The Culture of the Luiseño Indians, by Philip Stedman Sparkman, [1908], at sacred-texts.com
The Culture of the Luiseño Indians, by Philip Stedman Sparkman, [1908], at sacred-texts.com
Philip Stedman Sparkman, the author of this paper, by birth an Englishman, was killed at his home at Rincon, near Valley Center, San Diego county, California, May 19, 1907. For years before his death he had spent much time in communication with the Luiseño Indians of Rincon and vicinity, and in the study of their language, of which he published a sketch in the American Anthropologist of 1905. He left a voluminous manuscript grammar and dictionary of the Luiseño language, which have been secured for permanent preservation by the University of California and are being prepared for publication. Among the papers obtained by the University is the following account of the culture of the Luiseños, which is presented without addition and with only such minor alterations as have been necessary to make it ready for the printer. A Luiseño tale recorded by Mr. Sparkman is published in the Journal of American Folk-Lore of 1908. Several papers issued in this series of University of California Publications, especially "The Religion of the Luiseño Indians of Southern California," "Shoshonean Dialects of California," "A Mission Record of California Indians," and "The Ethnography of the Cahuilla Indians," treat in part or wholly of the same Indians as the present account or of closely related tribes. It will be found that these papers and Mr. Sparkman's corroborate one another closely. Even the slight discrepancies, resting on information independently obtained and representing significant differences of point of view, may have value for future students.