Tantalizing stories—more than 250—culled and woven together from interviews with Native Americans, primarily Navajo and Pueblo, conducted by Cunningham (English/Northern Arizona Univ.) and his wife through much of the 1980's as part of a research project into cross-cultural yarn-spinning. Following in the footsteps of well-known anthropologists and fieldworkers from previous generations, such as Ruth Benedict and Clyde Kluckhohn, the Cunninghams pursue an interest in commonplace folk tales and their formation in deliberately informal settings, talking with relatives and friends of tribal contacts. A Zuni woman brings them into the rich ceremonial world of the New Mexico pueblo, where they experience Night Dances and the midwinter Shalako rituals while hearing about tribal health matters and belief structures. Stories of medicine men lead to a hands-on encounter with a ``bone-presser'' in which the author is relieved of severe back pain following his spinal operation. A subsequent series of interviews with the Ramah Navajo uses common Anglo- American themes that have become legendary—such as the vanishing hitchhiker or the woman who tried to dry her poodle in the microwave—to probe for Native-American counterparts, prompting colorful stories about witchcraft and ``skinwalkers,'' those with the ability to change into animals at will. Other sections are equally interesting, whether concerned with Navajo humor or the difficulties of trying to live in both the white and native cultures, with individual anecdotes interwoven among scholarly commentary and personal reactions. Revealing glimpses of the Native American experience in the Southwest today, gathered with obvious warmth and affection for both the storytellers and their stories.
Pub Date: July 26, 1992
ISBN: 0-87483-203-9
Page Count: 296
Publisher: August House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992
Recommended reading for anyone curious about American military and Native American history.
A concise, moving history of American Indian military service.
The book opens with a burning, difficult question that both enlivens and haunts the pages that follow: “Why have American Indians served, and why do they continue to serve, a government that has betrayed and broken promises to native peoples for multiple generations?” Robinson and Lucas let their question breathe, and allow the actions of this story’s heroes–from Geronimo and Chief Joseph to the late Lori Ann Piestewa, a Hopi soldier killed in Iraq in 2003–speak for themselves. These narratives form an amazing record of self-discovery and political courage, one in which people forcibly divested of their land and traditions continue to look for their place in the sometimes violent, sometimes hopeful history of the United States. The book’s authors initially intended for their project to be a television documentary, and it is easy to imagine the work as a smart hour of public television. Robinson and Lucas are not academically trained and military historians and scholars of native America won’t find much here that is new (although the authors do provide a bibliography). Interested readers will, however, find a wonderful and compendious account of American Indian military service from the colonial period to the present. One only wishes that the project might be reissued in a larger format, one that could take advantage of the rich photographic and historical record that the book’s authors have so diligently aggregated. In the meantime, the book is a nice, engaging read.
Recommended reading for anyone curious about American military and Native American history.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2008
ISBN: 978-059547302-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A stirring, perceptive retelling of an endless fascinating battle.
A master storyteller’s vivid take on “one of the most notorious military disasters in U.S. history.”
In the centennial year of 1876, President Grant, intentionally slighting George Armstrong Custer, placed General Alfred Terry in command of the Seventh Cavalry’s campaign to force Sitting Bull’s Sioux and Cheyenne followers out of the Black Hills and onto reservations. For Custer, the country’s most famous Indian fighter, a greater indignity awaited. Philbrick fans, accustomed to his invigorating treatments of American history, will happily recognize an unaltered talent for fresh insight as he tackles one of the most written-about events ever: the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The author opens with an unexpected story about the riverboat journey of legendary pilot Grant Marsh up the Missouri and Yellowstone tributaries to provision the Seventh Cavalry and closes by following the harrowing return in the battle’s aftermath that carried wounded soldiers to the Dakota Territory’s Fort Lincoln. Philbrick (Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, 2006, etc.) dwells instructively on the importance of the strikingly peculiar landscape—the rolling hills, depressions, heat and dust that contributed so mightily to the usual fog of war. The author frankly acknowledges the difficulty of piecing together the battle’s details, weighing contemporaneous accounts against those collected well after, resolving repeated inconsistencies as to how it unfolded. He establishes confidence in his judgments, however, by his meticulous portraits of the chief antagonists, rejecting caricatures of Custer, from blameless martyr to vainglorious fool, and of Sitting Bull, from murdering savage to Native-American saint. Philbrick supplements his nuanced appraisal of each man—they had surprising similarities—with deft depictions of subordinate players, including the drunken Major Reno, the brave but vindictive Captain Benteen and the calculating Terry, more responsible than any single individual, the author persuasively argues, for the calamity.
A stirring, perceptive retelling of an endless fascinating battle.Pub Date: May 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02172-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
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