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Captain Sean Mulkerin comes home from the sea to find his family home in jeopardy. After the death of his father, Sean’s determined mother, Eileen, took it upon herself to run the sprawling Rancho Malibu—until a fire destroyed her hard-earned profits. Now, on the edge of financial ruin, Eileen hopes Sean can help them find a way out. The rumor is that her late husband found gold in the wild and haunted California hills, but the only clue to its whereabouts lies with an ancient, enigmatic Indian. When Sean and Eileen set forth to retrace his father’s footsteps, they know they are in search of a questionable treasure—with creditors, greedy neighbors, and ruthless gunmen watching every move they make. Before they reach their destination, mother and son will test both the limits of their faith and the laws of nature as they seek salvation in a landscape where reality can blur like sand and sky in a desert mirage.
""Decline of the Californios" is one of those rare works that first gained fame for its pathbreaking and original nature, but which now maintains its status as a classic of California and ethnic history."--Douglas Monroy, author of "Thrown among Strangers"
"[A] gorgeously illustrated compendium."--Sunset This lavishly illustrated atlas takes readers off the beaten path and outside normal conceptions of California, revealing its myriad ecologies, topographies, and histories in exquisite maps and trail paintings. Based on decades of exploring the backcountry of the Golden State, artist-adventurer Obi Kaufmann blends science and art to illuminate the multifaceted array of living, connected systems like no book has done before. Kaufmann depicts layer after layer of the natural world, delighting in the grand scale and details alike. The effect is staggeringly beautiful: presented alongside California divvied into its fifty-eight counties, for example, we consider California made up of dancing tectonic plates, of watersheds, of wildflower gardens. Maps are enhanced by spirited illustrations of wildlife, keys that explain natural phenomena, and a clear-sighted but reverential text. Full of character and color, a bit larger than life, The California Field Atlas is the ultimate road trip companion and love letter to a place.
Before the Gold Rush of 1848-1858, Alta (Upper) California was an isolated cattle frontier--and home to a colorful group of Spanish-speaking, non-indigenous people known as Californios. Profiting from the forced labor of large numbers of local Indians, they carved out an almost feudal way of life, raising cattle along the California coast and valleys. Visitors described them as a good-looking, vibrant, improvident people. Many traces of their culture remain in California. Yet their prosperity rested entirely on undisputed ownership of large ranches. As they lost control of these in the wake of the Mexican War, they lost their high status and many were reduced to subsistence-level jobs or fell into abject poverty. Drawing on firsthand contemporary accounts, the authors chronicle the rise and fall of Californio men and women.
Antonio María Osio’s La Historia de Alta California was the first written history of upper California during the era of Mexican rule, and this is its first complete English translation. A Mexican-Californian, government official, and the landowner of Angel Island and Point Reyes, Osio writes colorfully of life in old Monterey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and gives a first-hand account of the political intrigues of the 1830s that led to the appointment of Juan Bautista Alvarado as governor. Osio wrote his History in 1851, conveying with immediacy and detail the years of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846–1848 and the social upheaval that followed. As he witnesses California’s territorial transition from Mexico to the United States, he recalls with pride the achievements of Mexican California in earlier decades and writes critically of the onset of U.S. influence and imperialism. Unable to endure life as foreigners in their home of twenty-seven years, Osio and his family left Alta California for Mexico in 1852. Osio’s account predates by a quarter century the better-known reminiscences of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Juan Bautista Alvarado and the memoirs of Californios dictated to Hubert Howe Bancroft’s staff in the 1870s. Editors Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz have provided an accurate, complete translation of Osio’s original manuscript, and their helpful introduction and notes offer further details of Osio’s life and of society in Alta California.
Between 1846 and 1873, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide. Madley describes pre-contact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the Gold Rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and the broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. congressmen, California governors, and others. The state and federal governments spent at least $1,700,000 on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials’ culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book.
In this authoritative and immensely readable insider’s account, celebrated cookbook author and former chef Joyce Goldstein traces the development of California cuisine from its formative years in the 1970s to 2000, when farm-to-table, foraging, and fusion cooking had become part of the national vocabulary. Interviews with almost two hundred chefs, purveyors, artisans, winemakers, and food writers bring to life an approach to cooking grounded in passion, bold innovation, and a dedication to "flavor first." Goldstein explains how the counterculture movement in the West gave rise to a restaurant culture characterized by open kitchens, women in leadership positions, and a surprising number of chefs and artisanal food producers who lacked formal training. The new cuisine challenged the conventional kitchen hierarchy and French dominance in fine dining, leading to a more egalitarian and informal food scene. In weaving Goldstein’s views on California food culture with profiles of those who played a part in its development—from Alice Waters to Bill Niman to Wolfgang Puck—Inside the California Food Revolution demonstrates that, while fresh produce and locally sourced ingredients are iconic in California, what transforms these elements into a unique cuisine is a distinctly Western culture of openness, creativity, and collaboration. Engagingly written and full of captivating anecdotes, this book shows how the inspirations that emerged in California went on to transform the experience of eating throughout the United States and the world.
Native Americans who populated the various ranchos of Mexican California as laborers are people frequently lost to history. The "rancho period" was a critical time for California Indians, as many were drawn into labor pools for the flourishing ranchos following the 1834 dismantlement of the mission system, but they are practically absent from the documentary record and from popular histories. This study focuses on Rancho Petaluma north of San Francisco Bay, a large livestock, agricultural, and manufacturing operation on which several hundredÑperhaps as many as two thousandÑNative Americans worked as field hands, cowboys, artisans, cooks, and servants. One of the largest ranchos in the region, it was owned from 1834 to 1857 by Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, one of the most prominent political figures of Mexican California. While historians have studied Vallejo, few have considered the Native Americans he controlled, so we know little of what their lives were like or how they adjusted to the colonial labor regime. Because VallejoÕs Petaluma Adobe is now a state historic park and one of the most well-protected rancho sites in California, this site offers unparalleled opportunities to investigate nineteenth-century rancho life via archaeology. Using the Vallejo rancho as a case study, Stephen Silliman examines this California rancho with a particular eye toward Native American participation. Through the archaeological recordÑtools and implements, containers, beads, bone and shell artifacts, food remainsÑhe reconstructs the daily practices of Native peoples at Rancho Petaluma and the labor relations that structured indigenous participation in and experience of rancho life. This research enables him to expose the multi-ethnic nature of colonialism, counterbalancing popular misconceptions of Native Americans as either non-participants in the ranchos or passive workers with little to contribute to history. Lost Laborers in Colonial California draws on archaeological data, material studies, and archival research, and meshes them with theoretical issues of labor, gender, and social practice to examine not only how colonial worlds controlled indigenous peoples and practices but also how Native Americans lived through and often resisted those impositions. The book fills a gap in the regional archaeological and historical literature as it makes a unique contribution to colonial and contact-period studies in the Spanish/Mexican borderlands and beyond.