Author Description

Vinson Brown’s book covers native peoples along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California; it focuses on the Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Salish of the Northwest Coast, and the Yurok. Hupa, Karok, Pomo, Chumash, and Tongva down through California. Maps, appendices, drawings, photographs, text along with line drawings and photographs providing both framework and background throughout the text; Brown has included extensive trait distribution lists in the appendix and elsewhere, thus embedding the focus of each culture. The text includes summaries of the cultures. The remainder presents interpretations of myths and folktales or fictional accounts of life based upon ethnography and social organization. It is also subtly organized. “The Year of the Tlingit,” based upon Oberg’s monthly cycle of activities, is written from the perspective of mythic you learn of the Tlingit, as others on the West Coast,through characterizations. One learns from such accounts of the Tsimshian that there are slaves and that members of the tribe could advance by potlatching. Violence, potlatching, deception, and vigilance are practiced by Tsimshians, Kwakiutls, and Nootkas, one is told, as a principal psychological weapon against everyone’s the Haida. Alaskan Eskimo and Nootka whaling are dramatically and convincingly portrayed by this projection into characters and situations. The California peoples appear placid by comparison with those of the Northwest Coast. Some unsettled issues are dealt with as though they were nonissues, such as Drucker’s view of ranking and too much has been contested for this question to be approached as though settled.