The Journal of San Diego History
SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY
Winter 1977, Volume 23, Number 1
James E. Moss, Editor
Thomas L. Scharf, Assistant Editor

Douglas H. Strong, Book Review Editor

Several recent books on California Indians have been received. Theodora Kroeber’s best seller, Ishi in Two Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, $14.95) has been published in a deluxe illustrated edition which is well worth the price. Kroeber tells the fascinating story of the Yahi Indian who emerged from the foothill country near Lassen Peak in 1911 and spent the remaining four years of his life as a resident at the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco where he adapted to twentieth century America. Another attractive reprint from the University of California Press is Campbell Grant’s The Rock Paintings of the Chumash: A Study of a California Indian Culture. This well illustrated volume provides an historical and anthropological description of the Chumash and a detailed account of their pictographs and petroglyphs. Six essays by Sherburne F. Cook have been published under the title, The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), the standard work in its field. Philip J. Wilkie has edited a volume entitled, Background to Prehistory of the Yuha Desert Region (Ramona, CA: Ballena Press, 1976), a republication of six papers on the Indians who lived southwest of the Salton Sea basin.

Other books of interest include James R. Gibson’s Imperial Russia in Frontier America: The Changing Geography of Supply of Russian America, 1784-1867 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) which is part of the Andrew H. Clark series in the historical geography of North America. Gibson devotes one chapter to Russian exploration and settlement in California. Bernice Scott’s Junipero Serra: Pioneer of the Cross (Fresno: Valley Publishers, 1976) is an entertaining and partly fictionalized biography. The San Juan Capistrano Historical Society has published Recuerdos de San Juan Capistrano (1976), a collection of 11 short essays by different authors on the early life and personalities of that community.

Locally the Library Association of La Jolla has reissued the 1955 edition of Howard S. F. Randolph’s La Jolla: Year by Year (first published in 1946). This anecdotal account of La Jolla, 1887-1955, provides a myriad of facts and descriptions of episodes in La Jolla’s early development. Bill Robinson has edited Border Country (Alhambra and Imperial Valley: Border Mountain Press, 1976), an odd collection of unrelated recent articles on border life. Hopefully Robinson will spare us from a promised sequel volume.

DHS