Rupert and Jeannette Costo

Rupert Costo (1906-1989) and Jeannette Henry Costo (1909-2001) spent their adult lives advocating on behalf of American Indians. Rupert Costo was of the Cahuilla tribe from Anza. A fine athlete in his youth, Rupert Costo briefly played semiprofessional basketball. During the late 1920s, he attended Riverside City College and then worked successfully as a highway engineer, hydrologist, meteorologist, and surveyor before becoming a historian, author, publisher, researcher, and speaker. A tribal spokesman for eight years, he helped found an electrical cooperative in Anza, the Anza Farm Bureau, the Anza Soil Conservation District, and the Riverside Farm Bureau. In fact, he and his relatives helped persuade state legislators to locate a new branch of the University of California in Riverside County.

In the early 1950s, Rupert Costo married Jeannette Henry, an Eastern Cherokee descendant who had run away from home at age seventeen. Mrs. Costo had worked in the late 1930s as a police reporter for the Detroit Free Press. After moving to California, she worked for many years as a newspaper reporter in Corona, then as a public relations officer for Blue Shield.

Both held that the true story of American Indians had not been properly told, and they worked toward ending that neglect.

Through decades of marriage spent in the cosmopolitan setting of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco, the Costos remained inseparably joined in a common cause to which they devoted all of their energies, earnings, and intellect. Examples of Rupert Costo’s passion for his work included his strong personal protest against U.S. colonial actions against tribes such as the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and the Termination Act of 1953. As activists, writers, and organizers, they especially sought to promote the study of American Indian history through their scholarly, educational, and philanthropic efforts.

Both held that the true story of American Indians had not been properly told, and they worked toward ending that neglect, convening convocations of American Indian scholars. Together they wrote Natives of the Golden State: The California Indians (1995) and coedited Indian Voices: The Native American Today (1974) and The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide (1987), an important exposé of the brutality of that regime. Indeed, this last work derailed-or at least delayed-the canonization of Father Junípero Serra, the missions' founder. The Costos also wrote Indian Treaties: Two Centuries of Dishonor (1977) and compiled One Thousand Years of American Indian Storytelling (1981). In addition, Rupert Costo coedited Textbooks and the American Indian (1970) while Jeannette Costo edited The American Indian Reader (1972).

Costo Family Photos

The Costos are pictured on a panel of the Gluck Gateway Mural by John Wehrle, painted on the eastern support wall of the University Avenue overpass. On the left are Rupert and Jeannette Costo, who worked to bring a UC campus to Riverside and later endowed the Costo Chair in Native American Studies. At their feet are two unidentified boys. The woven baskets represent a collection of artifacts, books and native language recordings that the couple donated to UCR. On the right is Sylvestro Saubel, Cahuilla Eagle Dancer. In the background is the carillon tower.

Costo family photo album. These photos were found in a cigar box after Jeannette Costo passed away. There are no captions for the photos, but they are probably from the Anza-Hemet-San Jacinto area where Rupert Costo grew up. There are pictures of cattle round-ups and baseball, as well as other images of Indian life in Southern California in the early twentieth century.