Results by title

The Ohlone of the San Francisco Bay area and the Paipai of northern Baja California occupy opposite ends of the spectrum of Native Californian identities. Or so it would appear. While the Ohlone lack popular recognition and official acknowledgement from the United States government, the Paipai occupy a large reserve and celebrate their ongoing cultural traditions throughout Baja California and southern California. Yet the two groups share a similar colonial history: entanglements with early European explorers, labor and enculturation at Spanish missions, and sustained interactions with American and Mexican settler colonialism.

Based on fifteen years of archaeological and historical research in the two regions, Narratives of Persistence charts the remarkable persistence of the Ohlone and Paipai alongside a synthesis of Native Californian endurance over the past five centuries. As the case studies demonstrate, Ohlone and Paipai people made intelligent and culturally appropriate choices to cope with the impact of colonialism on their communities, even as they took different pathways to the present day.

Lee M. Panich illustrates how changes in Native identity and practice within these colonial contexts were made to best conduct the groups’ lives within shifting sets of colonial constraints. He draws connections between the events and processes of the deeper past and the way the Ohlone and Paipai today understand their own histories and identities, offering a model for how scholars of Indigenous histories may think about the connections between the past and the present.

Explore Utah’s legendary lost and hidden silver mines with the last miner

The Last Miner is a captivating memoir chronicling the final days of mining exploration in Utah’s legendary Little Cottonwood Canyon during the 1950s. Through the eyes of Dick Fluehe, the last living miner to traverse these haunted, silver-laden tunnels, readers are immersed in a forgotten world beneath the internationally renowned Alta and Snowbird ski areas. With a knowledge as deep as the mines themselves, Dick recounts tales of collapsed shafts, gloriously jeweled stopes, and colorful personalities, such as “Swingin’ Door,” “Slick,” and “The Bull,” who lived and died pursuing ore.

Edited by New York Times bestselling author Dan Schilling, The Last Miner offers a unique, firsthand account of the treacherous, adventurous, and humorous lives of mid-century miners. Both thrilling and insightful, this memoir is the mining equivalent of a float down the Mississippi with Mark Twain and an unprecedented insight into the history of American West mining.