Chief Marin: Leader, Rebel, and Legend
The past 15 years or so have seen many important works on California Native Americans that are informed by sophisticated historical and anthropological sensibilities. Among them are books by M. Kat Anderson, Albert L. Hurtado, Robert H. Jackson, Kent G. Lightfoot, Randall Milliken, George Harwood Phillips, and James A. Sandos. This book is an accessible addition to this fresh wave of scholarship. Anthropologist Goerke (College of Marin) draws judiciously on meager archaeological, ethnographic, and archival evidence to construct what is as much a history of the Coast Miwok people as it is a biography of Marin (1781-1839). Born in a village of the Huimen tribe, Marin's birth name was Huicmuse. At Mission Dolores in 1801, Huicmuse was given the baptismal name of Marino. Marino/Marin became an alcalde and mayordomo at Mission San Rafael after its establishment in 1817. In 1821 he was a guide for a Spanish expedition to the north, but soon thereafter, as California transitioned from Spain to Mexico, he was written up as ''insubordinate.'' Californio Mariano Vallejo named Marin County for Marino in 1850; the remnants of the Coast Miwok, terminated 1958-70, received federal recognition in 2001 as part of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.Summing Up: Recommended. General collection/public libraries. -- D. F. Anderson, Northwestern College (IA) --CHOICE: CURRENT REVIEWS FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIES April 2008''As Betty Goerke sketches the life story of Chief Marin, she effectively remaps Marin and southern Sonoma counties, providing Indian and non-Indian alike a rich historical tapestry of the region's native people and their against-all-odds survival, a tapestry that has heretofore been ignored or forgotten.''--From the foreword by Greg Sarris, Tribal Chair, Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria''With meticulous research and lively prose, Betty Goerke tells the true story of one group of California Natives overwhelmed by a century of change, and of one of their chiefs, Marin, whose intelligence, skills, and independent spirit epitomized his people's yearning to be free.'' --Beth Ashley,Marin Independent Journal