{16}

        Several years ago, while ordering texts for an Indian literature course at an all-Indian high school in Arizona, I thumbed through Seven Arrows (1), read the first dozen pages, and decided against using it in class. The book was steeped in controversy and I opted for older titles of seasoned worth rather than gamble with what was new and questionable. Seven years after publication the furor over Seven Arrows has dissipated, though the controversy has not been resolved. So I took a closer look for myself.
        I remember controversies over other books about Indians: The Fifth World of Foster Bennet, Bessie Yellowhair, Memoirs of Chief Red Fox. But seldom are such controversies so colorful as the fuss over Hyemeyohsts (Chuck) Storm's Seven Arrows. With it, as with other controversial Indian books, the issue is over who has the authority to speak "for the people." Historically, of course, this is a very old problem for American Indian tribes, especially in transactions with the federal government. As a rule now, the idea of "self-determination" implies that the federal government will at least consult with Indian people before undertaking programs that affect them. The controversy over Seven Arrows indicates that editors and publishers have not learned this same etiquette.
        Seven Arrows was published in 1972 as the first title of the American Indian Publishing program at Harper and Row. As the brainchild of Douglas Latimer, then vice president at Harper and Row, this non-profit program aimed at raising money to develop Indian language texts for needy reservation schools, thus restoring cultural identity for the people Latimer felt were now living "with a sense of hopelessness -- without a culture" (2). Shortly after Seven Arrows appeared, Rupert Costo, president of the American Indian Historical Society, cited several inaccuracies in the book and charged Storm with "vulgarizing one of the most beautiful but least known religions of Man" (3). These inaccuracies, Costo argued, were misrepresentations by an author of questionable Indian identity who was "presumptuous" in claiming to be a spokesperson for the Cheyenne Way.
        Costo was not alone. A review in The American Anthropologist called Seven Arrows an "atrocity" (4), cited additional inaccuracies quoted a Cheyenne Tribal Councilman who viewed the book as "complete B.S. from cover to cover," and blamed the publisher for trying to dupe the "naive public" by promoting Seven Arrows as "authentic Indian lore." In the New York Times Book Review, Smithsonian anthropologist William C. Sturtevant called the book "pompous and rather patronizing instructions in pseudo-religious mysteries which are said to be exemplified in a long boring story written in the style of old-fashioned children's fairy tales about animals"(5). The Cheyenne Tribal Council officially condemned the book. Little Joe Coyote, Cheyenne religious leader, sent a letter to harper and Row in which he wrote:

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Mr. Chuck Storm's book Seven Arrows is the fact that some of the beliefs which he presents in his book as having been derived from our spiritual ways are completely unfounded and extremely repugnant to the sensitivities of our people who are knowledgeable and qualified to speak about such things, not merely as the product of imagination, but as the result of actual lived experience. (6)

{17}
        Subsequently Harper and Row undertook a defense of Seven Arrows, first by circulating a letter containing Chuck Storm's tribal enrollment number and later by sending Douglas Latimer out to the Northern Cheyenne reservation where he met tribal leaders from both the Northern and Southern Cheyennes and with several invited guests, including Rupert Costo. During this unusual powwow, Costo reports, Latimer maintained that Seven Arrows was not a description of Cheyenne tradition and religious belief, that the book was not supposed "to be about the Cheyenne people" (7). Costo also reports Latimer as having expressed a wish to withdraw the book, but "the paperback rights [had] already been sold to another publisher." Finally, Harper and Row made a grant to the Cheyenne nations, the details of which were "unavailable" to me during a recent phone call to the publisher. Costo reports that this grant is in the thousands of dollars and that Cheyennes have called the money "reparations."
        Meanwhile, in defense of Seven Arrows, Vine Deloria reviewed the book for Natural History magazine, calling the book "a new and very important development in Indian literature," and "solidly and traditionally Indian"(8). Deloria rejects criticisms of the inaccuracies in the book as irrelevant to Storm's intentions which Deloria calls "a religious statement, not a statement about religion . . ." As in God Is Red, where Deloria praises Storm for "stepping outside of time-dominated interpretations of Indian tribal religion,"(9) Deloria in Natural History applauds Storm's "sense of totality" without troubling over "apologies to recorded data on Indian religions or to critiques of purists." These attributes, Deloria concludes, make the book "qualitatively distinct from everything else written on or about Indians . . . [forcing Indian literature] beyond simple explanations of gathered facts or recitation of cherished stereotypes, no matter how sympathetic."
        In an interview with Sun Tracks, Deloria blamed "outside agitators" from San Francisco for stirring up Cheyenne opposition to Storm's book (10). Deloria's finger was obviously pointed at Rupert Costo and the American Indian Historical Society, prompting an angry response from Costo in Wassaja. "Deloria, in fact, doesn't know what he's talking about"(11), Costo replied, adding that he viewed himself as "no more an outsider regarding Indian movements, Indian political and social activities, than is Deloria himself."
        From my reading of Seven Arrows I must disagree with both Latimer and Deloria. Contrary to Deloria's view, Storm does in fact make a statement about religion, and despite Latimer's disclaimer, this religion specifically purports to be Cheyenne. The introductory chapter (pp 1-27) is my primary objection to the book, for it seems to me here that Storm misrepresents both himself and his book. The first paragraph, for instance, sets the reader up to regard Storm as a spokesman for the Cheyenne:

You are about to begin an adventure of the People, the Plains Indian People. You probably have known these People only by their white man names, as the Cheyennes, the Crow, and the Sioux. Here you will learn to know of them as they were truly known among the People.

