Death is a universal experience that every culture must explain and deal with, and associated rituals are often the central focus of a society’s religious life. In this absorbing study, anthropologist Lowell J. Bean draws upon fifty years of personal research and over a century of observations by others to present a detailed account of the many ways in which the creation story of the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California-in concert with the complex ceremonies surrounding death and the journey of the soul to the afterlife-explained, validated and was interwoven into the entire life of a community coping with an occasionally harsh and unpredictable environments.