From Publishers Weekly
In this slight but sometimes resonant memoir, Baughman recounts his efforts to live within modern-day culture yet preserve the Mohawk part of his heritage. A few chapters, like one on a stop at Pine Ridge Reservation and Wounded Knee, are barely anecdotes. More substantively, Baughman, a contributor to Field & Stream, recalls his Pennsylvania boyhood, facing Indian stereotypes in cowboy movies, his stint in New York City marching as an Indian in a humiliating Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and his sad encounter with an Indian brother and sister whose hopes to leave Oklahoma ended in death. Baughman's best efforts here concern the outdoors and his Native American legacy: tracking deer on foot as his grandfather taught him; visiting the remote area of California where Ishi--``the last wild Indian in North America''--emerged in 1911; spending a week alone in the Cascade Mountains, returning ``with a clearer understanding of both Ishi and my own limitations.'' Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this unusual and beautiful narrative, Baughman, a contributing editor to Field and Stream and other magazines, attempts to come to terms with his Mohawk ancestry amid the modernity of his current life. Although part of 20th-century society, Baughman reaches into his past for inspiration: in one instance, he recaptures the glory of his grandfather by hunting a deer in the Mohawk tradition. Baughman creates a kind of reverie much as Thoreau did in his works, illuminating the Mohawk reverence for the earth and for the creatures that inhabit it. The author asks: "How much wildness is enough? How much is possible?" Wildness is equated with the purity of the innocent savage and starkly contrasted with the sophistication and overuse of material goods by today's society. Baughman reconciles this loss of purity through his contact with nature. His story is a personal vision that gives insight to all who read it. Recommended for most collections.
Vicki L. Toy Smith, Univ. of Nevada, Reno
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Vicki L. Toy Smith, Univ. of Nevada, Reno
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
