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Pestilence & Persistence: Yosemite Indian Demography

PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 10:31 pm
by dan
There's a new book coming out that's about how disease impacted the Yosemite Indians before contact with Euro-Americans:

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11223.php

Kathleen L. Hull
Pestilence and Persistence
Yosemite Indian Demography and Culture in Colonial California
$45.00, 9780520258471. 378 pages

Description:
"This innovative examination of the Yosemite Indian experience in California poses broad challenges to our understanding of the complex, destructive encounters that took place between colonists and native peoples across North America. Looking closely at archaeological data, native oral tradition, and historical accounts, Kathleen Hull focuses in particular on the timing, magnitude, and consequences of the introduction of lethal infectious diseases to Native communities. The Yosemite Indian case suggests that epidemic disease penetrated small-scale hunting and gathering groups of the interior of North America prior to face-to-face encounters with colonists. It also suggests, however, that even the catastrophic depopulation that resulted from these diseases was insufficient to undermine the culture and identity of many Native groups. Instead, engagement in colonial economic ventures often proved more destructive to traditional indigenous lifeways. Hull provides further context for these central issues by examining ten additional cases of colonial-era population decline in groups ranging from Iroquoian speakers of the Northeast to complex chiefdoms of the Southeast and Puebloan peoples of the Southwest."

Re: Pestilence & Persistence: Yosemite Indian Demography

PostPosted: Sat May 28, 2016 11:12 am
by dot
I believe in the authors theory that the Valleys original formation was a cataclysmic event of an upward burst from below and a pulling apart of the valley. No other way could "glaciers" have had the proper topography to develop, if they developed at all. If you visit, just simply look at the left side top ridge, and then the right. You can see how they almost fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Just like the earths continents. What could cause this upward and out ward "burst? I have a copywrite name for it. It is called the "M.M.1200 B.C E. Crater." the "Megan McCoy 12,000 BC Elongated Crater. The one that ripped right through the center of California at a near zero degree angle creating an elongated crater that is the "great California valley." Yes sir. It's amazing how time, effort and logical thinking and simple reasoning can change our history books.