The Mariposa Indian War, 1850-1851.

Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1957. First edition. One of 500 copies. 168 pp. with frontispiece portrait and fold-out map. Publisher's rust cloth with black spine label lettered in gilt, Very bright and clean.A miner who joined the volunteer Mariposa Battalion, Eccleston was the only one of some 200 men who kept a diary as whites pursued Indians through the High Sierra. "This brief diary gives an illuminating insight into life in the southern mines of California in 1850-1851. Robert Eccleston's journal tells the reader much more than merely what happened in an unimportant little 'war' between two hundred militiamen and some unhappy Indians. By close reading of this well-edited document one can gain a good understanding of the personalities, prejudices, and habits of the miners who made up the militia companies, and who were quite like and other California miners. One can also learn much about the physical hardships and dangers characteristic of the period and region" (R. Paul).