The Ipai (also known as Kumeyaay) are the native people of northern San Diego County. This book illustrates how one Ipai family's remarkable story forms part of the little-known, yet profoundly significant long-term history of human habitation in the land that only recently has come to be known as southern California. Beginning with the ancestors' accounts of the creation of the world that link the Ipai with the unique characteristics of our region's natural world, the journey then takes readers through the archaeological, historical, ethnographic and contemporary accounts of the dramatic transformations through which the Ipai have persisted and ultimately prospered.