A clearly written, sober, comprehensive survey for the intermediate
student. Hultkrantz is a notable Swedish scholar, active in the
field for over 25 years, author of books and articles in Swedish,
German, French, and English. Here he summarizes the gigantic corpus
of modern anthropological scholarship on Amerindian religion (of
both continents, but primarily North America), dealing first with
tribal religions, and then with the religions of the "American high
culture" (Incas, Mayas, Aztecs, and related peoples). The two
biggest problems Hultkrantz faced in organizing all this
information were the mind-boggling variety of Indian myths,
beliefs, and ritual practices (recall that the unabridged Golden
Bough runs to 13 volumes), compounded by the numberless
contradictory interpretations put on them by anthropologists. Can
we, for example, confidently distinguish between a personal
guardian spirit and a nagual (familiar to readers of Castaneda's
Tales of Power)? Hultkrantz bravely attacks these complicated
issues, compromising, on the whole successfully, between
distracting thoroughness and deceptive simplification. Assuming the
reader already knows the essential ethnographic facts - that he can
tell the Natchez from the Nez Perce - there should be no difficulty
in following Hultkrantz's careful reconstruction of New World
religion. This is especially true of the second section of the
book, with its narrower focus and more leisurely pace. The
inevitable loss in a schematic overview such as this one is the
rich, colorful detail of Indian life, the sense of Indian culture
as a lived reality. So it's disappointing that Hultkrantz's 30-page
bibliography systematically ignores the (often first-rate) popular
literature on the subject. Otherwise, a highly useful and reliable
guide. (Kirkus Reviews)
'Hultkrantz treads where other angels fear to with this audacious
and clear overall survey. He leaves the room for specialists to
debate and generalists to quicken curiosity.'--Christian Century
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