Robert Fleming Heizer Book order (chronological)

This new, expanded edition of The California Indians is a more comprehensive and thus more useful book than its predecessor, which first appeared in 1951 and was reprinted seven times. The editors have combined the selections, eighteen of which are new, into a general survey of California Indian native cultures. They have avoided highly technical studies because they intend their book for the general reading public rather than for scholars. The editors discuss the present-day Indians of California in a chapter written especially for this volume, and provide a new, extensive classified bibliography listing hundreds of published works arranged by culture areas and subjects. This list of references should prove useful to the nonprofessional who wishes to read further on a particular tribal culture or topic, such as Indian basketry or place-names or prehistoric rock art.

California is a contentious arena for the study of the Native American past. Some critics say genocide characterized the early conduct of Indian affairs in the state; others say humanitarian concerns. Robert F. Heizer, in the former camp, has compiled a damning collection of contemporaneous accounts that will provoke students of California history to look deeply into the state's record of race relations and to question bland generalizations about the adventuresome days of the Gold Rush.

This classic of American Indian ethnography, originally published in 1877, is again available in its complete form. In the summers of 1871 and 1872 Powers visited Indian groups in the northern two-thirds of California. A journalist by profession, he was untrained in ethnography, but was nonetheless an astonishingly intelligent observer who had a gift for writing in a spirited manner. He reported faithfully what he heard and portrayed accurately what he saw among the native survivors of Gold Rush days in a series of seventeen articles published mostly in The Overland Monthly. These were partly unwritten, added to, and reorganized by Powers to be published in 1877 as a report of the U.S. Geographical Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. Powers' book is still basic and is referred to by everyone who deals with native cultures. The 1877 edition was not large, and Tribes of California is at last reprinted in response to growing demand for this rare volume. For this edition all of the original illustrations have been retained and the basic text printed in facsimile. Professor Robert F. Heizer has provided annotations throughout and an introduction to indicate contemporary thought about the volume.