Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources

John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts
Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and…