December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520040880 ISBN 13: 9780520040885

Publisher: University of California Press, 1980

Synopsis

Before this publication of 111 myths, folktales, and stories collected by John Peabody Harrington between 1912 and 1928, only two Chumash texts were known. The texts range from aboriginal narratives centering on Old Man Coyote to 19th century tales borrowed from Mexico. Blackburn's analysis of the structure and meaning of these oral narratives along with the translations of them is a remarkable peeling away of layer after layer of what and why the Chumash thought as they did. He shows the relationship of Chumash oral narratives to all aspects of their culture, capturing the beliefs, the good times, the bad times, and the creative genius of the Chumash Indians.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"These tales are both strange and familiar. . . . they are a fascinating introduction to a complex, little-known, lost people."--World Literature Today "Only two Chumash texts were known before this pulication of 11 myths, folktales, and stories collected by John Peabody Harrington between 1912 and 1928. The texts range from aboriginal narratives centering on Old Man Coyote to nineteenth-century tales borrowed from Mexico."--Pacific Historical Review "The informants are identified and shown in photographs, emerging to remind us how accelerated was the fate of the Chumash; by 1834, the secularization of the missions, they had suffered dispossession of their lands, epidemics, deliberate abortion and a virtual blotting out of their culture. By 1860, when interest in them slowly but belatedly began, there were only a handful of scattered survivors. The handful of informants for these stories were born from 1804 to 1877, a half-dozen men and women . . . The narratives take up more than half the book--111 of them, some as short as a paragraph, mere bits and pieces, other long enough to take two or three days in telling. . . . Whatever else they may be, cognitively or psychologically, they are also entertaining."--Los Angeles Times

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0520040880
• ISBN 13: 9780520040885
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 394
• Editor: Thomas C. Blackburn