The last five words strongly suggest that Storm is both a member of "the People" in question and an authoritative spokesman for them, because he is going to tell how things "truly" were. The abundance in the first pages of phrases like "our Teachers tell us," "the old Teachers tell us," "The Sundancer believes," "The Six Grandfathers taught," and "according to the teachers" work similarly to establish Storm as an authoritative spokesman for traditional ways of the Cheyenne.
{18}
        In these pages Storm also tells the reader that the information for the book was given to him by his father, and that this information was handed down through generations by ". . . Fathers and from the Medicine Power, the Great Spirit." (12) In language such as this Storm takes license as an authority on traditional truths in Cheyenne religion. Whether or not Storm is in fact Indian has no bearing on the validity of the book. License to speak for any race is not a birthright, as Sturtevant has said:

To allow the author's claims of Indian identity to affect the evaluation is a mistake, for there are many different kinds and degrees of Indianness. Moreover, it is demeaning, even racist, to apply special standards to work by Indian authors, while it does not favor to the real Sioux or Apache or Cherokee to believe every writer who identifies himself as such. (13)

In Seven Arrows Storm is in a sense asking the reader to accept his book as truth about the Cheyenne Way simply because the author is of Cheyenne ancestry. And contrary to Deloria's view, this is where problems of inaccuracies become a relevant concern for the critics. Storms seems to me clearly to mean his book to be more than a product of the literary imagination, and I agree with the Indian Historical Society here: "If a book purports to be concerned with Indian religion, culture, traditions, it better damn well be accurate."(14)
        In all fairness to Storm, he does appear to sidestep these issues with the admission on page 11 that "I too am still learning about the Way of the People," and in his defense in the next paragraph that "The Sun Dance Way" is not to be learned "by studying archaic rituals and traditions." Yet coupling these statements with the book's preoccupation with the way things "truly" were in the past smacks of dishonesty. To clean up this book, Storm needs to present himself to his readers more forthrightly by amending especially the first three sections. The publisher and the publicity agent are also at fault here. Latimer is quoted in Publisher's Weekly as claiming that Seven Arrows "is an allegory designed to teach the meaning of the Sun Dance religion/philosophy. . ."(15) Although I was unable to obtain a copy of the original press release, one gets a pretty good idea of what it must have said by reading reviews such as this in Library Journal:

Storm, a Cheyenne shield maker who learned the medicine Wheel and Sun Dance Way from tribal elders, relates the rich oral history of his tribe. The allegorical stories, beautiful parables filled with symbolism and wisdom of the Cheyenne civilization, teach the meaning of tribal philosophy and religion. . . (16)

Or this glib line from Publisher's Weekly:

On another level Seven Arrows teaches the beautiful, pre-Christian Sun Dance religion/philosophy of the Plains Indians through allegories recounted by the old men of the tribes.(17)

In sum, seven years after publication, Seven Arrows has not been acquitted of charges of misrepresentation. The fiasco is forgivable (almost) if profits from the book did go to projects of benefit to Indians, but in recent phone calls to Harper and Row I could find no one who knew of such projects. Happily later books from the American Indian Publishing Program have been more meritorious. The pity is that Seven Arrows could be a useful teaching tool, especially for high-school aged students. Yet in the light of other problems, when it is time again to order texts, I will not choose Seven Arrows.

Notes: 1) Hyemeyohsts Storm, Seven Arrows (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), subsequent page references to this text. 2) Publisher's Weekly, v.201, Jan 17, 1972, pp. 47-8. 3) Indian Historian, v.5, no. 2, Sum 1972, pp.11-2. {19} 4) American Anthropologist, 75 (Aug 1973), 1040. 5) New York Times Book Review, Mar 18, 1973, p. 37. 6) Abe Chapman, Literature of the American Indian (N.Y.: Meridian, 1974). 7) Wassaja, Fall, 1979. 8 Natural History, 81 (Nov 1972), p. 96. 9) Vine Deloria, Jr., God Is Red (N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973), p. 52. 10) Sun Tracks, 4 (1978), 84-5. 11) Wassaja, Fall, 1979. 12) Seven Arrows, p. 8. 13) New York Times Book Review, p. 37. 14) Wassaja, Fall, 1979. 15) Publisher's Weekly, 47-8. 16) Library Journal, 97 (Jul 1972), 2436. 17) Publisher's Weekly, 201 (May 1, 1972), p. 47.
Additional sources: Choice, 9 (Nov 72), 1213; Kirkus Review, 40 (May 1, '72), 571; Library Journal, 92 (Dec 15, '72), 4059; Saturday Review, 55 (Jul 1, '72), 50; Booklist, 69 (Jan 1, '73), 428 & Jan 15 '73, 490; Newsweek 81 (Jan 15, '73), 69; New Yorker, 48 (Jan 15, '73), 211; Publisher's Weekly, 204 (Sept 17, '73), 58; Wall Street Journal, 181 (Jan 16, '73), 18.

(We are grateful to Mr. Jaeger for writing the foregoing, which expresses well, we believe, the doubts and confusions of many teachers about the book concerning which we have received more queries than all others combined. If others can shed further light on the topic we'll be even more pleased.)

