Books in Brief: The American Indian: Past and Present

The American Indian: Past and Present, Edited by Roger L. Nichols and George R. Adams (Xerox, 295 pp., $3.95). Now that every conceivable book on any facet of the Negro experience in America has finally appeared to glut the market, it’s time for other hitherto-ignored minorities to be “treated” to death. We are presently girding our loins for the red rage—American Indians, that is—and might just as well settle back and count on a few dreary years of the Noble Savage bit. Professors Nichols and Adams, to their credit, have edited a well-balanced collection of essays on the American Indian which, while it won’t bring unalloyed glee to the hearts of the newly hopeful Red Studies specialists, should do very nicely for the rest of us. Oliver La Farge presents the “Myths That Hide the American Indian,” including some tribes’ well-developed systems of slavery and fiendishly enjoyed sadism. The late Felix Cohen’s superb twenty-year-old essay, “Americanizing the White Man,” undogmatically demonstrates some of the many truly notable achievements of the original Americans, including, what we should remember but rarely do, the great importance of Indian medicine: quinine, cocaine, ipecac, witch hazel, petroleum jelly, oil of wintergreen and much more. William Willis’ splendid 1963 article from the Journal of Negro History, “Divide and Rule: Red, White and Black in the Southeast,” details the ways whites played off Indians against Negroes and vice-versa. Most of the two dozen essays are of high quality, although the last, “Alcatraz,” written by Rupert Costo in 1970—probably included to be (ugh) Relevant—is unintentionally embarrassing. Although understandably emotional about the present lot of his people, Mr. Costo speaks so enthusiastically of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz that his piece becomes laughable in light of the recent discovery of the wanton destruction his co-ethnics left behind on that rock in San Francisco Bay. Sic transit gloria Tonto.

DB

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D. J. C. Brudnoy

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The American Indian: Past and Present, Edited by Roger L. Nichols and George R. Adams (Xerox, 295 pp., $3.95). Now that every conceivable book on any facet of the Negro experience in America has finally appeared to glut the market, it’s time for other hitherto-ignored minorities to be “treated” to death. We are presently girding our loins for the red rage—American Indians, that is—and might just as well settle back and count on a few dreary years of the Noble Savage bit. Professors Nichols and Adams, to their credit, have edited a well-balanced collection of essays on the American Indian which, while it won’t bring unalloyed glee to the hearts of the newly hopeful Red Studies specialists, should do very nicely for the rest of us. Oliver La Farge presents the “Myths That Hide the American Indian,” including some tribes’ well-developed systems of slavery and fiendishly enjoyed sadism. The late Felix Cohen’s superb twenty-year-old essay, “Americanizing the White Man,” undogmatically demonstrates some of the many truly notable achievements of the original Americans, including, what we should remember but rarely do, the great importance of Indian medicine: quinine, cocaine, ipecac, witch hazel, petroleum jelly, oil of wintergreen and much more. William Willis’ splendid 1963 article from the Journal of Negro History, “Divide and Rule: Red, White and Black in the Southeast,” details the ways whites played off Indians against Negroes and vice-versa. Most of the two dozen essays are of high quality, although the last, “Alcatraz,” written by Rupert Costo in 1970—probably included to be (ugh) Relevant—is unintentionally embarrassing. Although understandably emotional about the present lot of his people, Mr. Costo speaks so enthusiastically of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz that his piece becomes laughable in light of the recent discovery of the wanton destruction his co-ethnics left behind on that rock in San Francisco Bay. Sic transit gloria Tonto.