Malcolm Margolin (1940–2025)

Terrific book about those who lived in the Bay Area before the Europeans arrived. Great research, and Margolin takes a leap of imagination to really give you what seems to be an accurate portrayal of the lives and even at least a bit of the way of thinking about these people who are all gone now. Though he's probably not as successful at not romanticizing them as he could have been, the picture he paints seems real. A thoroughly enjoyable book.

Recommended by a friend who is a professor of anthropology and history. I found this very readable and engaging. A great way to learn the history and culture of these people. The author did his research and did speak to the fact that he is a white man writing about an indigenous culture. I would be curious to hear what descendants of these folks think of the book. I will share this with my Mama. I know she will like it.

Reviewed March 2006

Second time reading this book, I really need to reread it every few years as it has so much information about this area. Margolin started with the question, “what was life in the Bay Area like before the coming of the Europeans?” I think I got this book when taking CA history at Hartnell, maybe this should be required reading in Junior High? Nothing is more relevant to students living in the area but to know about the peoples living in the area before. I was very show more interested to note that the Ohlone’s belief in the supernatural and animism, “served in place of a formal code of laws.” This kept people at peace, healthy an not overpopulated. Taboos worked as determents as well as not over hunting and showing respect for people, places and things. Also amazing is that these people have no history, “no sense of years, no long genealogies, no history by which they could measure or even conceive of the passage of time.” They were unable to mention the dead or even think about their ancestors in any specific sense. Lastly the author sums up what eventually happens to the Ohlone culture, “replaced by a civilization technologically more advanced than theirs, but in many respects ecologically, socially and spiritually more backward.”
4-2006 show less

Allows you to walk around in the Bay Area before the White man came and stole it all away, ruining it in the process. A unique book that gives the reader a new perspective. Gets one to thinking about how things might have been...