Vocabularies of the Cahuilla and Gabrielino California Mission Indians
With a Plate Illustrating the California Balí - a Stick Used by California Mission Rancheros to Record Cattle Brands
Rare separately issued offprint of this early report on the Native Americans of Los Angeles, by a Southern California pioneer who owned Rancho Santa Anita.
The letters were written by Hugo Reid (1811-1852), a Scot who arrived in Los Angeles by way of Sonora in 1832, who married a Gabrielino Indian woman.
These letters originally appeared serially in the Los Angeles Star, beginning in February 1852, but the present pamphlet stands as the first publication of Reid's letters in book form. They are here presented as edited by Walter James Hoffman, a physician and curator of the Anthropological Society of Washington, D.C., who had access to the actual letters, then still in the possession of the original recepient, Antonio F. Coronel. According to the Dawson 80, the newspaper letters showed subtle changes in wording and spelling, as well as "larger inclusions and omissions."
In his first letter Reid lists the Indian names for the main rancherias, along with their modern names.
Reid described the language, customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Gabieleño Indians, a tribe occupying the San Gabriel Valley and coastal areas of Los Angeles County, part of Orange County, and Santa Catalina and San Clemente Islands. His picture of the local Indians was a sympathetic one. - Dawson 80.
Hoffman's footnotes add much information on Native California cultures, including the shamans, games played ("Chunkee"), tattooing practices, and the like. The plate illustrates specialized tools used by Californio and Native American cattle herders, including the balí - which recorded the brands by means of notches:
The herds of cattle owned by the Missions were grazed in favorable localities, each herd being under the control of a chief herder...[whose] duty was, also, to have every animal branded, a record of which was kept in the shape of a notched stick.
The same kind of stick was used by herders of horses:
For horses, the end is pointed, in imitation of the sharp ear of a horse.
In sum, an important source for California Native American culture.
Rarity
This separately issued offprint of the Bulletin of the Essex Institute is quite rare in the market. Only 2 examples in RBH since 1959, one of which lacked the wrappers.