About the author:
The author (wearing hat) and friends playing handgame at the Susanville
Bear Dance (1999)
Bill Rathbun was born in Denver Colorado
in 1946. From an early age both the arts and science fascinated him. His
father wanted him to be an engineer, but he was more interested in writing
and music. Through his older brother, an engineer and self-trained ethno-musicologist
living in California, he met several old Indians living in the Oroville
and Quincy areas of northern California; he began to learn some of their
songs and stories, which would become a lifetime fascination
The author (above and below) enjoying a hot spring in the California
Sierras
He studied pure mathematics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and
in 1968 got a job in the space industry writing computer software for the
Viking Mars lander mission. In 1972 he tired of technology and came to
the West Coast to help form a small publishing cooperative. Here he discovered
Handgame and found out what those Indian songs were all about. He's been
going to Indian big-times ever since!
After a few years of struggling in the small press business,
financial realities finally forced Bill to turn back to his skills in computer
programming, and he got a job developing software for a scientific equipment
manufacturer (Kevex). Still, every year he'd travel hundreds of miles to
various big-times to play handgame with his many friends.
In 1978 he met his wife Lida, and in 1979 he joined the Berkeley
National Laboratory as a computer scientist, where he researched
parallel processing architectures (MIDAS), and developed software for real-time
data acquisition and analysis (CHAOS).
The author & his wife Lida at home in Berkeley
In 1997 he took an early retirement to write this book on Handgame.
Bill's passions include Handgame, hot springs, and sailing on San Francisco
Bay.
Bill Rathbun, exuberant, on a blustery day on San Francisco Bay
Bill on his boat
The white guys and their Indian friends at the big-time