Toypurina: Japchivit Leader, Medicine Woman, Tongva Rebel
by Cheyenne M Stone (Author) Katie Dorame (Illustrator)
Tired of being subjected to Spanish colonization, medicine woman Toypurina led a revolt against the San Gabriel mission in California on October 25, 1785. This bold picture book highlights an important, lesser-known leader in Indigenous history. Lushly illustrated by Tongva artist Katie Dorame.
Includes educational back matter to enhance the reader's experience.
Toypurina grew up in the village of Japchivit, where everyone had a role to play. She loved to gather elderberries from the woods, weave baskets, and listen to her grandmother tells stories. But all that changed when the Spanish came.
As Toypurina grew and became medicine woman of her tribe, she learned about the harsh conditions of the San Gabriel mission. Tongva people who lived there were renamed and no longer allowed to speak their native tongue. They were forbidden to perform their dances and ceremonies. They were whipped and mistreated.
Toypurina knew she had to act, so she organized an uprising against the Spanish rule to fight for her people and their way of life. This book, lushly illustrated by Tongva artist Katie Dorame, marks an important event in Indigenous people's resistance to European colonization and is a testament to Toypurina's bravery.
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School Library Journal
Gr 2-5--A picture book biography based on the life of Toypurina, an Indigenous Tongva medicine woman from a region of California. When Toypurina learned that members of her tribe were being mistreated by European missionaries--stripped of their native names and traditions, brutally beaten--she bravely recruited warriors from her own and neighboring tribes to fight the injustice. Despite knowing that the numbers were not in their favor, a group led by Toypurina descended upon the mission under cover of darkness in 1785; while most brought weapons, Toypurina only "carried the energy and spirit of her ancestors." The revolt ended almost as quickly as it started and led to her exile, but Toypurina's mettle in the face of dehumanizing treatment is a remarkable story worth being amplified. Stone, a member of the Paiute tribe and descendant of several medicine people, here with coauthor Armand, has succeeded in her desire to bring the life of an Indigenous heroine to the page. There is something pleasantly old-school about this book: the narrative and language are straightforward, the artwork realistic. Dorame, Tongva on her grandfather's side, acknowledges that no photographs exist of Toypurina, and her warm renderings of the woman and her surroundings are based on copious research. An afterword provides further information on a piece of American history that is unknown to many. VERDICT A standard telling of an anything-but-standard story, this biography of a courageous medicine woman would be especially valuable in a school collections.--Kate Newcombe
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