N[ovarro] Scott Momaday. The Way to Rainy Mountain. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1969; ppb., 1976. 89 pp. $2.95. The Names. New York: Harper and Row, 1976; ppb, 1977. xi + 170pp. $10.00Hb; $3.95 pb.
        For N. Scott Momaday, the essence of humanness is "the individual's ability to imagine himself into existence" (lecture, 1972). Participation in humanity consists of a process of imaging, a creative definition by form and relationship through which an individual realizes a place in actuality. In all his prose works (but surprisingly less so in his poetry), Momaday is centrally concerned with the ongoing creation of reality. In House Made of Dawn Abel runs in the ceremony to countervail evil, creating a purpose for his being by joining an ancient tradition of runners who race against evil and thereby restore, recreate, the world. While Abel's actions are unselfconscious stumblings towards the truth, he begins to comprehend at the end of the novel. Momaday's recollections in The Names and The Way to Rainy Mountain are conscious steps taken to shape his being. Both books are highly structured recruitments of personal, cultural, and mythic images, formed to the contours of an individual, a family, and a people.
        Momaday's design is clearest in The Way to Rainy Mountain. Framed by a brace of poems, a prologue, and an epilogue, the book comprises 24 sections each consisting of three parts. At the beginning, the parts, each set in different type, relate legend, history, and anecdote respectively. Cast into three major units, the book traces the emergence of the Kiowa as a people, mythically as they emerge from the cosmic vagina of a hollow log and historically as they migrate from the Northern Rockies into the plains of Oklahoma. As the book progresses, the characteristics separating the three segments of each section gradually dissolve; the last mythic episode, concerning a buffalo with horns of steel that can be killed only through the cleft of its hooves, is followed by the description of the killing about 1925 of what is, symbolically at least, the last buffalo, a "poor broken best in which there was no trace left of the wild strain" (pp. 54-55). The second closure comes in section 20, p. 70, where the author imagines the sacrifice by Gaapiatan of his beloved black-eared horse, an incident related in the middle, historical part of the section. By the end, the Kiowa have changed into what Momaday sees them as today, a once noble and fulfilled people whose distinctiveness is now in large measure lost. But in the course of their long migration from their spiritual birth as the Kwuda, the "coming out people," to their present existence, they had "conceived a good idea of themselves: they had dared to imagine and determine who they were" (p.4), and in that imagining lies their real strength and value and hope. The book ends with a poem, "Rainy Mountain Cemetary," where "Silence is the long approach of noon Upon the shadow that your name defines --".
{20}
        The Names is a more personal and necessarily more indulgent account of much the same history. It is openly "an autobiographical account . . . an act of the imagination" (p. xi). Here processes of conception are overtly commented upon: his mother "began to see herself as an Indian . . . This act of the imagination was, I believe, among the most important events in my mother's early life, as later the same essential act was to be among the most important of my own" (p. 25). Memory, as in The Way, also functions as creative act: "Some of my mother's memories have become my own. This is the real burden of the blood; this is immortality" (p.22).
        The book has four sections. In the first, the memories and the imaginings are detached, as the adult author remembers or conceives infancy. In the first remembrance, names predominate, at first of animals and birds, "of forms and features on the rim of the world . . . old and original in the mind, like the beat of rain on the river, and intrinsic in the native tongue (p. 3) . . . Had I known it, even then language bore all the names of my being" (p.8). These moments of earliest childhood are essentially timeless: "an imperceptible succession of colors, of dawns and dusks, mornings and afternoons, a concentration of days into one day, or it is simply the inside of eternity, the hollow of a great wing" (p.6) Momaday constructs the history of his family from records, photographs, old or recent family anecdotes. The texture is at times accidental, as when his mother's birth year is linked with the winning of the Kentucky Derby by a 91-to-1 longshot, who paid $184.90 on a two-dollar ticket (p. 20). In the short second part, he finds the memories of childhood spent in New Mexico, when "the memory begins to qualify the imagination (p. 61) -- an intriguing phrasing. As he moves into a kind of intellectual maturity he loses (imperceptibly, except in retrospect) a sense of innocence: "There are the clocks of shame; we tell the lie of time, and our hearts are broken" (p.91). Yet the overpowering truth, even under this shame, still lies in the procreative powers of language: "Children trust in language. They are open to the power and beauty of language, and here they differ from their elders, most of whom have come to imagine that they have found words out, and so much of magic is lost upon them. Creation says to the child: Believe in this tree, for it has a name" (p.92). The final section reveals adulthood, signaled in an epiphanous moment when he sees the remains of the fire-gutted Jemez Day School where his parents taught: "There was nothing but a shell, a ghost. It seemed already an ancient ruin in the pale January morning. . . I had the sense that I was looking for myself there among the ashes" (p. 117).
        The Names is a rich book. It rewards in its own terms, but it also rewards in the way it illuminates Momaday's other writings. The Da-oegya-de Sai, the 1833 shower of stars that marks the beginning of recorded Kiowa history (pp.46-9) complements the Epilogue to The Way, and the stories of Guadal-tseyu (Little Red Pony) and the legend of the origin of the Big Dipper are related in both books. In a more subtle way, The Names casts light on House Made of Dawn, incidents being transformed in revealing ways in the two books: the Jemez chicken pull, Momaday's shame (p.147) and Abel's at seeing a captured golden eagle; the Jemez runners who "ran without effort. . .running was ceremonial, emphatic, and was itself the measure of time" (p.142); the child's nightmare of a presence which swells to occupy his room completely, a description reminiscent of the enemy tank, "black and massive, looming there in front of the sun," which roils the ground on the hillside where Abel lies.
        Physically, despite the trendy sepia ink and ragged right margins in The Names, both books are enjoyable to read and hold. The Way to Rainy Mountain (essentially identical to the cheaper Ballantine paperback of 1970) is nicely illustrated by Al Momaday's stylized drawings, and its large pages allow the full text of each tripartite section to appear at one opening. The Names is lavishly illustrated with photographs of the individuals who people the memoir, helping to fix the faces that bear the names. Momaday's writing is typically spare, exact, poetical in ultimate simplicity and honesty of diction and in its effect on the reader. {21} Only once does Momaday stumble: pp. 88-114 in The Names are flabby stream-of-consciousness. Whatever its good moments -- and there are several -- this section is at odds with the style of the rest of the book. But the two volumes will sustain rereading, for their words are measured and telling. If Momaday's remembrances seem on occasion too self-conscious, they do betoken a man of great decency and understanding and a maker whose care with words acknowledges their power to create and maintain the worlds of both historical and imagined truth.

Prairie. Jon (Southern Cheyenne) and Annie (Otoe and Creek) West. Marvin, SD: Blue Cloud Quarterly, 1978. Unpaged. $2.00
Custer Lives in Humboldt County. Janet Campbell Hale (Coeur d'Alene). Greenfield, NY: Greenfield Review Press, 1978. 25pp. $1.00
        Annie West's poems are skillfully and movingly written. She has a keen sense of humor, and is totally free of the sentimentality that makes so much of the first efforts of young poets banal. Instead, she has refreshing honesty. Her poem "Spider Killing," which in other hands might have easily served as the occasion for homely platitudes about our brothers the insects, has a bracing acidity to go with its clarity of detail and spareness of language. Where liberal guilt would constrain a white middle class poet to appear progressive ecologically, Ms. West, who comes from a tradition which is truly attuned to nature, has no compunction about smashing the insect who "holds her laundry basket hostage." But there is more to Annie West than humor and honesty; she can write with lyric power, being original though drawing on tribal traditions:

                  within the damp wind
                  our fingers will sift the rain
                  for the breath of morning
              hear night whistle
                  singing through eaglebone
                  while braided sweetgrass
                  filters this antelope home

