228 - The Study of American Indian Religions

The Study of American Indian Religions

By Åke Hultkrantz, edited by Christopher Vecsey

New York and Chico, Crossroad and Scholars Presses, 1983. 134 Pp. $12.95.

This is one of the few collections of reprinted essays that deserves to be issued as a book. It is a gold mine of references to American Indian religion studies over the past century, containing those additional aspects that qualify an invaluable guidebook: magisterial overview and critical evaluation. The author, Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Stockholm, has achieved prominence in his field through an extensive list of articles and more than a dozen books. In 1966-67 he aided students everywhere with a review of scholarly literature that defined the state of the art. That classic (History of Religions, vol. 6, pp. 91-107 and 183-207; vol. 7, pp. 13-34 and

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112-148) forms the heart of this volume, and it is extremely helpful to have those segments within a single set of covers. Two other chapters (from a 1976 anthology and an enlarged version of a 1982 article in New Scholar) round out the coverage by bringing it down to the present time. Editorial contribution is minimal. Reprinted essays now have subheadings that help, and a few footnotes show authors' names instead of initials as originally indicated. Pagination has been made more explicit where needed. But the bulk of the material remains unchanged, and that is all to the good.

One of the strong points in Hultkrantz's work is that be reports with penultimate definitiveness on studies found in English, German, and French publications. And instead of listing references without comment, he captures the gist of each contribution, categorizing it with similar efforts and chronicling-trends-in the field of study. Neophytes and veterans alike will enjoy starting with Hultkrantz at the headwaters of reports by early missionaries and traders; travel with him along the mainstream of anthropological development dominated by Franz Boas until 1925 and A. L. Kroeber, R. F. Benedict, and G. A. Reichard (among others) thereafter; and arrive by mid-century at a delta where the stream divides into many channels with separate characteristics but one general direction. References to European scholars keep pace with resident Americans, and attention to theory supplements fieldwork reports. This coverage is not polemic, and though it displays no antagonism to varying methods or topics, each contribution fits within the author's conception of where the field is progressing and which perspectives materially advance it.

By the time readers come to contemporary scholarship, they understand how the field has developed and can grasp Hultkrantz's sensible suggestions about tasks for future research. While acknowledging the legitimacy of many methodological approaches, he appeals rightly for a cognitive perspective that will allow students to "come closer to an understanding of the meaning of religion and the deep-structured values that keep all beliefs and rites together" (p. 133).

Specialists in Christianity as well as historians of other religions will profit from this work because it shows how an active mind can encompass anthropology, folklore, and religious phenomenology while moving beyond functional descriptions to grasp what beliefs and rituals really express.

HENRY WARNER BOWDEN

Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey