THE SIOUX, Life and Customs of a Warrior Society.

By Royal B. Hassrick '39.Norman, Okla: University of OklahomaPress, 1964. 337 pp., illustrated. $5.95.

A teacher always finds it rewarding to receive a book written by a former student; and his job as a reviewer is made easy when the book is as good as this one. Although anthropology was still in its infancy at Dartmouth when Hassrick was an undergraduate, his interest in the subject was keen, and led him on to graduate work at Harvard and Pennsylvania followed by professional field and museum work focused on the Indians of the Plains. The present study represents the distillate of nearly 25 years of study of the Sioux, and it is a fitting addition to the University of Oklahoma's excellent Civilization of the American Indian Series.

The author analyzes Sioux culture under five main headings: (1) rank and order, including tribal structure, morals and manners; (2) the importance of the warrior and the nature of warfare; (3) patterns of familiarity and respect, including family structure and sex roles; (4) hunting nomadism; (5) world view, including religious beliefs, the vision quest, and the life cycle of the individual; and concludes with a brief epilogue which contrasts the present dreary reservation life with the old, free days. Hassrick concentrates on the period of 1830-1870, the "great period" of the Sioux nation, and the climax of Plains culture. Time depth, however, is not lacking for he begins his story in 1650 when the Sioux were still a woodland people in the Mille Lacs area of central Minnesota, and traces their movements as they pushed their way into the treeless Plains, thanks to their own zest for war combined with the new cultural element, the horse.

Although Hassrick reflects American anthropology's traditional concern with ethnography and culture history, he also employs the functional approach of British social anthropology, particularly in his handling of Sioux government, as well as showing a psy-choanalytical interest in the relation between culture and the individual personality. Much of Hassrick's data was secured from Indian informants, but he has also drawn heavily on all available literature. The book is enlivened by his own drawings of Sioux technology together with reproductions of early frontier paintings and photographs. Both professional anthropologist and the Western buffs should find much to satisfy them in The Sioux.

Professor of Anthropology