Annie's husband and partner in Prairie is also a poet of considerable talents. His use of surrealistic images is reminiscent of James Welch, influenced by the Peruvian surrealist Caesar Vallejo. The Indian tradition of the dream vision, and the cosmology which underlies it, makes surrealism a congenial mode for Indian poets. West's image from "Star Song That You Might Hear Again" is powerful:

                  emptying my pockets of this night
                  I let loose songs familiar only to us
                  remembering it was your laughter
                  so tender and freely given
                  that made me weep

West is also a master of the conversational verse favored by Robert Frost, though here the accent is rural Oklahoma flavored with an Indian phrase or two.
        Janet Campbell Hale has less verbal facility than the Wests, but more passion. Her tone is often bitter, and her verse often the poetry of protest. The title poem of her collection is about the shooting of a Pomo by a policeman. "To a Recently Retired Supreme Court Justice," a tribute to William Douglas, speaks angrily about the bigotry of the whites of Yakima towards Indians. But her bitterness is balanced by her honesty and fairness. She despises white bigots, but reveres Douglas. And, although there is probably more than a touch of irony in the last line of "Custer Lives," she does seem to believe that "The past is best forgotten."
        All of Hale's poetry is highly personal. There is a strong sense of intimacy in her poems to her son. "Aaron Nicholas, Almost Ten" and "Alligator Bites." These poems manage to be moving without being cloying. I believe her best work, however, is that stamped with a sense of irony, poems like "Writing a TV Documentary" or "Salad La Raza." The first gets across effectively the anomalous position in which Hale finds herself -- finally getting a chance to voice her outrage and do some good shaping opinion about her people, but constrained to stay within production guidelines, to be "intimate," "unique," "visually exciting." In "Salad La Raza" Hale recalls the bigoted treatment she received as a child from Chicanos who made fun of "Los Indios." Torn between her sympathy for the Chicanos, whom she realizes are treated poorly, and remembering with resentment their treatment of her, she ignores the lettuce boycott with mixed feelings:

                 
                Eating my crisp and delicious
                Safeway salad,
                I tried not to think
                of Caesar Chavez.

Two first rate collections from poets of great promise.

{22}
        Coyote's Daylight Trip. Paula Gunn Allen. Albuquerque, NM: La Confluencia (PO Box 409, zip 87108), 1978). 50pp. $3.95 pb.
        This strong, accomplished, and very appealing collection of poems should be read, at least in part, as something of a journey or quest sequence. Even the choice of the title, taken from one of the poems, suggests this. The journey, for which the initial "Snowgoose" is a kind of emblem with its "way I have never been," is as much inward as outward -- maybe even more a divining of time and space within. It records in poem after poem the author's restless, troubled search for home, roots, a knowledge and stability that are perhaps tribal, at any rate close to earth, to a long-preserved knowledge of what might be called instinctual, even mythic or religious. This kind of knowledge begins to make its presence felt from the long "The Turning Point" on through the final evocative "Grandmother," with its almost mystically feminine figure.
        The other side of the pattern of journey is everything from the poet's experience which deters, misleads, destroys. Much of this is associated with the shape and influence of our technological/consumer society, erasing older values, replacing stability with empty mobility: "Where to go to be buried/ when no place is home." In such circumstances the poet sees only confusion -- in "The Last Fantasy," "On the streets people passing --/ new Indians with crazy light eyes and ruffled hair,/ mad karmic loafers waiting for the last bad trip -- and "displacement," to borrow the apt title of another poem. "Nothing," she tells us, "stays in any sense where it belongs."
        Ms. Allen's own life has its share of personal grief, movingly expressed, for example, in "Elegy for My Son," in which the poem's progression is matched by an increasing burden on language and syntax, until the poem skirts breakdown, speechlessness in sorrow, with the one word line of negation at its heart:

                  I wanted to write 1968 for today's date -- as though
                  somewhere between then and
                  then, some step taken could be untaken, or a word
                  spoken be unsaid
                  some little thing done
                  not
                  wouldn't lead into
                  where with bewildered hands I sit
                  holding your small body dead.

Displacement and loss are balanced by poems or passages of travel, friendship, love, and the poet's determination to discover lost places, presences, resources -- "benediction/ sign of home," to use one of Allen's various phrases for these. Finding that location requires memory, resurrection of the sleeping or hidden past within herself. In the long crucial poem "The Turning point" she reaches toward, envisages in different ways, the primal sources she has been seeking, "where humankind is born/ and the ancient being of our Mother waits." Having abandoned the falsifications, the fundamental vacancy of the contemporary world, what she calls the "alien country/ superimposed over my home," she can "enter the sea," be renewed, and so "begin the long journey at last/ toward home, hardly knowing I have begun."
        It should be clear, even from such a brief glance, that the poems, when read chronologically, display a sequential cohesiveness, though when examined out of context each has much to offer. The lines are free and variable, the rhythmic sense is as a rule sure. A few sections seemed awkward or oddly abstract or cryptic, but these are few. Allen establishes a voice and identity at the outset and maintains them with force, directness, clarity. She gives everywhere an impression of the authenticity of her thought and feeling, of having earned what she says. While I find many things to recommend in this small book, I should like to single out what for me are the special accomplishment of several of the shorter poems, such as "Snowgoose," "Grandmother," and "Passage," which I quote as exemplary of the best qualities of Ms. Allen's art.

                  We stood up as the boat neared the shore,
                  the tall pine hills were far behind.
                  Before us we saw the town
                  circled with logs soaking in the sun
                  flat and dingy, full of mud.
{23}
                  This was another end in the long trip.
                  Our private search for meaning,
                  for certainty, for a silver peg
                  to hang ideals on. No one
                  had sent us. We had to come
                  to this port in the cool north waters
                  to see the mountains thundering in pine,
                  green, glacial, cold.
                  This was as far as we could go,
                  toward the turning of the earth.

                  In the end we found a narrow street
                  lined with hanging baskets of fuchsia flowers
                  and took another smaller ferry home.

