Choice 评论

The Cheyennes are one of the most prominent American Indian tribes of the Plains. Although they have attracted long-standing attention from anthropologists and historians, there has been no modern book-length study of the Cheyennes contextualized within the cultural history of the region. Moore (University of Oklahoma) attempts to provide such a synthesis. Written from a Marxist perspective, the book focuses on the historical development of Cheyenne society; it traces the evolution of that society from protohistorical bands to the Cheyenne "nation" of the 19th century. This book is the product of a prodigious amount of historical and ethnographic study; Moore addresses unresolved questions about Cheyenne origins, history, demography, and social structure. The approach is dialectical, posing historical data against the testimony of contemporary Cheyennes, and relies as well on simple statistical methods. Although Moore's work addresses fundamental problems, his interpretations of the data vary all too frequently--from controversial or dubious to incorrect. Particularly distressing are the misinterpretations of the Cheyenne past, which result from the author's lack of understanding of modern linguistic methods. For graduate students and faculty. -D. R. Parks, Indiana University