Customer Reviews

Myths of Native America

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I am quite the anthropology and, hence, mythology enthusiast, and I own my share of books on American Indian lore. Imagine my surprise to find that this "new" book offered a selection of myths that were nearly all collected over a century ago. Notwithstanding the obviously stilted writing style that this often implies, one must realize that Native American ethnography had scarcely matured into a scientific discipline by the time these stories were collected. Therefore, the lion's share of narratives "worth recording," as it were, had not been collected. The illustrations are nice, but one wonders about the choice of stories and the fact that so many extremely well known (not to mention, of critical etiologic importance!) myths have not found their way into McNeese's work. Furthermore, the editing is abjectly wretchedly abominable. One finds rampant misspellings, rife omissions of words, capitalized words in the middle of sentences, small letters opening sentences, and stray hyphens here, there, and everywhere. Check out Erdoes and Ortiz or Dee Brown if you're looking for a suitable introduction to the fantastic literature of the North American Indian, but, by all means, avoid McNeese like the plague!