Customer Reviews

Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South

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The sheer number of gorgeous images in this book is breathtaking. But for many readers I suspect the most astonishing image might be a fairly simple one on page 17: a rendering of a orderly semicircle of structures facing a river, it is a city in Louisiana----in 1500 B.C. This book reveals Native American civilizations rivaling what we know of the Maya and Inca, but in the heartland of North America.

In the south and Midwest a series of sophisticated cultures left behind artifacts and even structures that we are just now beginning to study and understand. For example, the Hopewell site in Ohio, where "the most dramatic" sacred structures were "geometric in form and combined circular, oval, square, octagonal, or other elements in compositions covering hundreds of acres."

The artistry of the artifacts presented here is amazing, and this book has a generous selection of large, excellent photographs. But the prose is equally good: intelligent but intelligible, often with an interesting narrative. Even the occasional semiotic language is used as vocabulary rather than jargon. Not only does this book explore so much about these next-to-unknown cultures, but it provides an exemplary context of explaining a worldview shared by many Native cultures and peoples. Although this is a scholarly presentation based on a traveling art exhibit, it is pretty graceful about integrating contemporary Native views and information. It's only in recent years that scholars have taken the testimony of contemporary Native Americans about their own culture as seriously as they take their own theories about old artifacts that survived.

For all of these reasons I count this book as instantly one of my most treasured.

This is a spectacularly beautiful book. Hundreds of exquisite photographs of Indian pottery and other pre-historic artifacts, plus maps, drawings, and paintings illustrate the text.

The illustrations accompany about 20 essays on the Indians of southern and midwestern United States from archaic times until contact with Europeans. The essays vary in quality and interest, but most are well written in scholarly but accessible prose. The contributors include anthropologists, art historians, folklorists, and members of several Indian tribes. Footnotes and a substantial bibliography round out a scholarly and artistic book of real merit.

Throughout the book the continuity of ancient Indian cultures with those known to the Europeans is emphasized. One of the most interesting essays concerns the people of Cahokia, the largest Northamerican archaelogical site dating from about 1200 AD, in which the author speculates about the identity of the inhabitants, relating them to present day Indian tribes. Other essays concern the Bread Dance of the Shawnee Indians -- written by a Shawnee -- and the cultural continuity from pre-historic to present day Caddo Indians. Hopewell, Poverty Point, Moundville, and other important pre-historic Indian cultures are also given meticulous attention.

Smallchief

I saw the show in Chicago!!! Amazingly, the book, due to the excellent phothgraphy and printing comes close to the gallery experience. The text is insightful. A definite buy. I bought the book at the museum shop($60) and immediately purchased two copies for friends from my favorite bookseller - Mother Amazon!

This book is an absolute must have for anyone in the field of archaeology and iconography of the Southeast, but if you are in that field you probably already know this. Robert Sharp, the executive director of publications for the Art Institute of Chicago, did a marvelous job, as did all the contributors and editors.
This volume makes an excellent book for anyone interested in the prehistory of the peoples of native north america; the pictures are of the highest quality, and the included essays are knowledgable and well written, by the finest minds of the field.
Whether a coffee table book or a valuable resource material for thesis, dissertation, or post graduate studies, this book is incredible. two thumbs way up!

A wonderful compliation of articals and superior photographs that covers the subject in an entertaining way.
It is an absolutly beautiful book, good size, with fine printing and color as well as being extremley well researched and written.
This level of presentation would be hard to improve upon.

If I have one catalog for art and/or archaeology exhibitons (and this fits both categories)I must have 75+ ranging from Troy and Borabadur through Velazquez to the Impressionists to St. Gaudens and to today's landscape artists.

This is my favorite of all of them for the images, history, articles and sheer amazement of human creative genius.

I bought one and gave it to a local art center and bought another for me. I'm sure when I die, you will be able to buy it from my heirs cheaply here, but it will not be in "good" or even "acceptable" condition, it will be too used.