Mythology of the Mission Indians (Forgotten Books)

Mission Indians, predominantly from present-day California (although members of the Shoshone also joined), were groups of Native Americans who were brought to live in the Spanish missions in California, and there baptized as Catholics, under the patronage of Franciscan fathers, as early as 1769, when the first missions were established in California. Mission Indians were from many tribes who in the missions amalgamated together and formed new groupings.

While the term was initially applied to Southern California nations and tribes circa 1906 by Alfred L. Kroeber and Constance G. Du Bois, the term is commonly used today also in Northern California to include the natives of the seven Northern California missions. (Quote from wikipedia.org)

About the Author

Constance Goddard Du Bois (1889 - 1934)
Constance Goddard DuBois (d. 1934) was a novelist and an ethnographer, writing extensively between 1899 and 1908 about the native peoples and cultures of southern California.

DuBois was born in Zanesville, Ohio, and settled in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1889. Her published fiction included several short stories plus six novels (DuBois 1890, 1892, 1895a, 1895b, 1900, 1907).

DuBois' most enduring contribution was as a self-taught ethnographer, doing pioneering studies in a period when professional academic anthropology was just becoming established in the United States. Starting in the late 1890s, she made summer trips out west to see her sister who lived in the San Diego area. She began making treks into the San Diego backcountry, to meet the surviving communities of Diegueno and Luiseno Indians. Soon she was writing about their traditional and contemporary lifeways, promoting traditional crafts (particularly basketry), and helping with fin