THE IROQUOIS EAGLE DANCE AN OFFSHOOT OF THE CALUMET DANCE.

William N. Fenton '31. Washington: U.S.Government Printing Office (SmithsonianInstitution, Bureau of American EthnologyBulletin 156), 1953. 324 PP. $1.50

Ostensibly this monograph is a detailed analysis of the Iroquois Eagle Dance, a ritual still performed by members of one of the several Iroquois "curing" societies. Actually, however, it is far more than a careful ethnographic account of an Indian ceremony. As Fenton says, "The study of a major activity in culture touches almost every activity of that culture."

What we have here is the distillate of some twenty years of study and field work among the Iroquois. During this time Dr. Fenton has become the acknowledged authority on these people.

A variety of anthropological interests and orientations are revealed in this study. In addition to the attention to ethnographic detail customary among good field workers, Fenton has added a sensitive perception of the differences between individual Indian personalities, and the resulting differences in their participation in the ceremony.

A comparison of the Iroquois Eagle Dance with similar dances among other tribes indicates that the ceremony originated among the prairie tribes of the middle Mississippi area and spread east via the Great Lakes, reaching the Iroquois of New York state about 1750. In his analysis of this cultural diffusion Fenton has utilized a wide variety of historical sources, and has developed a technique which he terms "upstreaming," i.e., working backwards from the present to the past via all available historical sources.

Just 23 years ago this reviewer read a senior thesis submitted in Sociology 101 by one of his students. Its subject was the culture of the Iroquois Indians, and its author was William N. Fenton '31. Its grade, based on undergraduate standards of that time, was "A". The present study, judged by the professional anthropological standards, merits the same mark.