With clear and accessible writing that is uniquely alive and at the same time informed, this well-loved classic vividly recreates the lost world of the Indian people who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area such a short time ago.

This study of the social content of the only surviving Spanish epic provides a means of assessing the motives and intentions of the protagonist and of other characters. Chapters are devoted to such themes as the multifarious significance of kinship and lineage, with special attention to the role of fathers, uncles, and cousins in the world of clan loyalties; amity as a system of fictive kinship, personal honor, and public organization; the importance of women, and the meaning and function of marriage, dowry, and related practices; the emergence of the polity as a rivalry of social, legal, and...

The origins of present-day Ibero-American racialization can be traced to the period when Europe straddled the boundary between the Middle Ages and the era of New World exploration. Focusing on themes of race, caste, and indigeneity in travel narratives, Harney explores this already internationalized world of late-medieval and early-modern Europe.