Magical stories and songs of California Indian life captured by a master poet Jaime de Angulo was a man of legendary vices and pure brilliance. He was a linguist of California Indian languages and is still vividly remembered and talked about forty years after his death, as much a myth as a scholar or writer. He lived among Indians, he drank with them, he could be found in their roundhouses and in their kitchens. No one had a better ear for the music of their language, for the nuances of their thoughts, for the sad, sweet poignancy and laughter of their lives. Berkeley radio station KPFA invited Jaime de Angulo to broadcast a program of Indian songs and stories. Each week he unfolded the magic that came to be known as Indian Tales--some of them transcribed directly from native sources, some totally invented, all authentic in tone. Angulo's Indian Tales is musical, quirky, funny, and entirely moving. These captivating stories recount the journey of Bear, his wife Antelope, and their son Fox as they set out to visit relatives on the coast. "Good ethnography buried in...stories, " Andrew Schelling calls it. Indian Tales is a literary masterpiece that transcends bounds: appealing to both adults and children, it combines fact and fiction, literature and anthropology. We are pleased to reissue this classic under our California Legacy series, with an introduction by Darryl Babe Wilson, a member of the Achumawe and Atsugewi tribes of Northern California and author of The Morning the Sun Went Down and Surviving in Two Worlds.