I picked this book up in Bisbee, AZ on a recent trip. Expecting it to be dull and academic, I was delighted to find it is great reading. I could slowly read a chapter or two each night and LEARN something of what life was like for an Apache who was a boy during the last "Indian wars" of the southwest.

It has always fascinated me that this huge country was only recently occupied largely by people such as the Apaches. White people and their "civilization" were still just building their way, one stick at a time, toward a new world of artifice and hypocrisy to surround the native people of North America.

This is a rare find! Eve Ball has helped preserve some important Apache oral history translated to written form

They also are one of the strongest parts of southwestern cultures, now and back when. Specifically, Hopi indians draw on the oldest known tradition, going back 1,500 years. Generally, southwestern baskets have been popular outside the area, since 1821. The opening of the Santa Fe trail started up some heavy duty trading with the world outside the southwest.

No energy- or time-saving equipment is used, not now or then. But some modern tools can be used. Helpers are tin lids, scissors, pruning shears, knives, fingernail clippers and awls.

But baskets still are made from many of the same old plant parts. Some of the materials are yucca, horsehair or cattail stems for coiling; sunflower seeds for black dye; sumac bush for twining; kaolin clay for natural white to show better; and alder bark for tan, red or brown dyes. Finding them is getting harder, what with plants losing ground to highways, subdivisions and hard-to-predict weather.

It impresses me that each southwestern culture keeps up a different way to start and end baskets. So finely twined baskets are western Apache. They still are needed in the sunrise ceremony, for a girl's coming-of-age. Red willow bowl baskets are made from sacred Rio Grande plants, for Pueblo basket dances. They often hang on the wall, as decoration, between uses. And sumac splints sewn on a triangular 3-rod foundation, with a false braid or herringbone finish, go into Navajo wedding baskets.

Also interestingly, baskets, like other parts of southwestern cultures, tie past, present and future together. This happens with traditional designs. So one favorite design of first man placing stars keeps alive part of the Navajo Genesis. Likewise, another favorite design of a turtle surrounded by clouds and thunder calls to mind the highly successful Hopi rain ceremony.

This well-written book gets to the point, with helpful comments from the artists and with pretty pictures. There's space for it on the shelf with Kathryn N Bernick's BASKETRY AND CORDAGE FROM HESQUIAT HARBOR, Mary Dodds Schlick's COLUMBIA RIVER BASKETRY, and Rachel Nash Law and Cynthia W Taylor's APPALACHIAN WHITE OAK BASKETMAKING.

California is unique to all other areas in today's United States in that it was the last area occupied by American settlers. It was also the last place left for fleeing and exiled tribes from the east to go to. This not only caused strife for local Californian tribes, but led to integration of cross-tribal cultures. Native Americans were very unique from not only outsiders, but also to other tribes.

This book is clearly written and moves at a consistent pace because every sentence is pertinent to California's amazing history!

Sutter's treatment of and plan for Native Americans is something so-called "historians" at Sutter's Mill should learn about before they tout him as some kind of heroic frontiersman. Rape, murder, suicide, disease, corrupted politics, vigilantism, paradoxical alliances between tribes and "White" men... and much more are all in here! I couldn't put this book down! Though it is a history book (of sorts), it reads like a dramatic murder-mystery book... only difference is is that this is non-fiction!! I never knew California's history was so unique and full of intrigue! You'll never think of California as the surfer-dude, Hollywood, sunny golden state again after reading this book...