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• WHEN THE GREAT SPIRIT DIED- [LSI]: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS

  $19.95 $11.97 0 review(s)

  
  

  "This man has scalped more Indians than any other person living on this coast, and has his trophies to prove the fact." This was the headline of an article in the San Francisco Examiner in early 1899. The reporter had obtained an interview with one Jackson Farley, a pioneer rancher who had settled in Mendocino County in 1857. Was this merely the idle boast of an old man seeking notoriety? Not at all. Farley pointed out dozens of Indian scalps decorating the walls of his cabin. Too, the reporter duly noted the fact that Farley recited his tales while sitting in his "Indian hide-bottomed chair." A member of one of Farley’s 1859 Indian hunting forays testified that: "On the first night we found and surrounded a rancheria in which we found two wounded Indians and one old squaw, all of which we killed; on our return home we found another rancheria which we approached within fifteen feet before the Indians observed us; then they broke for the brush, and we pursued them and killed thirteen bucks and two squaws."

• REMEMBERING THE CALIFORNIA MISSIONS

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  From San Diego to the Salinas Valley, to the rugged coastlines of Monterey and San Francisco, and inland to Sonoma, El Camino Real traces the path of the California’s 21 historic missions. Under the leadership of California’s founding hero, Father Junipero Serra, Spanish priests and their Indian converts built these imposing and beautiful structures that are the earliest monuments of modern California. “Remembering California Missions” evokes all the beauty and history of California’s mission heritage in the lush watercolors of renowned California artist Pat Hunter and the insightful prose of Janice Stevens. Through exploring the history and enduring architectural, artistic, and cultural heritage of the California missions, this book reveals the full history of California itself, from Father Serra’s pioneering labors, to the conquest of the land’s agricultural wealth, to California’s painful transfers from the Indians to Spain, Mexico and the United States. A treasury of captivating artistry and fascinating history, “Remembering the California Missions” celebrates and preserves the masterworks of California’s founding era.

• MURDER IN THE GARDEN

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  As countless thousands poured into the fertile San Joaquin Valley of California in the decades following the Civil War, some brought visions of man's darker side to this new Eden. Murder in the Garden is the absorbing examination of fifteen notorious crimes from the not-too-distant past of Fresno, California.

• California Fruits, Flakes & Nuts

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  They call California the Granola State — a place where everyone is a fruit, a flake or a nut. They don’t get any fruitier, flakier or nuttier than the deviants, crackpots and losers profiled in California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts. A freewheeling catalog of misfits, eccentrics, creeps, criminals and failed dreamers, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts profiles 48 bizarre personalities who exemplify the Golden State’s well-deserved reputation for nonconformity. Unlike the sanitized heroics taught in school, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts tells history from the viewpoint of the losers: murderers, lunatics, eccentrics and disgraced, washed-up celebrities. Presenting a wealth of historical information that had long been swept away and forgotten, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts is a uniquely entertaining look at the dark and disreputable corners of California history. In these pages, Gold Rush pioneers are revealed as murderous madmen; Hollywood celebrities are shown to be drug-addled sex maniacs; early hippies are just 1950s weirdos; and even seemingly ordinary Californians have a talent for freakish, crazy and criminal behavior. California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts profiles such stellar Californians as frontier lunatic Grizzly Adams (whose head was one massive wound after multiple bear attacks); I Love Lucy star William Frawley (a racist, misogy- nist, foul-mouthed drunk); skirt-wearing, skirt-chasing legendarily awful film director Ed Wood; proto-hippie and “Nature Boy” singer eden ahbez; rocket scientist, black magician and L. Ron Hubbard mentor Marvel Par- sons; and many more nutjobs, oddballs and dangerously violent freaks. The perfect book for anyone who likes feeling superior to losers, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts is a side-splitting, salacious and shocking salute to the people who made California the strangest place on earth.

• THE CALIFORNIA SNATCH RACKET

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  Subtitle: "Kidnappings During the Prohibition and Depression Eras." In California in the 1920s and 1930s, kidnapping—nicknamed the “snatch racket” by a cynical newspaperman—was the most booming criminal enterprise around. Driven by greed, desperation and sometimes plain stupidity, ransom artists preyed indiscriminately on Hollywood socialites, wealthy heiresses and even poor people who couldn’t pay a dime. Every new disappearance sold more newspapers, but for both the kidnappers and their unfortunate victims, even the simplest caper often went tragically wrong. “California Snatch Racket” brings this dark and forgotten era into shockingly vivid life. Richly illustrated, “California Snatch Racket” reflects newspaper, police, court and prison accounts of the times written in a style that places the reader on the scene. Avoiding supposition and sensationalism, the book offers true accounts of the crimes and the people. These 15 bizarre, often ironic tales illustrate the complex cruelties that flourished in the Golden Era of the Golden State. A modern city rises and lynches a pair of kidnappers. A victim begs leniency for his kidnapper in a case where a technicality demands the death penalty. A couple of college kids imitate the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping to prove their intellectual prowess and famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson fakes her own kidnapping to cover up an affair. “California Snatch Racket” recounts its stories in the manner of the times, while leaving judgment to the courts and the readers.

• THE SEPOY MUTINY 1857: AN ANNOTATED CHECKLIST OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE BOOKS

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  The largest and most comprehensive checklist on the Indian Mutiny since the publication, in 1966, of The Revolt in India by Janice Ladendorf. Includes approximately 1160 entries with author, publisher, date and place of publication, annotation, and the institution holding a copy. An extensive 24 page index is included.