Ruth Underhill Book order (chronological)

A groundbreaking blend of ethnographic fieldwork and American Indian oral history by a pioneering female anthropologist. Anthropologist Ruth M. Underhill (1883 1984), a widely acknowledged expert on Native American life, published The Autobiography of a Papago Woman in 1936, the first-known oral history of an American Indian woman. The story of Maria Chona, a Papago (Tohono O'odham) woman, is a sequence of intimate episodes and crises from her traditional and nontraditional life, including childbearing, marriages, family and reservation life, song making, and knowledge of practical medicine. The strong Papago fear of women's impurity restricted her, and all females, from having an active role in ceremonial life, yet her independent spirit and dynamic personality led her to challenge tribal taboos. The rare autobiography of Chona, which forms the core of this historically significant case study, appears in Part II of Papago Woman. Underhill adds interpretive analysis, historical background, and absorbing ethnological descriptions in Part I as well as commentary on Papago views on child training, women, love, and the continuing effects of Roosevelt's New Deal in Part III. Useful student study questions (by Catherine Lavender) are included. Visit waveland.com for a complete list of modern and classic ethnographies on Apache, Navajo, Pueblo, Papago, Shoshone, Comanche, Crow, and other American Indian cultures.

Among the topics considered in this classic study are world origins and supernatural powers, attitudes toward the dead, the medicine man and shaman, hunting and gathering rituals, war and planting ceremonies, and newer religions, such as the Ghost Dance and the Peyote Religion."The distinctive contribution of [ Red Man's Religion ] is the treatment of topics, the insight and the perspective of the author, and her ability to transmit these to the reader. . . . Trais and aspects of religion are not treated as abstract entitites, to be enumerated and summated, assigned a geographic distribution, and then abandoned. No page is a dry recital; each is an illumination. Insight and wisdom are framed in poetic prose. An offering of information in such a medium merits gratitude."— American Anthropologist

Red Man's America meets the great need for a comprehensive study of Indian societies from the first Stone Age hunters to the American citizens of today. Beginning with the first migrations of primitive man from Siberia in the Old World to Alaska in the New, probably during the latter part of the Pleistocene glaciations, and his subsequent migration southward and eastward, the author takes up in turn the tribes and cultures of the various regions of North America.The material Professor Underhill has gathered from the fields of archaeology, ethnology, and history, together with that drawn from her own experience in the United States Indian Service, produces a fascinating narrative. Red Man's America is an important contribution to our heritage of Indian life and lore."A work for which both sociologist and historian will be forever grateful. The author has combined a long period of study with actual field work in the service of the Indian to produce a work that gives a brief, but well written and accurate, sketch of the origins, backgrounds, and customs of the various North American tribes. . . . There is no other modern single volume that contains as much information on the subject."—E.R. Vollmar, The Historical Bulletin"Liveliness in style and illustration, together with perspicacity in content, makes this book a useful introduction to the civilization of the original inhabitants of the land."— Pacific Historical Review