California's earliest European colonists - Russian merchants and Franciscan missionaries - both depended heavily on Native American labor to build and maintain their colonies, but they did so in very different ways. This richly detailed book brings together disparate skeins of history - including little-known oral histories, native texts, ethnohistory, and archaeological excavations - to present a vivid new look at how native cultures fared under these two colonial systems. In addition to providing a new window on California's colonial past, Kent Lightfoot's innovative work, incorporating the holistic methods of historical anthropology, explores the surprising ramifications of these long-ago encounters for the political status of native people in the state today.
- ISBN10 0520208242
- ISBN13 9780520208247
- Publish Date 29 November 2004 (first published 1 January 2004)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 30 June 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of California Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 355
- Language English