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...of Native Society
Our understanding of the early history of California and its indigenous inhabitants is based on a handful of accounts by early explorers and missionaries. Unfortunately, most cared nothing about the indigenous cultures they encountered. Father Geronimo Boscana was an exception. Although he was focused on one goal, the conversion of the so-called savages he encountered to Christianity, Boscana was also an apt observer of native lifeways and culture.
Although Boscana had the same biases that characterized others who took time to record their reflections on Native peoples, the biases of a white male from a completely different cultural and religions background, he took enough interest in the natives of California to record such things as their ideas on the creation of the universe, how they related to their children, their marriage customs, their death and burial customs and their belief in the existence of the human soul. Unfortunately, Boscana approached his subject as though they were his...