We are not savages : Native Americans in Southern California and the Pala Reservation, 1840-1920
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
We are not savages : Native Americans in Southern California and the Pala Reservation, 1840-1920
(Native American series / Clifford Trafzer, series editor)
Michigan State University Press, c2001
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
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  Gunma
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  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
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  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
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  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
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  Tokushima
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  Fukuoka
  Saga
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  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-262) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
On a cool, autumn day in October 1902, a group of Indians, known as Cupenos, noticed a white man approaching their village of Agua Caliente, located in a beautiful mountain valley in southern California. The unexpected guest was a farmer, a federal employee assigned to teach Native Americans how to raise crops. The stranger apparently came to assist the Cupenos and other local Indians in preparing to leave their homelands and remove to the Pala Reservation, over fifty miles away. On the following day, Cupenos, along with their Luiseno and Kumeyaay neighbors, gathered together to discuss the stranger's demands. One person stood up and declared with firm resolve, "We do not need a farmer to help us, we are not savages". Others agreed. The assembly of Indians then invited the white man to depart.
In We Are Not Savages, Joel R. Hyer traces the history of the Cupenos, Luisenos, and Kumeyaays, recounting how the federal government ultimately forced more than one hundred of their numbers to the Pala Reservation. He also considers the diverse and complex methods the U.S. government used to Americanise these Indians. Yet, this is much more than a study in federal Indian policy. Hyer places local Indians in the centre of his work. Basing his research on reservation records, government documents, interviews, and other sources, the author demonstrates the strategies the Cupenos used to respond to the pressures and problems created by outsiders.
Hyer's sympathetic account offers new insight into such issues as Indian health and education, acculturation, and cultural persistence. This is a remarkable tale of survival, resistance, and accommodation.
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