This guide is meant to be useful for a variety of people seeking information on California Indigenous persons, communities, and languages. The guide provides a relatively simple way to begin research into The Bancroft Library's collection and this brief how-to section explains what to expect from the guide and how to navigate the guide.
It should be noted that in addition to the physical items themselves and microfilm copies available at The Bancroft Library, some of the items included have digitized version in the Online Archive of California. Whenever possible the Call Number provided is to the microfilm version, which are more readily available. The collections included within the guide are linked at the bottom of this page.
What's in the guide?
This guide collection contains all of the items related to the Indigenous Peoples of California found in the collections listed below, as well as the archival manuscripts within The Bancroft Library's collection and select other resources.
The metadata found in this guide was derived almost entirely from existing UC Berkeley records and records from the Online Archive of California. This allowed a large number of items and collections to be included and organized, but it does mean that information available for each item was limited. Anyone doing in-depth research should look closely at unorganized (General) items and consider consulting with The Bancroft Library staff in order to find all possible sources.
Interpreting the guide
The guide is laid out in tabs with each tab pertaining to a Language Family and then further organized by group: Language, Lifeways, Mythology & Narratives, Worldview, and General. Each group is laid out in a sortable table with information about the item included in each row. If an item fit into multiple locations, then it can be found in all relevant locations including different Language Families and groups. In order to help users identify items that they may wish to locate within the Bancroft Library, each item has a link to its catalog record. For item's within one of the collections (see below for a full list of collections) the catalog record will be for the entire collection, not the individual item within the collection.
Each of the collections that we included has a dedicated page in the Online Archive of California with details about the collection and a full list of items. The only items included in the guide were those that are related to California Indigenous persons, however, when the information about an item was ambiguous, we included it within the guide in order to avoid falsely excluding items.
To access items included within this guide, users can find some digital copies through the Online Archive of California or links to the digital versions in the catalog records. When physical items or microfilm copies are available to the public, they can be accessed through the Bancroft Library itself. For more information about viewing items at the Bancroft Library, please visit the Bancroft Library's website.
Finding records
To locate a set of records, users can first look by Language Family and then narrow their search by one of sub-group. The About section has more information about the different sub-groups as well as links to resources on Language Families. Lower down on that page there are also maps that provide some geographic context for the different Language Families.
Tables with items are sortable by selecting the table heading. When a cell within the table is blank, there was no information provided in either the catalog record or the Online Archive of California guide. Many items do not contain language information, but the section was included as there are items in alternate languages which may affect their utility for some users.
When viewing records that are included within a collection, section titles were sometimes included within the Item Title in order to provide more context for the user. When this has been done, each section title is separated by a colon. For example "Research materials 1816-2000: Anthropologists, linguists, language consultants, students: Language files: Digueño: Anthropological data 1950-1967". The item in questions is "Anthropological data 1950-1967", but the section titles provide more information for the user.
Collections Included