BOOK R E V I E W S 6 5 7

Mack's narratives with data from published sourcesand archival documents. A remarkable interest is dedi-cated to the ravages of alcoholic beverages and drugs,in particular Chinese opium and morphine. This was abig issue in Paiute life during the first decades of thiscentury and almost wrecked the continued existenceof many Paiute groups. In his comments and appen-dixes on opiates, Hittman has greatly advanced ourknowledge of this sad tragedy.

The picture we receive of the man who delivers allthis information is of a personality who has becomerather broken from the vicissitudes of a life that is notclearly oriented. He was only half Indian and wasforced to live in poverty, without the access to tradi-tional Indian occupations; for instance, he could notbecome a medicine man because of his blood. Like theregular Paiute Indians he was caught in the hell ofopium and liquor, and like practically all his Indianrelations he experienced the consequences of the dep-ravations with general laxity, violence, and killing. Hemanaged to survive as a type of gardener but had diffi-culties filling his purse. In spite of all these troubles heproved to be an honest man with sound judgment andan excellent memory. He was Hittman's primary infor-mant in the field, and the bond between Hittman andhis client was strong and only ended with Mack'sdeath in 1974.

It is not often one hears of such deep emotionalties between a fieldworker and his informant, and theabundant text that Mack handed over to Hittman hasfew parallels.

It is challenging to compare this autobiographywith the first publications in this genre, Paul Radin'streatises on some Winnebago personalities. These arecertainly used to supply anthropology with historicalsource material (see his The Method and Theory of Eth-nology, McGraw-Hill, 1933) and thus are highly selec-tive in their composition. Hittman, again, gives his in-formant free reign and allows him to go on talking inhis garbled English on any preferred topic. It must beadmitted that in the long run the reader may find it wear-isome. Nevertheless, we are provided with a lively glimpseof the world of a common Paiute Indian during the 20thcentury. We should be thankful to Michael Hittmanfor this realistic monument of Northern Paiute life. •

A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk. IngeborgMarshall. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press,1996. 640 pp.

HARALD E. L. PRINS

Kansas State University

Like other vanished tribal nations, the Beothuk ofNewfoundland are most enigmatic. First encounteredby Europeans 500 years ago and formally declared ex-

tinct in 1830, they tempt us by their silence. Leavingprecious little information about their cultural heri-tage, Beothuks have long been ideal subjects for impe-rialist nostalgia. As Ingeborg Marshall explains, "It isthe demise of the Beothuk—at once the most distress-ing aspect of their history and the most complex—thathas rooted itself most deeply in public consciousness.Oral traditions of violent interaction between Beothukand English settlers that formerly flourished in thenorthern bays were later replaced by stories in whichthe Beothuk were characterized as mild and inoffen-sive forest dwellers who had been cruelly extirpatedby Newfoundlanders. But the facts were elusive andlack of information led to the idea that the Beothukwere a people whose origin, history, and fate wereshrouded in mystery" (p. 4).

Hailed by its publisher to "become the standardreference book on the Beothuk," Marshall's contribu-tion represents a painstaking effort to unveil every-thing she knows about a fiercely independent peoplewho, paradoxically, were determined to remain incog-nito. Of course, she is not the first to be so dedicatedto their memory. Equally passionate about all thingsBeothuk, for instance, was James Howley, author ofthe pioneering The Beothucks or Red Indians (Cam-bridge University Press, 1915). Aiming higher than up-dating Howley's work, Marshall seems to have meticu-lously reviewed almost every source of archaeological,historical, and ethnographic information available.She also carefully examined every known piece of ma-terial culture stored in museums and private collec-tions. Moreover, she not only has read nearly every-thing written about the Beothuk but has even (albeitnot always successfully) tried to glean insights basedon comparative studies. Finally, as the acknowledg-ments attest, she has consulted just about anyone in-volved with Beothuk studies. The product of her laboris an exhaustive and highly readable account dividedin two sections: part 1 relates the history of theBeothuk from the late 1400s to their extinction in 1829,and part 2 discusses Beothuk ethnography and offers the"Concluding Discussion." In addition to two lists, fiveappendixes, and about 120 pages of notes followed by a27-page bibliography, the author has marshaled numer-ous illustrations (42 plates, four tables, seven maps, sev-eral graphs, diagrams, and sketches).

Minor problems are almost unavoidable in a workof such impressive proportions. Beyond a few misspell-ings, some are errors of fact (e.g., Meherin Indianswere not in New England, p. 421), others concern eth-nonymic muddle (e.g., Innu/Montagnais, pp. 226, 379;Algonquin/Algonquian, p. 410), contradictions (e.g.,Beaches / Cow Head Indians "defeated the Norse," pp.263, 277), arrangement flaws (p. 338), and bibliograph-ic omissions. Inaccurate use of quotation marks can be

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deceptive, as in Marshall's assertion: "In the secondhalf of the eighteenth century the term 'Beothuk coun-try' was synonymous with the area around the Ex-ploits River" (p. 276). Fact is that the name Beothuk"was never used by the English" until 1827 (p. 447).This is not a trivial issue, because it points to a moreserious problem.

