Tribes of California

by Stephen Powers, Robert F. Heizer (Introduction)

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.

Genres: History

508 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1877

About the author

Stephen Powers (1840–1904) was an American journalist, ethnographer, and historian of Native American tribes in California.

Reviews

[Marcia Kreutzmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an overview, this is a good read, as a reference, it lacks real sources. I was researching the tale of Bloody rock, about the massacre of a group of Yuki Indians near the Eel River in present-day Mendocino county. Sadly disappointed as he just repeated a story told to him by a local Potter Valley man, "whose name can be given upon request."

[Harry Allagree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1874 this account of the Tribes of California was based on Stephen Powers' experience of travelling among them in the summers of 1871 & 1872. Though he writes in highly stylized Victorian language, he gives the sense that, for the most part, he knew what he was talking about. His book gives a fairly detailed glimpse of life in the tribes of that time: long after the generations of the very first Native American populations, and after contact with the white man & his culture. Chapter XXXVII, General Facts is quite informative. "Let it be remembered...that after the Republic had matured its vast strength and developed its magnificent resources, it poured out hither a hundred thousand of the picked young men of the nation [1849 ff.], unencumbered with women and children, armed with the deadliest steel weapons of modern invention, and animated with that fierce energy which the boundless lust for gold inspired in the Americans, and pitted them against a race reared in an indolent climate, and in a land where there was scarcely even wood for weapons." (p. 471)

In the Preface, Powers says this about the indigenous people whom he encountered at the beginning of the 1870's: "While they had fewer vices than our own race, they committed more frequently the blackest crimes...but in this category there was nothing ever perpetrated by the California Indians which has not been matched by acts of individual frontiersmen..."

Powers' attitude towards Native Americans, as he describes them, is a mixed bag: he defends them in many ways & explains what was behind various elements of their culture. On the other hand, it was almost painful for me to see him constantly refer to them as "savages" and constantly put them down. I had to continually remind myself that he was a product, even that early, of the prejudices of the time -- many of which have continued to the present in our culture, unfortunately. Nevertheless, overall this seems to be a helpful book & Powers seems to really back up his observations with fact rather than fiction. This was most apparent, perhaps, in Chapter XXXIV, in his dealing with the names which have survived in Yosemite -- all names given by Americans, not a single one by Native Americans.