The Western Apache: Living with the Land Before 1950 by Winfred Buskirk (review)

Reviews 187 He interviews medicine men, holy men, and leaders, who explain and enact contemporary rituals which allow one to walk both roads at once. It is not a pretty picture, overall, because few survive, let alone manage the feat of biculturalism. Yet both Lincoln and Slagle (Anglo and Indian) find a measure of success in their joint but separate quests to verify that the native vision of reality must be experienced and institutionalized in all of our lives if we are to warp the black road of technological irresponsibility back to the ecological orientation of aboriginal American ways. Both authors keep an honest, sensitive, and informed sensibility open to the nuances of prairie life. We see the hatred and terror that afflicts Pine Ridge and its neighboring Indian and white communities. But we are also privy to the healing ceremonies that still bind tribal people together, no matter how desperate their situation. This volume, with its idiosyncratic and personalized scholarship, speaks to a wide readership, from serious students of contemporary Indian culture to general readers who sense the connection between native ecological religion and human survival in these American lands. That connection is the good red road of Black Elk’svision. JACK L. DAVIS University of Idaho The Western Apache: Living with the Land Before 1950. By Winfred Buskirk. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. 273 pages, $22.50.) The Western Apache are well known in the popular and scholarly litera­ ture on the Southwest for their role in making the settling of the region by Anglos an unsettling experience. In this volume, based on anthropological fieldwork in the 1940s, another view is given—that of the relationship of the Western Apache to the land they fought so hard to protect. Often cited in its unpublished form by regional scholars, this slightly revised dissertation, com­ pleted in 1949, should now get the full attention it deserves. The volume treats the ways Western Apache people made a living from their lands from the time of early Spanish/Anglo contacts in 1800 through reservation adjustments to 1950. The work is divided into six chapters, three focused on the details of subsistence, a fourth on the topic of foods, and the two remaining on comparative aspects of Apache lifeways. Chapter 1provides a cultural summary of the Western Apache, particularly the San Carlos Chiricahua - Mescalero group and subgroups. Chapter 2, on agriculture, is rich in original detail on all aspects of plant husbandry, but particularly those related to corn, beans and squash. The role that these crops and their care have played in the daily lives of the people since roughly 1800 is also considered. Chapter 3, on hunting, is equally rich, and treats, in addition to the technology for taking various classes of animals, the methods of training boys to hunt and the spiritual beliefs that guide the system. Chapter 4 provides data on wild 188 Western American Literature plant collecting and processing, while again considering such topics as the organization of gathering parties, the implements used, principles of owner­ ship, etc. Chapter 5 focuses on foods, including their preparation, dietary content, and menus, as well as food preferences, and foods associated with ritual. Chapter 6, the summary, draws conclusions from the above as to the cul­ tural position of the Western Apache vis a vis their neighbors in the Southwest. Although the volume is principally data oriented, it is well written and should be informative to people with a genuine interest in the cultures, environ­ ment, and environmental concerns of the Western Apache and the peoples of the Southwest. The University of Oklahoma Press should be congratulated for selecting an older but excellent manuscript for publication. CATHERINE S. FOWLER University of Nevada, Reno At Home in Texas: Early Views of the Land. By Robin W. Doughty. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987. 163 pages, $17.95.) What this geographer-writer strives for in his survey of accounts written by Texas “settlers, chroniclers, and promoters” is both to define sense of place and analyze development of the tie between settler and his new land. Stephen F. Austin, best-known of the early colonizers, foresaw that estab­ lishing a home on the Texas...