The Conflict Between the California Indian and White
Civilization: By Sherburne F. Cook. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1976. Charts and Tables. Index. 522 pages. $6.95.
Reviewed by Florence C. Shipek, author of The Autobiography of Delfina Cuero (1968).
This volume, combining six studies originally published
between 1940 and 1943 in the University of California Ibero-Americana Series,
makes these excellent seminal works readily available for use by the present
generation of scholars interpreting California ethnohistory. The author,
Sherburne F. Cook, (1896-1974), a biochemical physiologist, interested in the
reactions to rapid cultural change and the diseases of human populations,
pioneered in the analysis of historical sources for demographic data about
Native Americans. His complete bibliography covering the extent of more than
forty years research is published in the Journal of California Anthropology (1976:3:1:5-12).
Part One in this volume, The Indian versus the Spanish
Mission, details the treatment received by the Indians at the missions. His
thorough discussions of diet, diseases, sexual behavior of Spanish soldiers and
Indians, labor conditions, severe punishments, Indian revolts, and attempts to
flee the missions are unsurpassed and balanced in presentation. Cook has demonstrated
that the total mission harvests in relation to population size
meant that the Indians at the missions received an inadequate diet.
Unfortunately, the editors placed Cook's analysis of mission population
statistics, Population Trends Among the California Mission Indians, near
the end of the volume rather than following the discussion of missionization
which it illustrates. Cook used the population data from the annual reports
of each mission and demonstrated the general trends of an increasing
death rate, decreasing birth rate, and changing
sex ratio. He also points to differences in the rates at several missions (p.
442). For example, adult death rates range from 26.8 to 128.4 and child death
rates from 76.9 to 353.3. The causes for these differences have yet to be
determined, but I suggest that they may be revealed by an analysis of the
specific interaction of each mission with its local Indian cultural variation.
The Physical and Demographic Reaction of the Nonmission
Indians centers on the effects of Spanish exploration, incursions, and
raids into the Central Valley and adjoining Sierras. Using reports and diaries,
Cook estimates the size of the original populations and describes the population
decline due to disease and raiding. Similar data for southern California remains
to be studied.
The American Invasion, 1848-1870 documents the brutal
treatment received by Indians from most gold miners and settlers in central and
northern California. Cook also demonstrates that the Indian provided a major
labor source in gold mines, and later in agriculture, stock-raising and
transportation of goods. He recognized the California Indians' ability to
freely adapt to new labor forms and a cash economy but suggested that their
adaptability was limited since they did not develop capital and progress beyond wage
labor for others. He apparently did not recognize that, regardless of ability,
lack of political and legal rights and equality prevented any form of secure
ownership or capital development by Indians.
The remaining sections, Trends in Marriage and Divorce
since 1850, and The Mechanism and Extent of Dietary Adaptation Among
Certain Groups of California and Nevada Indians, deal primarily with those
aspects of change among central and northern California Indians. Comparable
studies among southern California Indians would undoubtedly reveal some differences.
This volume is an excellent preliminary study of Native
California demography. However, variations in acculturation and survival rates
of Indian groups will not be fully understood until studies correlate the
culture of each group with each mission's actual condition and records of
harvests, births, baptisms and deaths. Further, the recent evidence for lengthy,
widespread recurrent droughts (H.C. Fritts, "Tree Ring Evidence for Climatic
Changes in Western North America," Monthly Weather Review, 1965,
93:421-443) must be intermeshed with the historic to understand all California
demographic data.
