BOOKSHELF

BOOKSHELF BY BUDGE RUFFNER HONOR DANCE: NATIVE AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS. By John Running University of Nevada Press, Reno, NV 89557. 1985. 155 pages. $40, hardcover.

One of the most frequent comments on today's western painters is that they produce scenes they never saw. They rely on imagination and research of varying depth to supply the detail of their finished work. Not so with the photographer. With a few bizarre exceptions, the lens captures the reality of time and place. It was this kind of integrity that brought recognition to Edward S. Curtis as the premier photographer of American Indians at the beginning of the twen tieth century. A similar honesty and sensitivity may well pass that proud title on to John Running by the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Running tells us the honor dance is a custom of the Plains Indians, performed at special gatherings to salute an individual, living or dead, for any of several reasons. This stunning book serves as the artist's own honor dance, created to celebrate the contemporary Native American. It is the collection of a decade's work, photographs taken over an area extending from northern Montana to the homeland of the Tarahu mara, three hundred miles south of the Mexican border. It includes victims of reloca tion, the Big Mountain Na vajo; the Pueblo people of the Rio Grande; the Hopi; the Plains Indians; and the colorful inhabitants of the Wind River Valley.

HOPIS, TEWAS, AND THE AMERICAN ROAD. Edited by Willard Walker and Lyndia L. Wyckoff. Wesleyan University Department of Anthropology, Middletown, Connecticut 06457. 1983. 189 pages. $13.95, softcover.

Thousands of visitors to Arizona from throughout the world, as well as residents of this Grand Canyon state, visit the Hopi Indian villages each year. They drive on broad, paved roads, often stay at the fine motel at the Hopi Cultural Center, enjoy good food at its restaurant, and visit the tribal museum. They come not just to see these Native Americans who live on their mesas in Arizona's high country, but especially to see thousand-year-old religious religious ceremonies and to buy exquisite arts and crafts-basketry and beautiful pottery. Few realize how much these crafts are part of Hopi history, interwoven into the contemporary social and political fabric of Hopi culture.

This book, at its outset, is an In documenting today's Indians, Running has been wise not to limit his subjects to those dressed in their pow wow best. There is evidence of LL. Bean in today's native dress. T-shirts and tennis shoes, Timex watches and aviator glasses, the one-sizefits-all billed caps with beer ads, and the American Legion bola ties all vie with the turquoise, eagle feathers, and porcupine quill work. John Running has an honest eye.

This handsome book contains ninety color and seventy duotone images of Indian life as it is today. These are enriched by the commentary of the photographer. Running is not a man of single specialty; his text is uncluttered and concise. It is obvious that when he works, he looks at much more than a light meter.

Honor Dance gives us a clear message of what Ameri can Indian life once was, and what it is today-and leaves us a little fearful for the future.

Account of a family of New England Americans who took a similar trip nearly sixty years ago-in 1927-in a Model T Ford touring car, towing an open trailer over rutted, single-track dirt roads, and pitching a tent in the shadow of a mission church in a Hopi town. They were on a ninemonth tour across the United States, and detoured from the Grand Canyon to visit friends in Hopiland. There they became intrigued with pottery and other crafts and gathered a large collection, only recently donated to Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

The authors and editors have herein cataloged this collection with descriptions and photo graphs, and thus have documented the changes that took place in this ceramic art from its great revival in the 1890s through the decadent period of the 1920s, when many "curio" pieces were produced along with beautiful vessels decorated with pre-Columbian motifs.

But the book is much more than a catalog. It goes on to describe the relations between the Hopi and the Tewa, those Hopi-like folk who live on First Mesa and today produce virtually all of the Hopi pottery.

Importantly, it describes the impact of Anglo traders, mission aries, and government agents upon Hopi culture; the efforts of the Museum of Northern Arizona to improve the quality of all Hopi crafts; and the influence of the museum's annual Hopi Craftsman exhibition each July. All of us, visitors and residents alike, can gain new insights into the history of these graceful and friendly people through the pages of this book. -Robert C. Euler Research Associate, Arizona State Museum, Tucson