Indian Tales

The book misses pages 87-118, but instead had another repeat of pages 23-57. It was so disappointing to find this when you are half way through the book. The pages also fell apart after just a few days of reading.

This book has been one of my all time favourites for many years. One of the copies in my possession featured a cover blurb by William Carlos Williams, extolling its virtues. Having read it aloud to two generations of children, I can vouch for its beauty as an oral experience - brilliant, clear and transforming in its tale of a prototypical human-animal family traveling through a mythical California, encountering many amazing figures (Loon, Coyote, the Flint People) on their way. Kids (and adults) readily identify with the family dynamics among the characters. Really can't recommend too highly.

Jaime de Angulo was a truly Californian character -- wanderer, poet, wastrel, anthropologist, linguist, and wild man; and near the end of his life he started retelling to his children the stories he'd learned from years of field work (and just hanging around) with the Pit River Indians of northern California. Out of those stories came this enchanting book, a semi-novel for children and wise adults, a series of stories both hilarious and profound told and experienced during a family's journey to visit relatives by the ocean. De Angulo's luminous vision gives us as intimate a picture of a Native American vision of life as any book I can think of. That this classic is not better known is a mystery....