Volume 17, Number 10 · December 16, 1971
Indian Corn
By Peter Farb
I Have Spoken: American History Through the Voices of the Indians
compiled by Virginia Irving Armstrong
Swallow Press, 206 pp., $2.95 (paper)
The Memoirs of Chief Red Fox
with an Introduction by Cash Asher
McGraw-Hill, 209 pp., $6.95
The First Hundred Years of Niño Cochise
as told to A. Kinney Griffith
Abelard-Schuman, 346 pp., $9.95
Geronimo: His Own Story by
edited by S.M. Barrett, newly edited with an Introduction and Notes Frederick W. Turner III
Dutton, 191 pp., $1.25 (paper)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
by Dee Brown
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 487 pp., $10.95
Cannibalism, torture, scalping, mutilation, adultery, incest, sodomy, rape, idolatry, unspeakable rituals, duplicity, filth, drunkenness—such a catalogue of accusations against a people is an indication not so much of their depravity as that their land is up for grabs. The accusations were true of only some American Indians, and even then only at certain times and places and under particular conditions. Yet, throughout the history of the white conquest of red America, this list of savage traits was contrasted with a similar list—piety, continence, cleanliness, charity, and so on—stated to be characteristic of civilization.
Review, 2793 words
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