Customer Reviews

Shasta Nation (CA) (Images of America)

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This book does an excellent job of showing the determination, resilience, and optimism of the Shasta people. To me, the pictures were the essence of the book. They explained for the first time the relationship between generations, families, and friends. I felt like I had made 100 new acquaintenances by the time I finished it. It also gave me an appreciation for history and how were are not really that distant from the tumultuous times of our ancestors. This is an uplifting and "must read" book for anyone wanting an intimate look at the life and times of Native Americans.

Arrived quickly and in good condition. Book is very detailed and an excellent record of the Etna area tribes

Like many Native American tribes, which did not keep written records during their aboriginal period, and whose cultures were largely destroyed in a single generation following contact with European-American civilization, the Shastas are mostly lost to the historical record. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of accounts, far more information exists about the Shastas than is presented in this book. The authors irresponsibly ignore most of the information that does exist in favor of an apparently romanticized oral history passed down by members and acquaintances of their own family, which reads more like a family-history album written by an amateur historian. Many doubtful claims are presented as if well-established (e.g. Shastas possessed a centralized government). Of especially doubtful veracity is the supposed poisoning of 3,000 warriors by US government agents at a feast following a land cession in 1851, a tale supposedly told by an old man on his deathbed, and otherwise primarily supported by the discrepancy between a federal agent's wild guess as to the native population and a subsequent census report listing only 27 resident Indians in the same county. While the most shameful treatment (including frequent incidences of rape and mass-murder) of Native Americans (mostly by white miners and settlers--not federal agencies or the US military) was general throughout Northern California during the 1850s, this alleged tradition, while possibly based on a real event, lacks the supporting evidence to be worthy of its presentation as history, and may be a corruption of an infamous 1852 incident in which members of the Modoc tribe were murdered by poisoning and/or gunfire at a parley and feast hosted by white "Volunteers" from Yreka, a class of men whose treatment of Indians did approach a veritable agenda of general extermination.

The book does have some value for its wealth of stories passed down within a very narrow group of individuals, and should be counted in with other accounts, although weighed accordingly. Betty Hall's standing as official historian of "the Shasta Nation" (a corporation essentially run by members of her family) is also misleading, since this organization presumes to speak for the Shasta tribe, which hasn't existed with any real cohesiveness or identity since the 1850s, and which probably existed with less cohesiveness than implied before that. Shasta Nation, Inc. is not a federally-recognized tribe (which doesn't necessarily mean they aren't legitimate), was (and maybe still is) financially interested in a proposed casino in Hornbrook (It tried to build its own, and opposed that of a rival tribal organization.), and stands curiously at odds with neighboring tribal organizations on political and environmental issues. Perhaps tellingly, the cover of the book has a photo of a native woman weaving a basket--most ethnological studies suggest that the Shasta weaved few of their own baskets, but usually traded for baskets made by other tribes, esp. Karuk downriver.