Chiefs and Challengers:Indian Resistance and Cooperation in Southern California, 1769-1906

Description

Long recognized as a pioneering work in the ethnohistory of California| ” Chiefs and Challengers| ” when it first appeared| overturned the stereotype of Indian victimhood and revealed a complex political landscape in which Native peoples interacted with one another as much as they did with non-Indians intruding into their territories.
Although historian George Harwood Phillips did not shy away from chronicling the mistreatment of Indians| he moved beyond that approach to examine Indian-white interactions from both Indian and white perspectives.
This new edition describes the indigenous cultures of southern California and offers a detailed history of the repercussions of Euro-American colonization.

Because there was no geographical frontier in California separating Indians and whites| the interaction varied significantly from region to region in California.
In the south| conflict reached a climax in 1851 when Antonio Garra led a pan-Indian revolt that sent shock waves throughout California| forcing the Americans to take counteractions that affected themselves as much as the Indians.

In this second edition of “Chiefs and Challengers| ” Phillips brings the story into the twentieth century by drawing upon recent historical and anthropological scholarship and upon seldom-used documentary evidence.
After 1865| Indians faced new problems| including settler encroachment and the imposition of the reservation system.
That some Indians succeeded in holding onto their ancestral lands| Phillips shows| is evidence of their strategic efforts to survive.
His narrative includes numerous eloquent testimonies from Indians| among them a student at a government-run school who wrote to the U.S. president: “The white people call San Jacinto rancho their land and I don’t want them to do it.
We think it is ours| for God gave it to us first.”