With no conclusive evidence, Marshall posits that"the Beothuk were the only residents of Newfound-land at the time of discovery" (p. 273). However popu-lar such an insular model of tribal territoriality, it isnot without problems. Conceding that there is only"meager documentation" (p. 8) for Beothuk culture inthe 16th and 17th centuries and admitting that "we arenot certain of their geographical distribution" (p. 273),the author allows that her reconstruction of Beothukculture during this period is rather "speculative" (p. 8).Yet she generally presumes that all unclassified New-foundland natives were Beothuks, ignoring or explain-ing away evidence that is contrary or incompatiblewith this premise. But there are significant indicatorsthat the island's early ethnohistory is more fluid andcomplex than Marshall imagines. Perhaps never theexclusive domain of Beothuks, its shores have longbeen within the aboriginal range of seafaring hunterssuch as the Mi'kmaq. Interestingly, Marshall did notpersonally tap into the cultural memories of Newfound-land Mi'kmaqs to discover what they recall about theirerstwhile neighbors. Would it not be ironic if Marshall'selegant effort on behalf of now-extinct Beothuks be-comes a barbican that halts a still-surviving tribal peo-ple in their current quest for native rights? •

Athabaskan Language Studies: Essays in Honor ofRobert W. Young. Eloise Jelinek, Sally Midgette, KerenRice, and Leslie Saxon, eds. Albuquerque: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1996. 490 pp.

JOHN T. RITTER

Yukon Native Language Centre, Yukon College

The essays in this volume pay richly deserved trib-ute to the scholarship and influence of Robert W.Young, whose contributions over the last 50 yearshave so greatly advanced Navajo linguistics and cul-tural studies. Many AA readers are aware of Young'slongtime collaboration with the Navajo linguist Wil-liam Morgan and have seen the monumental results oftheir meticulous research which have appeared in re-cent years: The Navajo Language: A Grammar andColloquial Dictionary (1980, rev. 1987) and the Ana-lytical Lexicon of Navajo (with Sally Midgette, 1992).Young's work began in the late 1930s (some of it withJ. P. Harrington) and continues to this day. (His sub-stantial 1996 reanalysis of Navajo verb prefixes is inmanuscript.) He has researched Northern Athabaskan

languages, written about Navajo history and place-names, spearhearded the development of the modernwriting system for Navajo now in widespread use,translated legal documents and literacy materials, andbeen an inspiration and catalyst to students and col-leagues working in Navajo and Athabaskan.

This essay collection ranges over a variety of sub-ject areas, many of which have engaged Young's schol-arly attention, but it lacks any sustained analysis of hislexical and grammatical methods (well worthy of com-ment) and contains no bibliography of his works (usu-ally considered de rigueur in a festschrift). These aredismaying omissions in a nearly 500-page tome with nofewer than four named editors, The reader interestedin Young's multifaceted career, much of it spent out-side the university setting, must look elsewhere fordetails. (See S. Iverson's essay in Between Indian andWhite Worlds, University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.)

Thirteen articles in this volume focus on topics inNavajo language and culture; the remaining three areconcerned with Alaskan Athabaskan languages. Virtu-ally all contributions are written by and for specialistsin various subfields and presuppose intimate familiar-ity with current theory, method, and terminology. Agreat deal of space is taken up by theoretical claimsfor or against particular analyses of specific phenom-ena in Navajo and other languages. But traditional de-scription and analysis, both synchronic and diachronic,are amply represented in this eclectic mix of studies.

Following an appreciative preface by K. Hale andthe editors' introduction, the volume opens with a col-lection of articles on syntax and morphology: lengthystudies by Saville-Troike (the acquisition of Navajoverb inflection by children) and Speas and Yazzie (thesyntax of quantification in Navajo), as well as shorterarticles by Hale and Platero (theoretical import ofNavajo transitivity alternations), by Jelinek and Willie(Navajo verbs expressing emotive and cognitivestates), by Thompson (Yi-/Bi- alternations and subject-object inversion in Navajo and other Athabaskan lan-guages), by Tuttle (analysis of direct object pronounsin the apparently now-extinct Salcha Athabaskan), andby Uyechi (reanalysis of Navajo YiTBi- alternations).

Phonology is treated in articles by Leer (diachron-ic study of Gwich'in verb stems, analyzing the complexsegmental and tonal history of a language spoken inboth Canada and Alaska), and by McDonough (reanal-ysis of Navajo verb prefixes treating the vowels asepenthetic).

Semantic studies include those by Kibrik (transi-tivity-decreasing alternations met with in Navajoclassifiers, which he renames "transitivity indicators"),by Midgette (the manifestation of "telicity" in Navajoverbs), and by Willie (the expression of various modal