Ralph J. Mills, Jr.     University of Illinois-Chicago Circle

The Metaphysics of Modern Existence. Vine Deloria, Jr. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Xiii + 233 pp. Bibliography. $8.95
        This is a welcome book. It has been six years since the publication of Vine Deloria's last philosophical work, God Is Red, which inspired readers to look beyond the confines of Christianity to find alternate answers to the question of the meaning of existence in the religious traditions of North American Indians -- traditions sprung from and still rooted in the American land itself. Since Deloria has become, both by the force of his ideas and his personality, the foremost literary representative of American Indians, many of us have been wondering what, of late, has been on his mind. In The Metaphysics of Modern Existence he lets us know.
        The book may be described as rumination. In its pages Deloria ranges through many academic disciplines -- theology, philosophy, physics, history, anthropology, astronomy, economics, and more -- giving us juxtapositions of concepts that we might never before have considered relating. It is a book of intellectual spadework, turning the academic garden topsey-turvey to make way for a new approach to understanding. This is a major task to entrust to the confines of a single book. In the process Deloria offends many traditionally held ideas in many areas of knowledge, and he is sure to bring down the wrath of scholars in every field. Yet the journey with him is an exciting one, well worth the intellectual exercise.
        The book grows out of Deloria's own experiences: "Growing up on an Indian reservation makes one acutely aware of the mysteries of the universe. Medicine men practicing their ancient ceremonies perform feats that amaze and puzzle the rational mind." But education away from the reservation, in the white man's schools, Deloria says, is "a traumatic experience for most Indian people. . . Knowledge seems to be divorced from experience" (p.vii). This is the fundamental contradiction that motivates the book. Deloria sets himself the task of searching through western civilization to discover the process by which knowledge has come to have divided experience into discrete, seemingly unrelated fields of specialization, to rearticulate the pieces, using the works of a variety of modern thinkers, and to delimit a metaphysics of modern life. Or, to use the vocabulary of Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) to establish the parameters of the "paradigm" that defines the acceptance of scientific knowledge.
        This is a hopeful book, an optimistic, intensely personal confession of faith in the ultimate ability of human beings to communicate meaningfully in order to reach epistemological truths about the nature of existence, the origins, meanings, and directions of life. Deloria borrows the French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel's concept of "The New American Revolution," a revolution in thought comparable in scale to that which occurred in western civilization during the 18th and 19th centuries when an egalitarian ideology replaced an hierarchical one. The new revolution is a planetary one, sweeping aside national boundaries and differences -- in Deloria's words, "a coming to maturity of the human species" (p.6).
        Back to the process is a reexamination of fundamental ideas in the current paradigm of western thought. Drawing from such diverse writers as Jung, Velikovsky, Heisenberg and Teilhard de Chardin, Deloria challenges the concept of evolution which in its most pernicious form has condemned all non-Western peoples as more primitive survivals of earlier stages in man's development. This merely replaces Christian theology with parallel scientific doctrine. Deloria questions evolution at every level, from organic to superorganic, rejecting its validity entirely. {24} He predicts that the theoretical basis of future knowledge will have to be transformed to an historical one to account for the data of human existence. This reintegrates emotion and intuition with science, reunifying knowledge into the whole as apprehended by "primitives" throughout the world, past and present. It makes the knowledge of these non-western peoples relevant once again to the ultimate metaphysical quest, and reintegrates the human species, as well as the knowledge system. By returning to examine particular cultural systems historically, comparing them for the unique remembrances each retains of the planetary past, the new metaphysics will be able to rise above any particular culture as the absolute standard of truth.
        Central to Deloria's construction of the new metaphysics is what he calls "the emerging dissident literature." These writers question from a variety of perspectives precious scientific concepts of uniform development and evolution. Best known is Immanuel Velikovsky, who since the publication of Worlds in Collision (1950), has written on matters of scientific concern from an essentially historical perspective derived form the study of mythology. Deloria finds the idea that myth reflects actual historical traditions to be a compelling one and urges further consideration for American Indian myths. That aspects of world history and planetary formation have been caused by cataclysmic catastrophes rather than evolutionary principles is central to his interpretations. Personally, Deloria accepts the notion eagerly, and decries the failure of professional scientists to consider alternative theories seriously, or even to read the dissident works. His point is valid and well made and presents a fair challenge to any scientist who wishes to engage in the open and honest dialogue that Deloria's work represents.
        Without doubt, many sceptics will dismiss this book as naive and beside the point, without giving it the consideration it deserves. Any challenge to epistemological foundations is too serious for the rigidly orthodox to consider. But from this reviewer's perspective as an anthropologist, Deloria is seen to have done to us what we anthropologists regularly and as a matte of course do to other peoples. He has studied us and constructed a model of our ways of thinking, of our metaphysics, both religious and scientific, and using the same unemotional evaluation as a social scientist, he has judged the logical integration of our ideas and their relative validity. He finds us out of sync with most of the rest of humanity, just as anthropologists have so often and quaintly found other peoples' ideas to be out of touch with "scientific" reality.
        This brings Deloria's message full circle. We and the peoples we study are no longer distinct. The value of all our work is to be tested by our ability, at least our honest intentions, to communicate across the artificial barriers that separate us. "Our next immediate task," Deloria concludes his book, "is the unification of human knowledge."

