THE UPPER TANANA INDIANS.

YaleUniversity Publications in AnthropologyNumber 55. By Robert A. McKennan '25.New Haven: Yale University, 1959. 223 pp.$3.00.

This is a technical monograph describing the culture of a series of Indian villages (there is no tribal organization) along the eastern border of Alaska. The report is published in a journal which, unfortunately, believes that a detailed table of contents is an adequate substitute for an index. It is illustrated with drawings of objects now in the Dartmouth College Museum and with photographs taken in the field. The author's data on physical anthropological measurements and his notes on the neighboring Chandalar Kutchin are promised for future publication.

At the time the work was undertaken in 1929, most anthropologists were collecting detailed inventories of specific cultural traits whose distribution revealed their history. The Athapascan-speaking Indians of central Alaska and northwestern Canada were at that time an unspectacular, almost unknown, group. Professor McKennan undertook to sample this blank in the cultural map in the manner dictated by the interests of the time. As such, it is a highly competent piece of research.

Much of the significance of his work, however, has been stolen by time. Due to the depression, wars, etc., and lack of funds, the report has lain dormant for thirty years. Yet the data presented here do have certain lasting significance. The detailed observations on religious practices will be hard to duplicate. Many of our concepts of "primitive man" are challenged by this report. The northern Athapascans had a very primitive culture, yet they used metal. Though nomadic, they preserved and stored food. Though they were always fighting, they took no scalps. In hunting big game, snares were more important than bow-and-arrow or even spears. Burial customs, supposedly a very conservative trait, changed rapidly following white contact.

Most readers will be fascinated by the brief description of the field work. Professor McKennan had to go into the wilderness to live off the country and his Indian subjects. Moving from camp to camp, he had only a short time to gain their confidence sufficiently to let him take physical measurements on their persons. To emerge from that experience not only with a complete set of legible notes, but with a whole skin and a reasonably complacent intestinal tract was indeed a problem. Those of us who like to do our anthropology from a conveniently located motel or in the relative comfort of a well-stocked field camp can only say - "That, by God, was a field trip."