The Ohlone Way

Special 25th Anniversary Edition, with a new afterword by the author Two hundred years ago, herds of elk and antelope roamed the hills of the San Francisco--Monterey Bay area. Grizzly bears, now extinct in California, lumbered down to the creeks to fish for silver salmon and steelhead trout. From vast marshlands geese, ducks, and other birds rose in thick clouds "with a sound like that of a hurricane." This land of "inexpressible fertility, " as one early explorer described it, supported one of the densest Indian populations in all of North America. With clear and accessible language that is alive and at the same time deeply informed, this well-loved classic vividly recreates the lost world of the Indian people who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area such a short time ago. In the afterword, Margolin remarks that he "became increasingly amazed at the tremendous complexity and subtlety of their culture and at the wisdom that seemed to permeate their entire way of life." The Ohlone Way, first published in 1978, is in its sixteenth printing.