        It would be easy to dismiss Vine Deloria's The Metaphysics of Modern Existence as a work of careless logic. Deloria loosely employs words like `reality' (p. viii) and `truth' (p. 16) without providing a definition or context by which they may be understood. He uses the self-contradictory phrase 'metaphysical fact' (p. 17) without explanation. He equivocates on the phrase "single, simple answers to all of life's questions" (p. ix) by equating that pop philosophy concept with theories in synthetic Metaphysics. He says, "Indian traditions. . .have been verified to be scientifically correct" (p. viii), thus implying that Indian ideas are superior because Western scientific ideas have proved them so, a spurious acknowledgment that Western ideas somehow establish the standard of correctness.
        But to dwell on the several logical and technical failures of Deloria's work is not to give due credit for what it does. Deloria does analyze with astuteness the role that primitive thought -- particularly American Indian thought -- may play as a corrective for our contemporary tendency to be alienated from our environment and from ourselves. With perceptive insight he develops those tendencies in modern physics and modern theology which are moving toward models of the universe which were common in primitive world views. His discussion of the effect of Heisenberg's "indeterminacy principle" on our everyday understanding of the world is incisive (pp. 36ff). And he gives a good summary appraisal of Alfred North Whitehead's revolutionary ideas of "simple location" and "misplaced concreteness." Indeed, if we were to regard Deloria's book as an annotated bibliography {25} of significant alternative approaches to explanations of reality, we would not find it disappointing. As Deloria says, "To my knowledge no one has tried to place the collective thoughts of these people into one consistent exposition of an alternative way of conceiving reality (pp. xi-xii). This purpose of Deloria's work is admirably realized except for the serious omission of Martin Heidegger and Whitehead's Process and Reality.
        It is with his analysis of recent legal trends and his appraisal of contemporary developments in Protestant theology, however, that Deloria shows his greatest depth of insight. His conclusion that the "new vision of the world" which would follow from "broadening our legal concept of the world by giving rights to nature itself. . . would make us better people" (p. 140) is presented with convincing sincerity. Likewise, his portrayal of the wasteland of modern authoritarian theologies -- Harvey Cox and supporters and opponents -- is a keen bit of criticism, while his discussion of Ian Barbour as "approaching a major breakthrough" in theology (p. 191) is one of the best appraisals of that theologician to date.
        Strangely enough, in view of his title, it is in the area of metaphysics itself that Deloria proves weakest. His efforts to "prove" the superiority of theology to philosophy by a comparison of Teilhard de Chardin's theology with Whitehead's philosophy, for instance, is weakened by his ignoring of Whitehead's basic work, Process and Reality, while citing only his popularized Adventures in Ideas. Even so, the only advantage he finds for Teilhard is that he avoids Whitehead's "mathematical orientation" (p. 52), a point which gets at one of Teilhard's weaknesses -- his lack of precision -- more than at one of Whitehead's. In what sense mathematical precision is a weakness, however, Deloria doesn't discuss, nor does he note that Whitehead eschews a mathematical orientation in Process and Reality.
        Even where one would expect him to shine with new metaphysical insights, relating Native American world views to traditional metaphysics, Deloria disappoints. Instead of a thorough discussion of these issues, he notes in passing only a few tantalizing insights, which he leaves unanalyzed. He notes, for instance, the traditional Indian precedence of space over time (p. 25), the superiority of traditional Indian polytheism and pantheism to monotheism (p. 29), the advantage in traditional Indian cultures in the processes of nature (p. 37), and the superiority of the this-worldly orientation of Christianity and Buddhism (pp. 147 ff). But these points, which might indeed make a splendid work of metaphysics, are not sufficiently developed.
        In conclusion, then, we could regard Deloria's legal analysis and theological criticism as a superior achievement, his scientific popularizing as a worthwhile if modest attempt, but his metaphysics as an unfulfilled promise providing hope for better things to come.

Studies in American Indian Literatures, the Newsletter of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, is issued four times a year. Annual subscription $2.00 until Jan. 31 for four issues, thereafter $2.00 for remaining issues of that calendar year with back numbers for the year $1.00 each. For prices of vols I-III consult 3:4 or write The Editor, 602 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, to whom contributions, subscriptions, and inquiries should be addressed. Advisory editorial board: Paula Gunn Allen, Gretchen Bataille, Joseph Bruchac, Vine Deloria, Jr., Larry Evers, Dell Hymes, Maurice Kenny, Robert Sayre. Bibliographer, A. LaVonne Ruoff. Editor, Karl Kroeber. ©1980 SAIL.

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The American Indian: Language and Literature. Compiled by Jack W. Marken. Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Pub. Corp, 1978. xx + 175 pp. $12.95 HB $8.85 Pb.

        This is the most extensive general bibliography devoted to Native American literature published within recent years. Few bibliographies have been devoted to Indian literature, which has all too frequently been consigned in general bibliographies to the limbo of "mythology and folklore" or "religion." In 1973 two specialized bibliographies were published: Arlene Hirschfelder's American Indian and Eskimo Authors and Anna Stensland's Literature by and About the American Indian. Whereas Hirschfelder's book focused on works told, collected, or written by Indians, Stensland's centered on materials suitable for junior and senior high school students. In The American Indian: Language and Literature Marken attempts to survey the spectrum of literature by and about Indians and their languages -- excluding Eskimos and Indians of Mexico and Central America.
        Marken has organized his work in two divisions: non-geographic and geographic. The first contains sections on bibliography, autobiography, general literature, and general languages. As Marken warns in his introduction, some works which might be categorized as biography are included in the "autobiography" section, and not all works published in periodicals are included in the "general literature" section. The second division is organized by geographic patterns, sections on Indians in the United States according to the areas designated in George Murduck's Ethnographic Bibliography of North America. Indians in Canada are simply divided into western and eastern. These geographic sections are subdivided into "general literature" and "general language," with entries for both listed alphabetically -- though Marken never states specifically how he defines "literature" nor indicates the basis on which he includes historical and ethnographic works and excludes others.
        This organization creates some problems. With the exception of the Ojibwa or Chippewa, tribal groups are assigned to only one country. In the Midwest section, the Chippewa are designated "The Chippewa (Wisconsin)" and are grouped with the Fox and Sauk (undifferentiated) and the Miami. So anyone wishing to determine works by Ojibwa authors or on Ojibwa literature has to consult both the U.S. and Canada divisions -- especially since under "Chippewa (Wisconsin)" are listed Gerald Vizenor, White Earth Chippewa, MN, and Basil Johnston, Cape Croke, Canada, and many of the items do not deal exclusively with the Wisconsin Chippewa.
        The list of authors is incomplete. Important writers included in Hirschfelder but omitted here are William Apes, Peter Clarke, Chief Andrew J. Blackbird, Alexander Posey, Samson Occum, Elias Boudinot, Paul Cuffe, Maggie Fry, James Christopher, Jon Mockingbird, and, most surprising, John Mathews.
        The list of publications by authors is also not complete -- particularly much early fiction, poetry, and essay work published separately is omitted. Only one work for George Conway is given. Excluded are The Life, History, and Travels of Ka-Ge-Ga-Gas Brown (1847), Organization of a New Indian Territory (1850), and Running Sketches of Men and Places (1851). Two important works by the Rev. Peter Jones are overlooked, Journal (1853) and Life and Journals (1860), as well as the original publication date of his Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854). Simon Pokagon's essay The Red Man's Rebuke (1893) and his "Indian Superstitions and Legends" (1898) are not included. Although Francis LaFlesche's work with Alice Fletcher on the Osage is cited, that on his own tribe, the Omaha, is not. In the listing of Zitkala-sa's work (Gertrude, not "Ethel" Bonnin), only two of the autobiographical essays published by the Atlantic Monthly are noted. The entry for Mourning Dove (humishuma) misses {27} the more complete (and still in print) collection of Coyote Tales edited by Donald M. Hines under the title of Tales of the Okanogans, as well as her novel written in collaboration with Lucullus McWhorter, Cogewea (1927). Some basic works are omitted, such as Alfred Kroeber's The Arapaho (1902-07), which includes literature and mythology, Robert Lowie's Indians of the Plains (1954), and Clemens De Baillou's "A Contribution to the Mythology and Conceptual World of the Cherokee," Ethnohistory, 9 (1961), 92-102. Two entries pertaining to the Southeastern Yuchi are included with the Yuki of California, those of Gunter Wagner and James Crawford.
        So Marken's extensive bibliography must be used with some care. But despite its weaknesses, it will be an indispensable tool for teachers and students of American Indian literatures and should be part of all library bibliographical collections.

