CROSS OF THORNS- PB EDITION [LSI]
Purchase
Description
AVAILABLE NOW.
A Cross of Thorns reexamines a chapter of California history that has been largely forgotten—the enslavement of California’s Indian population by Spanish missionaries from 1769 to 1821. California’s Spanish missions are one of the state's major tourist attractions, where visitors are told that peaceful cultural exchange occurred between Franciscan friars and California Indians.
In schools across the state, as required by the California State Board of Education, fourth graders are taught that life between the friars and the Indians was based on peace and mutual respect. Both tourists and schoolchildren are being deliberately misled—in truth, the missions were places of enslavement and deliberate cruelty.
A Cross of Thorns challenges this mythologized history and presents the facts of the Spanish occupation of California, describing the dark and cruel reality of Mission life. Beginning in 1769, California Indians were enticed into the missions, where they and their descendents were imprisoned for 60 years of forced labor and daily beatings.
The chilling depictions of colonial cruelty in A Cross of Thorns are based on little known church and Spanish government archives and letters written by the founder of California’s mission, Friar Junipero Serra (who advocated the whipping of Mission Indians as a standard policy), and published first-hand accounts of 18th and 19th century travelers.
Tracing the history of Spanish colonization in California from its origins in Spain’s 18th century economic crisis to the legacy of racism and brutality that continues today, A Cross of Thorns is one of the most thought-provoking books ever written on California history.
Products You May Like
-
SIX GUN SOUND
$18.95
$11.37
"The Early History of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department". The dusty and lawless frontier of Los Angeles - a combustible mixture of Civil War veterans, failed gold prospectors, and desperadoes - experienced the highest recorded murder rate in U.S. history. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was created to bring law and order to this treacherous, rough-and-tumble town.
-
THE NEWHALL INCIDENT
$16.95
$10.17
Midnight, April 5, 1970. Minutes after a red Pontiac with two men in it is stopped, four young California Highway Patrolmen lay dead of gunshot wounds. The incident still stands as the worst of its kind in America.
-
THE CALIFORNIA SNATCH RACKET
$16.95
Subtitle: "Kidnappings During the Prohibition and Depression Eras." In California in the 1920s and 1930s, kidnappingnicknamed the snatch racket by a cynical newspapermanwas the most booming criminal enterprise around. Driven by greed, desperation and sometimes plain stupidity, ransom artists preyed indiscriminately on Hollywood socialites, wealthy heiresses and even poor people who couldnt pay a dime. Every new disappearance sold more newspapers, but for both the kidnappers and their unfortunate victims, even the simplest caper often went tragically wrong. California Snatch Racket brings this dark and forgotten era into shockingly vivid life. Richly illustrated, California Snatch Racket reflects newspaper, police, court and prison accounts of the times written in a style that places the reader on the scene. Avoiding supposition and sensationalism, the book offers true accounts of the crimes and the people. These 15 bizarre, often ironic tales illustrate the complex cruelties that flourished in the Golden Era of the Golden State. A modern city rises and lynches a pair of kidnappers. A victim begs leniency for his kidnapper in a case where a technicality demands the death penalty. A couple of college kids imitate the Leopold and Loeb kidnapping to prove their intellectual prowess and famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson fakes her own kidnapping to cover up an affair. California Snatch Racket recounts its stories in the manner of the times, while leaving judgment to the courts and the readers.
-
THE VALLEYS LEGENDS & LEGACIES, VOL III
$18.95
$11.37
Volume III: Stories include Firebaugh, Selma, Hanford, Fresno, Dunlap, Coalinga, Madera, Kingsburg, Fowler, Oakhurst, Mariposa
-
ON THE RUN
$14.95
$8.97
On The Run is Douglas McHardie?s amazing tale of adventure and survival at the dawn of the modern era. The year is 1898 in northern California, and after a melee with his drunken father, 16 year old McHardie flees the lumber town of his youth. He soon becomes entangled with an outlaw gang, and is then seemingly propelled through a series of astounding adventures where his ability to simply survive is repeatedly put to the test. From gold prospecting in Alaska to smuggling guns to tribes in Afghanistan, he exists on the sharp edge of destiny, with life on one side and death on the other.
-
CALIFORNIA DISASTERS [LSI]
$18.95
$11.37
It was another time. Deadly earthquakes, steamboat explosions, floods, train wrecks, and other tragedies were a part of everyday life in nineteenth-century California. Yet, the men and women of the day licked their wounds, mourned their dead, picked up the pieces, and plunged ahead to build a great prosperous new state that took its place in the forefront of our great Union. This is their stories, in their own words. First-person accounts of the major 19th century California catastrophes. Includes scores of contemporary period photographs and other illustrations.