Our Unique Heritage

The University of California at Riverside is unique among universities in the United States in that American Indians Supported UCR's Founding. A Cahuilla man and a Cherokee woman, Rupert and Jeannette Costo, were responsible for the campaign to locate a branch of the University of California at Riverside. The Costos also established the first chair in American Indian Studies in the United States, the Costo Chair of American Indian Affairs. They also assembled one of the largest collections of research materials relating to Native Americans in the nation the Costo Library of the American Indian and Costo Archive. The Costos founded the American Indian Historical Society, which served as the foundation for a Native American book and journal publishing concern, the Indian Historian Press.