PREFACE (Unvanquished, xiii-xiv)

In the fall of 1908 some interest was stirred in the newspapers by a story to the effect that hunters with a survey party had encountered in the State of California, a tribe of Native people who were still in the Stone Age. The idea of a “wild” tribe in
a thickly populated region like California, was so novel that it served to awaken an interest that would not fade away. The three dark-skinned individuals witnessed, however, had meanwhile vanished.

The two surveyors, who the day before, first encountered “a disheveled man,” thought he was African.” They took him for “wild,” because he was “not wearing city clothes,” a polite way of saying, “he was naked.“

Some three years later, an individual who had the appearance of belonging to this group was captured in northern California. He was put in jail, and a few days later turned over by the Butte County sheriff named John Brooks Webber, to the University of California. On September 1, 1911, Thomas Waterman of the University’s Anthropology Department, arrived by Western Pacific Overland train, and became the first to open communication with the prisoner.

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Works in Progress - Possibly Released in 2024 or 2025