California's Channel Islands are a chain of eight islands that extend along the state's southern coastline from Santa Barbara's Point Conception to the Mexican border. Popular tourist destinations today, these islands once supported some of the earliest human populations in the Americas; archaeological evidence of maritime Paleo-Indian settlements on the northern islands dates back some 13,000 years. The indigenous peoples of the islands--the Chumash of the northern islands and the Tongva of the southern islands--thrived into historic times by relying upon the abundance and diversity of...