American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Scientific inquiry predicates the need for periodic self-appraisal and reexamination. Perhaps it is axiomatic that the methods, research materials and findings of the collective scholarship on the American Indian, more than a century in process, would undergo regular reevaluation. It is healthy, of course, for scholars to challenge older theories and methods, to question earlier facts and findings as well as the very 'artifacts' of research upon which we hang our theories and conclusions. Sometimes newer methodology or a new perspective inspires innovative approaches to bridge disciplinary foci and thus bring fresh insights to a field of study. This is certainly true for the study of Native Americans. Recent decades, for example, have witnessed the maturation of ethnohistory, which has helped to synthesize the disparate approaches of anthropologists, geographers and historians-the three fields represented in this symposium. Whatever newer perspectives are advanced in these three papers, they belong hopefully to the mainstream of concern for rigorous criticism not just of our findings but also of our source materials-those miscellaneous 'artifacts' that include herein mission registers or padrones, letters (those by John Sutter) and maps as they have recorded changing land tenure.

INTRODUCTION An increasing number of studies in recent years have been devoted to interpreting data contained in the various ecclesiastical registers kept by early Franciscan missionaries in California. These mission registers contain valuable information regarding California Indian history, settlement geography, demography, family structure, marriage patterns, and relations with the Spanish colonial system. These data are important because they supplement and test statements about California Indian lifeways occurring in other historical documents and in the records gathered by early ethnographers. A great advantage to the ethno-historic information contained in the mission registers is that it covers a sizeable sample of the native population, thereby allowing analysis on a regional scale. Although an excellent opportunity is provided to obtain significant anthropological information, the use of mission register data is not entirely straightforward. The registers may contain any number of clerical errors, difficult handwriting, faded ink, missing pages, inconsistent renderings of Indian names, and cross-cultural misinterpretations. Because of the increasing use of mission registers for reconstructing California Indian culture, it is appropriate to review some common sources of error so that other researchers may be aware of potential problems which are involved in using this type of material. Examples are drawn from the author’s mission register studies of the Chumash Indians primarily using data from Missions Santa Barbara, La Purisima, and Santa Inés.

Most students of California Indians in the 1850s have dwelled on the violence that native people endured at the hands of whites. Tribes that were directly in the path of the Gold Rush were most severely affected because miners forced Indians off of valuable mineral and farm lands and commonly killed those who resisted. Even the most docile natives became victims of infectious diseases; tens of thousands of Indians did not survive the decade. The minority who survived often relied on seasonal labor for white ranchers who seldom had compunctions about exploiting Indian workers. Nevertheless, a few native people were able to exert a measure of control in this new world and became fixtures of daily life in California’s mining and agricultural settlements. Thus California Indians became an impoverished racial minority living on the margins of white society. The Nisenan Indians who occupied rich agricultural and gold-bearing lands in central California shared this sorry fate, yet little is known of the details of Nisenan history in the 1850s. The fullest record of Indian life during the Gold Rush ear exists in the correspondence of the Office of Indian Affairs, but federal agents concentrated their vision on the reservations that they administered where only a minority of the state’s Indians lived. For hundreds of small Indian communities a few scattered documentary references constitute a fragmentary record of their adjustments to the new conditions that beset them. Dispersed among the farms and towns of the Sacramento Valley, Nisenans were out of the view of federal Indian agents, so official records seldom mentioned them. As a result, rare documents that describe the Nisenans-like the two John A. Sutter letters printed with this essay-expand our understanding of Indian adaptations to white society and of how farmers and bureaucrats dealt with Indian workers.

Maps may be treated as scientific tools; they may also serve as historic documents. In Indian affairs there is no dearth of maps; in fact, the cartographic record, however rendered and preserved, began almost as early as the European encounter with native Americans. Such maps have taken various forms: field sketches as by missionaries, military personnel or others; exploratory maps and surveyors' plats; and maps rendered as part of, or subsequent to, treaties of land cession. The bulk of relevant maps of Indian distributions and occupancy, however, seem to belong to those that are reconstructions based, in part, on archaeological investigations, knowledge of native informants, field observations, the scanning of firsthand observations of others through letters, diaries and reports, and the interpretative abilities of map makers. While the majority of maps relate to ethnogeography, they also reflect the role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in the administration of tribal lands for a period spanning more than one hundred and fifty years. Maps of Indian affairs focus on land and resources, and they represent a wealth of data awaiting the interested researcher. Although such maps may incorporate some aboriginal knowledge, rarely has Indian cartography contributed to this official record, which has been compiled, surveyed and authenticated by non-Indian. Thus our current cartographic depiction of Indian tribes, their migrations and culture traits, as well as territoriality and contemporary trust lands, reflect the multiple origins of the data and the mixed purposes for which the maps have been prepared.

Any researcher who comes to the literature of the California Indian intent on preparing yet another bibliography confronts a consistent dilemma: what to include or exclude. To be sure, literature abounds, for the California Indian remains a viable subject not only for anthropologists but for historians, ethnohistorians, geographers and other scholars. In the 1970s several scholars produced bibliographical or documentary studies and these form the foundation of this listing. Grouped around somewhat traditional headings, the bibliography focuses on disciplinary and interdisciplinary writings mainly in the social sciences; I have excluded studies in physical anthropology, fiction, literary essays and poetry. I have also omitted references to foreign language sources. Moreover, because they are too numerous to cite herein, I have identified only a handful of the master’s theses produced in departments of anthropology, geography and history at all campuses of California State University and the University of California. Although the intent emphasizes the past ten years or so, at times I have dipped into the literature of the entire 1970s, especially when studies appear in less well known publications. On the other hand, to some extent I have tried to avoid duplicating some references appearing in the articles in this symposium or the book review section. Many of the items are, themselves, excellent bibliographical sources (e.g., California, vol. 8 of the Handbook of North American Indians [1978]). Moreover, some citations cover a larger universe than California, but are cited because they contain many applicable entries for the time period. In no way is this bibliography exhaustive within any heading, and some topics are regrettably lacking.