Indian Life at the Old Missions

Webb, Edith Buckland

Published by Warren F. Lewis, Los Angeles CA, 1952

About this Item

INDIAN LIFE AT THE OLD MISSIONS, Edith Buckland Webb, foreword by Frederick W. Hodge, hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, 1st edition, 1952. BOOK CONDITION: near fine. The text block and illustrations are in fine condition, with no tears, dog ears, or marks. No bookplate or signature of a prior owner. Small white spot at top of first pastedown. Not a library book or remainder. The brick-red cloth boards are in near fine condition. The detached dust jacket is in pitiful condition but will be included with purchase of book. 10 ¾ x 8, 326 pages, 53 ounces. XX [From the dust jacket flaps] ?IF there is anyone who knows more than does Edith Buckland Webb about the life of the people who lived in the mission communities of California 150 years ago, he is yet to be found. Since 1924, more than a quarter century ago, Edith Webb has been devoting a large part of her time to the study that now has resulted in this master book, INDIAN LIFE AT THE OLD MISSIONS. She has visited all 21 of the missions, not just once, but many, many times in her eagerness to verify every possible statement, to check each elusive fact. Oddly, her original purpose was not to produce a book on Indians at all. What she started out to do was secure information that she could incorporate in a series of mission paintings she was contemplating. So she began her systematic study of the old buildings and their uses. But the result had consequences she had not foreseen, for before long she found herself more than ordinarily interested in the all but forgotten people for whose welfare, ironically, the missions had been created: the Indians. Many writers have dwelt on the romance and legends of mission days, but till Edith Webb produced INDIAN LIFE AT THE OLD MISSIONS, not one had attempted a definitive study of the mission Indians: how they lived, where they lived, what they ate, their amusements, their arts and their crafts. And now, here it is?the first book on the subiect, the book that Arthur Woodward, Chief Curator of History at the Los Angeles County Museum, asserts will "never be equaled." How did such a master work come into being? Where did Edith Buckland Webb get her material? The answer is easy, but the getting was hard, because she and her husband have been visiting and photographing the missions since 1903. Then, in the middle Nineteen Twenties, she began studying them seriously, in preparation for her proposed series of paintings. In her search for background material, she found hundreds of old documents in the mission archives: diaries, inventories, reports, written in old Spanish by the Padres. This material she laboriously copied, making it doubly her own, for in the copying she became saturated not only with the information, but with a deep understanding of the mission people and with the spell of the missions' Golden Age. Edith Buckland Webb came naturally to her interest in things Californian. Her grandparents and two of her great-grandparents came to California in 1846. Her father was the first white child born in San Joaquin County. Though she is not a Catholic, her devotion to the missions and their people, her important historical findings, have resulted in her election as a corresponding member to the Academy of American Franciscan History.

Seller Inventory # 003480

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Indian Life at the Old Missions
• Publisher: Warren F. Lewis, Los Angeles CA
• Publication Date: 1952
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Weight: 53 ounces