There are two important measures on which a bibliography can be evaluated. First, its utility as a research tool and reference book, then the nature of the relation between it and the subject it purports to cover: is it properly a study, or merely a list of sources? Marken's bibliography scores weakly on both measures with regard to its coverage of language and linguistics, the focus of this review.
        Minimal cross-references are provided, no comprehensive subject index nor orientation map is available, nor has the problem of multiple names for similar peoples (and singular names for multiple peoples) been solved. Marken states his bibliography is fashioned generally after Murdock's Ethnographic Bibliography of North America. But Murdock's presentation is alphabetical by tribe within a particular region, e.g., Southwest: Hopi, Isleta, Jemez, etc. One need only consult the accompanying guide to linguistic stocks in the region to locate cognate, languages. Marken reduces the number of lists by compressing several tribes together, continuing Murdock's alphabetic sequence but not always exercising due regard for established linguistic relations. One is consequently faced with an unfortunate, especially for linguistic inquiry, combined listing of Hopi, a Uto-Aztecan language, with three Hokan languages (Cocopa, Havasupai, and Mohave). Another mix of Uto-Aztecan (Yaqui), Hokan (Walapai, Yavapai, and Yuma) and Zuni (an isolate) is found at the tail end of the alphabetic spectrum. Navajo and other Apachean languages are all members of the Athapaskan family and should be listed in conjunction, not separated by a miscellany of Yuman and Uto-Aztecan references. The problem is compounded by placements such as Holder's seminal work "The Apachean Verb" exclusively in the "Apache" section and not also with the Navajo (spelled by Marken Navaho, against tribal preference and linguistic convention).
        As with the case of Holder, bibliographic sources are entered only once, and the choices are not always sound. Items pertaining to two tribes are to be found in the general listing for a region, and not with either of the appropriate tribes. Marken lists bibliographies on specific tribes and sub-regions under the general heading `Bibliography,' so bibliographies such as Helm's on the Subartic Athapaskans, Iverson's on the Navajo, Lander's on the Chimariko, and Tanner's on Arizona are not to be found in contexts of most utility. A related problem: Marken lists a volume edited by Sawyer on American Indian Languages (1971) in the `General Language' section, where it doesn't belong, since it is a collection of studies on particular languages, not entered in their appropriate sections and, therefore, unlikely to be discovered during normal consultation.
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        Although it contains 3695 entries, Marken's bibliography would be more valuable if it included references to doctoral dissertations, non-English sources, and if it covered the early attempts at linguistic description more fully, e.g., James Isham, John McLean, Samuel Parker. And what at first appears to be an alphabetizing problem in the listings turns out to be a structural problem. Marken has chosen to separate literary references from linguistic ones, but runs the two lists together without caption or notice. There are clerical defects: incorrect naming (Karl instead of Earl Swanson), indexing (e.g. Heckwelder), and spelling, e.g. Martha A. Austin's Saad Ahaah Sinil were readily detected through a spot inspection. So, although it may frustrate students, the bibliography will be an aid to them, for it contains useful references. It will be of less use to advanced scholars.

