Review of Earth and Sky: Visions of the Cosmos in Native American Folklore Edited by Ray A. Williamson and Claire E. Farrer

Authors

Lee Irwin, College of CharlestonFollow

Date of this Version

1995

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:1 (Winter 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

This is a book for a wider audience than folklorists or anthropologists, though both will find substantive materials here for future research. It is a work that integrates a number of disciplinary perspectives-including ethnohistorical sources, archaeology, social theory, myth studies, religion and ritual, and astronomy- with remarkable economy and focus. The editors, Ray Williamson (from the United States Congress's Office of Technological Assessment) and Claire Farrer (an anthropologist at California State University at Chico), have illustrated the depth and complexities of Native American "Blue Archaeoastronomy" as a source for enhancing our understanding of diverse mythic worlds. The volume's essays range from the southwestern Zuni, Mescalero Apache, Navajo, and the Yuma-Piman peoples of Agua Caliente, to the California Cahuilla and Ajumawi, to a rapid survey of the Northwest, including Quinalt, Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, Tlingit, and most cogently the Tsimshian. Blackfoot, Lakota, and Pawnee celestial lore are also discussed, and in the Northeast the Seneca and the Ojibwa. An essay on the Alabama rounds out the circle.