Customer Reviews

The Mexican Kickapoo Indians (Native American)

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This book is chock full of knowledge and facts in a subject area in which there is very little information available. It was well written and barring a few errors that I can count on one hand, the editor did an excellent job with the presentation of the finished product. My only complaint is the lack of pictures.

I feel there should have been way more pictorial representation of the everyday life of the Kickapoos especially in view of how many years the Latorres spent with them. Not to mention the inability to effectively describe something in words where one could actually "picture it" correctly. In 99% of the cases had a picture been available to back up the text description, it would have gone a long way toward clearing up any confusion and/or frustration on the part of the reader on objects, activities and persons being described. It was also stated at least twice in the book that though the Kickapoos were secretive about some things (ie: ceremonies and dances and even certain objects--medicine bundles and ceremonial drums) that they were nonetheless a people as a whole who did not mind being photographed. There was only one photo of the chief who resided over the tribe at the time (Chief Papicoano) in the whole book!

Should the LaTorres decide to update their book I suggest strongly that more pictures be added in order to enhance the narrative. Otherwise, as I mentioned before, in an area where little information is available, this book does a fairly decent job of attempting to fill that gap.

As a non-anthropologist I found this book to be very well done and interesting as well. This is the main work up to this time on the subject and serves as a modern overview of the tribe that was previously lacking. In the book some of the members of the tribe were shocked to see detailed histories shown to them by the authors, of other tribes but nothing about Kickapoos. This book goes a long way to fixing that condition. The quality of the writing is superb, by this husband and wife anthropology team. I thought there were plenty of pictures too.