Indian Tribal Sovereignty and Treaty Rights. Ed Pat D'Andrea and Susan V. DeWitt. Albuquerque: La Confluencia Press, 1978. 38 pp. $2.00
        This publication is based on the transcript of proceedings of a forum held April 12-14, 1978, at San Diego State University, and was published as a special supplement to the October, 1978, issue of La Confluencia. The date of the conference coincided with the Longest Walk, a march by Indian people that left Sacramento in February, 1978, and arrived in Washington, D.C., on July 15. The Walk and the forum were intended to draw attention to legislation then before Congress that was designed to abrogate Indian treaty rights. Over the years American policy towards Indians has vacillated between compelling them into mainstream society and allowing them a special status within the law. Since the Kennedy administration the policy of the federal government has been to maintain the reservations and to allow Indians a greater degree of self-government. President Nixon's policy statement of 1970 and the Indian Self-Determination act of 1975 are the most significant definitions of this position. In 1975 Congress also created the American Indian policy Review Commission. Divided into a number of task forces, this Commission conducted a series of hearings throughout the United States. Its final report, issued in May of 1977, was a statement of the Indians' right to self-government and an assertion of tribal sovereignty. In the past few years, however, several Congressmen have introduced bills intended to abolish treaty tights and to terminate tribal governments. Indians thus see themselves on the defensive, and the issues discussed at this forum are fundamental to their existence as distinct cultural and political communities.
        Sam Deloria, Director of the American Indian Law Center, set the tone of the conference by analyzing the tension that exists between the United States' assertion of trust responsibility, based on the treaties and Supreme Court interpretations, and the tribes' capacity and will to self-determination. Deloria points out that over the past century the tribes have been consistently denied the tools necessary to govern themselves. Without suitable experience, the tribal governments, reconstituted by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, have had a history of failure. These failures have allowed the United States to continue exercising its authority. Federal officials have tended to look upon Indians as incapable or unwilling to govern responsibly. But any meaningful definition of sovereignty includes the right to make mistakes, and even to fail.
        The highlight of the conference was a debate between Lloyd Meeds, a Congressman from Washington and the author of many bills intended to {29} abolish Indian treaty rights, and Vine Deloria, Jr. This debate occurred on the second day of the conference (the transcripts apparently have been reordered to fit the editors' sense of organization) and generated electricity. Meeds, a member of the American Indian Policy Review Commission, asserted the Commission exceeded its authority by defining policy instead of restricting itself to a review of contemporary Indian and White relations. Meeds argues that the Commission acted upon a mistaken notion of sovereignty and that Indians are no longer a sovereign people and are completely subordinate in law to the federal and state governments. This is a point of utmost importance. The State of Washington is deeply involved in controversy over Indian fishing rights. A 1974 decision of the federal district court in Seattle awarded Indians the right to catch 50% of the salmon and steelhead runs, and this decision has prompted much of the agitation for the elimination of Indian treaty rights. Deloria refuted Meeds' interpretation of the Indians' legal status and argued that Indians are indeed sovereign, but he nonetheless faulted the Commission for not addressing the specific problems of Indian reservations. Clara Sue Kidwell, director of the Ethnic Studies program at UC-Berkeley, and Ed Castillo, presently teaching at UC-Santa Cruz, made clear the disparate legal and economic problems faced by such reservations as White Earth, Minnesota, Choctaw, Mississippi, and the Makah, Washington, as well as Indian communities in California. Simon Ortiz, Acoma poet and singer, appropriately concluded with a reminder that Indian people must also confirm their relationship to the land.

A Snug Little Purchase (How Richard Henderson Bought Kaintuckee from the Cherokees in 1775). Charles Brasher. La Mesa CA: Associated Creative Writers (9231 Molly Woods Av, La Mesa CA 92041). 1979. pp.xii + 138. $4.95
        This clear, direct, and vivid historical monograph, presented from the Indian point of view, deals with three days in March 1775. On this occasion Richard Henderson and his associates traded six wagon loads of material for the Cherokees' rights to a vast tract of Kentucky-Tennessee land know as "Kaintuckee." The negotiations took place at Sycamore Shoals, Tennessee on the Yatauga River, between what is now Elizabethton and Johnson City. Various historical characters such as Dragging Canoe (the "Savage Napoleon") and Nancy Ward (the "Beloved Woman of the Cherokees") express varied and interacting points of view and expectations in the episode. The date, 1775, is of course significant. Henderson carried his deal through in defiance of a proclamation by King George III, and Cherokee rights were destined to be a casualty of the Revolution.
        Actually recorded verbal material from the time has been worked into the account. There are line drawings of artifacts, and care has also been expended to suggest the "mentifacts," or specifically Indians ways of thinking about relations and incidents. After each chapter there is an explanation of the documentary oasis for the material just presented, which may serve as a guide for further exploration. There is a bibliography on Cherokee affairs during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, but the account is intended to appeal to the general as well as the specialized reader. Dr. Brashers, originally a Texan, has taught at the Universities of Denver and Michigan and presently teaches fiction at San Diego State. His publications include founding and editing a magazine of "well-made" stories and poems. A Snug Little Purchase is well-made, too.

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Due to an error in production most copies of our last number, 4:1, omitted the last two items in the bibliography of films prepared by Charles L. P. Silet, of Iowa State University, as well as his name. The following two items should be added to page 10 of the last number. We apologize to Gretchen Bataille, who edited the section of film, and to Charles Silet who prepared the excellent annotated bibliography.

Turner, John W. "Little Big Man: The Novel and the Film," Literature/Film Quarterly 5 (Spring 1977), 154-163.

Turner argues that close examination of the novel illuminates some of the critical difficulties in the film, among them the use of the narrator, the identity problems of the central character, and the conflict between savagism and civilization.

Wood, Robin. "Shall We Gather At the River: The Late Films of John Ford," Film Comment, 7 (Fall 1971), 8-17.

Criticizes Ford's ability to create a really convincing view of the Cheyenne which resulted in the artistic failure of Cheyenne Autumn. His self-contradiction in dealing with Indians flaws the film. The article also deals in a general way with Ford's treatment of Indians in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Fort Apache.

Notice of two publications: Alan R. Velie, American Indian Literature: An Anthology (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1979) $15.95HB, $6.95Pb. Includes both contemporary and traditional materials; selections not extensive but includes Walam Olum and Radin's version of the Winnebago trickster cycle. No scholarly notes..... . Scree 11-12, Second special Native American Issue, Duck Down Press, Box 1464, Fallon NV 89406. $3.00 Pb, is a fine collection of poems (including Hobson, Castro, northSun, Big Eagle, Oandasan, Bruchac, and others) and prose pieces, notably by Wayne Ude. Very useful bibliography and directory: Excellent!

We hoped to include a reproduction or two of the splendid pictures in Hilary Stewart's Robert Davidson: Haida Printmaker, another lovely book from the University of Washington Press (Seattle, 1979), but we ran out of space. See our next number!

Order from SAIL: Gretchen Bataille: Bibliography on Native American Women, $2; Kroeber and Ruoff: Basic Bibliography for Teachers, $1.

A, vol. 4, no. 2, Fall 1979, is a special education issue includes Simon Ortiz on the nature of language, Geri Rhodes on Winter in the Blood, essays on Ceremony, Ray. A. Youngbear, Lance Henson, Simon Ortiz, and Maurice Kenny on Peter Blue Cloud. An excellent volume. Order from Wm. Oandasan, c/o Program for Writers, Un. Of Illinois-Chicago, 60680. To same address send contributions to A. 5:2, an issue on Tribal Sovereignty and Autonomy, include SASE, contributor's note; deadline May 31. (After July 1 address A at Box 206 Laguna NM 87026)