Review of Plains Indian Studies: A Collection of Essays in Honor of John C. Ewers and Waldo R. Wedel Edited by Douglas H. ubelaker and Herman J. Viola

Authors

Warren W. Caldwell, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Date of this Version

Summer 1984

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer 1984, pp. 199-200.

Comments

Copyright 1984 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

A dual Festschrift is unusual, but here we have one celebrating a collective century of achievement by John Ewers and Waldo Wedel, two scholars of the first rank. Ewers and Wedel, long-time colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution, are well known to historians and anthropologists with special interests in the plains of North America. Indeed, each has contributed to the basic structure of their respective disciplines: Ewers essentially to ethnology and Wedel to archeology. Neither scholar worked within a strictly academic setting and thus, neither had students in the usual sense, yet Ewers and Wedel have been remarkably influential and are revered by scholars for their consistent excellence and originality.

The papers presented here resulted from a celebratory symposium held at the Smithsonian Institution on 25 April 1980. The collection is introduced by informative (and evocative) biographies of Ewers and Wedel, the former by William N. Fenton, a long-time associate, and the latter by James H. Gunnerson, who shares continuing concerns in the archeology of the southwestern plains. Other contributions range from "Reminiscences" by T. Dale Stewart, now retired from a distinguished career at the Smithsonian, through Arikara and Pawnee folklore, to such recondite considerations as "Bias in the Zooarcheological Record," with waystops at intercultural clothing exchange and the identification of Blood bands.

The editors note that each paper "focuses on some aspect of Plains Indian anthropology, but the approaches, topics, and problem-levels vary considerably .... The essays are not designed to follow a particular theme or to cover any assigned area .... the authors were asked to provide new original data in a manner that would admirably complement the career interests and accomplishments of the two great scholars" (p. 3). Yet as frequently happens in symposium volumes, scholarly levels vary, although none of the papers descend to the totally trivial. In total they are informative and quite satisfying to the reader and, I suspect, to the honorees. The volume was worth the effort.