Napa Valley's Natives

by Richard H. Dillon

A scholarly but entertaining ethnographic study of the early Indian population of Napa Valley, California. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1885852193
• ISBN13: 9781885852199
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: James Stevenson Publisher
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Napa Valley's Indian Tribes

This under one hundred pages book is simple but comprehensive on the history of past history on Napa Valley’s Natives of different tribes. It was written by Mr. Dillon, offered by Napa County Historical Society. Page 21 showed that Josiah Belden at Coast Range Indians were inferior in physique and mental capacity to Indians east of the Rockies. But had good word for those who adopted some of the white man’s ways: civilized (Christianized) to some extend . . . were very useful servants and laboring men for the rancheros and citizens (another form of slavery?). It is interesting on p.36 that ill and painful women rubbed themselves with angelica, in lieu of lotions On the next page, the chief and his wife were working the same work as preparing and storing food, making clothes, weaving blankets and making fish nets. Wappo society was more democratic in its equal opportunity that whites still struggle for their share! It is fun to learn that Napa Indians adopted color codes for their directions of red, yellow, blue and pink, ( a borrowed Chinese system?). Maybe they had the physical features of Asian (p.84)? Page 96 recorded that white men committed genocide against the first settlers in cruelties and atrocities. Who is the savage and uncivilized? The American government in 1906 to amend to include “Mongolians” a term for Chinese but extended to Indians as they had the same DNA. It is a good reference to learn about the Native Americans in Napa Valley, California.