CALIFORNIAN INDIAN

Distribution of Californian Indians. member of any of the aboriginal North American peoples in the area roughly corresponding to California and the northern Baja California peninsula. Native peoples found in California were only generally circumscribed by the present state boundaries. Some of the peoples within these boundaries were culturally intimate with other areas neighbouring California. The Colorado River groups, such as the Mojave (Mohave) and Yuma, shared traditions with both the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) and southern California, whereas the peoples of the Sierra Nevada, such as the Washo, shared traditions with the Great Basin peoples. In northern California were to be found native traditions of the Northwest Coast; the remaining native groups occupied the greater part of California, and they represented indigenous cultural developments. A conservative estimate of the pre-Spanish population of California is 275,000, making it one of the most populous culture areas of native North America. Various ecologic featuresseacoasts, tidelands, river and lake areas, valleys, deserts, and foothillsand various historical traditions contributed to great cultural diversity. Thus there existed a seemingly endless variety of local environmental niches, each contributing advantages and disadvantages to human adaptation. The peoples of California were politically stable, sedentary, and conservative and less in conflict with one another than was usually the case in other areas of North America; and neighbouring groups often developed elaborate systems of economic exchange of goods and services. The Californian Indians reached peaks of cultural attainment rarely seen among peoples depending almost wholly for subsistence on hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plant foods. Additional reading A.L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California (1925, reprinted 1975); and Robert F. Heizer and M.A. Whipple (compilers and eds.), The California Indians: A Source Book, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged (1971), provide the most general summaries of native Californian cultures, although neither source is wholly representative of the latest thoughts. Other books of interest are, on the region, Lowell J. Bean and Thomas C. Blackburn (eds.), Native Californians: A Theoretical Retrospective (1976), essays on economic, social, and religious life; Robert F. Heizer and Albert B. Elsasser, The Natural World of the California Indians (1980); Jack D. Forbes, Native Americans of California and Nevada, rev. ed. (1982); Robert F. Heizer and Alan F. Almquist, The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination Under Spain, Mexico, and the United States to 1920 (1971); George Harwood Phillips, Chiefs and Challengers: Indian Resistance and Cooperation in Southern California (1975); Sherburne F. Cook, The Population of the California Indians, 17691970 (1976); and Albert L. Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (1988); and, on specific peoples, Raymond C. White, Luiseo Social Organization (1963, reissued 1971); Lowell John Bean, Mukat's People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (1972); and Virginia P. Miller, Ukomnm: The Yuki Indians of Northern California (1979). Very readable books for the nonspecialist are Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds (1961, reissued 1976); and Theodora Kroeber and Robert F. Heizer, Almost Ancestors: The First Californians (1968). Lowell John Bean The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica