only means something to those people who dream, in Blackfoot (pp 19-20).

These transcripts wil l be of (minimal) use only to specialists able to supply the missing contexts from other literature or from fieldwork. The qualifications of the informants are not properly described, and the transcripts are fu l l of blunders. "Brownie" for Browning (p. 3) and "Sallish" for Salish (p. 6) are transparent, "Cuyahogas" for Cayugas and "Unitas" for Oneidas (pp. 45-46) are somewhat less obvious; "midewiwin" for Midwinter (pp. 38ff.) is bizarre. Unedited verbatim transcripts from taped inter- views are once again demonstrated to be no substitute for ethnography.

This volume illustrates rather clearly the diff i- culties in both analysis and communication that result from inadequate attention to: (1) dif- ferences in the value loading as well as other im- plications of important labels for religious phenomena, especially between common English usage and supposed academic precision; (2) change and intrasocietal differentiation in knowledge, belief, and practice; (3) the extent of intersocietal differences across native North America; (4) varying attitudes toward the ultimate truth of Indian religions; and (5) the legacy of forced and directed religious accultura- tion that inevitably influences any dialogue on this subject

Forms of Play of Native North Americans. EDWARD NORBECK and CLAIRE R. FARRER, eds. 1977 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. St. Paul: West Publish- ing Co., 1979. vii + 290 pp., figures, tables, n.p. (paper).

/ A Y MILLER Colville Confederated Tribes

While a valiant, pioneering effort t o go beyond the classic descriptions of Stewart Culin and the theory of Huizinga and make the study of native play relevant to modern anthropology, this volume as a whole i s too disjointed and the papers too thin t o do more than point the way to the future. (In fairness, this is, of course, expected from any such wide-open symposium.)

The volume consists of a foreword and 19 chapters ranging from panhuman aspects of men- tal equilibrium to specific games played some- where on the North American continent. In the first chapter, Dobkin de Rios and Schroeder theorize, but do not test, that members of in- dustrial societies wil l choose leisure activities op- posite to those of the brain hemisphere that dominates their work-related activities, with the left hemisphere devoted to more analytical and discursive tasks and the right to more spon- taneous, aesthetic, and pattern-oriented abilities.

Susan Parkman seeks the evolutionary advan- tages of play and dreaming in terms of diverse stimulation and novel syntheses conducive to the well-being of any organism The treatment of North America per se is begun in the third chapter by Erika Bourguignon, who deals with psychic transcendence (ASC, or altered states of consciousness) in the impersonation of other per- sona and in trance states, as illustrated by Ojibwa Shaking Tent shamanism and by her garbled discussion of North Pacific Winter Dances, which she erroneously links to "gods." Norbeck reviews his concern with ritual reversals expressed in thought, word, deed, and attitude which serve as safety valves, humor, and indirect control in North America, Africa, and elsewhere. Robert Spencer gives a specific example of sarcastic humor in an Alaskan Eskimo men's house that has social and cultural ramifications. Lynn Price Agar discusses the change over time in Yupik Eskimo girls' anecdotes, games, and wishful tales that are accompanied by crude sketches in the ground made with a "storyknife"

The focus shifts further south with Robert Dirks's description of a Carifuna (Black Carib) mummery, called John Canoe, held during the Christmas season. Claire Farrer presents a general discussion of aesthetics in terms of s i x varied theoretical perspectives, other symposium papers, and her own interest in process. Marcia Herndon looks at play elements in Cherokee myth in particular, explaining the origins of their seven musical styles (she doesn't mention that the Cherokee do everything by sevens) and de- scribes a general process whereby new features are formalized and played with over time. In a highly problematic paper, Norma McLeod writes about the Kootenay Blanket Rite, a very secret ceremony she recorded under unusual circum- stances (engagingly presented in her second foot- note). She does us a disservice, however, by treat- ing the data in terms of play, making diffusionary pronouncements, getting the language ties wrong, and ignoring the excellent manuscript on the rite by Claude Schaeffer, which he wrote after decades of research. Arden King deals, from an evolutionary perspective, wi th clowns in dif- ferent culture areas as the arbitrators of ambigui- ty, paradox, and creativity. Victoria Bricker of- fers a comparison of ritual humor in Aztec and Mayan texts of fiesta dramatizations of Spanish conquests. Louis Hieb provides a careful analysis of the contexts of two types of Hopi ritual clowns, seen here as a strategy and a symbolic statement for resolving problematic situations. Kendall Blanchard discusses the stick-ball game that is so important in the Southeast, although his emphasis on the importance of betting seems simplistic. Susan Boyd gives a fairly light treat- ment of the sociological and tribal aspects of concealment games as played in Montana. Alyce Cheska, who looks at the way games serve as strategies for social maintenance in terms of sex roles, groupings, decisions, and symbols, presents the best discussion of the volume theme. Her paper, however, i s more a sweeping summary of

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the topic of games and less an attempt to ex- plicate the roles of games in societal integration. Christine Von Glascoe and Duane Metzer look at the folk classification and preference for games in coastal (251 named) and interior (130 named) Yucatan. Thomas Green examines the role of the hand game for six members of the American In- dian Movement (AIM) in Idaho in terms of their commitment to nativism, and James Loucky discusses the personal and community functions of futbol (soccer) in a highland Guatemala village.

In all, the proceedings are a mixed bag, with many items of average appeal and a few note- worthy for being either comprehensive or astute analyses But, then, who'am I to judge other peo- ple on their choice of fun and games.

The Languages of Native America: Historical a n d Comparative Assessment. LYLE CAMP- BELL and MARIANNE MITHUN. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. 1034 pp., tables, notes, bibliographies, map, index. $22.50 (cloth).

IEFFREY HEATH Harvard University

This large volume grew out of a 1976 con- ference designed to provide state of the art assessments of historical linguistic work on native languages of North America. It contains 17 substantive papers on specific families (only one dealing primarily with languages in Mexico and Central America), an introductory work by the editors critically reviewing the history of genetic classifications, and an Olympian afterword ("A Glance from Here On") by Eric Hamp which threatens to make this review superfluous.

Running through many of the papers i s a new critical spirit, a willingness to submit the am- bitious genetic proposals of Sapir and others to sharp cross-examination. Thus, Campbell, on Maya-Araucanian, writes: "All i t s evidence can be explained away as accident, onomatopoeia, vague semantic and phonological similarities, etc. The hypothesis i s too weak t o warrant further attention for the time being" (p. 964).

The introductory essay i s a delightful debunk- ing of the early work of Powell, which turns out to have been largely the work of a BAE staff or- nithologist named Henshaw, and a demystifying of Sapir's classifications, which have since been taken as authoritative despite the absence (in many cases) of adequate philological documen- tation. The substantive papers survey the various developmental stages of historical linguistics in different families. Several papers make useful methodological and theoretical points. Goddard (Algonquian) stresses the utility of subgrouping unusual shared innovations and cautions against overloading proto-languages with formulaic

phonemes or clusters based on isolated cor- respondences. Jacobsen (Hokan) calls for more creativity in phonological comparisons involving great time depth, and in the same vein Silverstein (Penutian) stresses that lexical comparisons can- not be undertaken in the absence of comprehen- sive historical analyses of morphophonemics and stem formation. Krauss (Eskimo-Aleut) em- phasizes that attested languages with sharp boundaries often conceal earlier complex dialect chains, subsequently crystallized. Campbell (Middle America) calls for more work on toponyms and other nonobvious data.

O n the substantive side, Goddard (South Texas) is notable in providing a major reanalysis of a poorly studied region; he recognizes a large number of languages and families in what was once thought to be a homogeneous area. But in general, there are few new dramatic claims. The papers on Hokan (Jacobsen; Langdon) and on Penutian (Silverstein) do not resolve the contro- versies. There are some original suggestions- Crawford gives some for the isolated Yuchi, while Davis suggests a nexus involving Uto-Aztecan and Keresan. Rood's (Siouan) piece is notable for its sharp criticism o f available descriptive works; Chafe's cautious Caddoan-lroquoian suggestions (including morphological material) look very pro- mising.

The next major advances in the field wil l be in diffusional (not "areal") linguistics, mentioned but not developed in this volume. Papers by Thompson (Salishan and the NW) and Jacobsen (Wakashan; Chimukuan), surveying the Pacific Northwest, suggest that advances in diffusional research are in sight. Silverstein has elsewhere made contributions in the same region. Campbell (Middle America) speaks about large-scale areal patterns; however, I concur with Hamp's com- ment calling instead for intensive analysis of dif- fusion in small areas.

Krauss's paper on Na-Dene and Eskimo describes a staggering amount of recent descrip- tive work indicating that these fields are ready for explosive developments. Muskogean, covered briefly in Haas's paper, has also exploded very recently due to fine philological work by young scholars such as K. Booker. Mithun gives a useful description of work on Iroquoian, but I find some of the historical arguments weak, notably the ar- bitrary supposition that Cayuga "split off" from and then "rejoined" Seneca. This paper also has more than 20 serious typos (hopefully to be cata- logued in I IAL).

Steele (Uto-Aztecan) i s out of place in this volume, as she argues for "theoretical" reorien- tations of Amerindian linguistics and charges COIL leagues with "parochialism." But some of the theoretically interesting results from UA that she cites are based on hasty philology and a priori reconstructions involving typological theories. She mentions controversies on UA subgrouping without taking a position, yet at least one of the proto-UA features she cites (reflexive prefixes) oc- curs only in the southern languages (regarded by some UA specialists as a genetic subdivision). She

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