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December 2014 Vol. 52 No. 4

Gilbert Wilson, a pioneer anthropologist, published in 1917 the first full-length ethnography of a traditional small-scale agricultural system, Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians, the farming of the Hidatsa people of North Dakota.  It was an amazing collaboration between him and a Hidatsa authority, Buffalo Bird Woman; it remains one of the best studies of traditional agriculture, and is still in print (Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, 1987).  A great deal of Wilson's ethnobotanical work remained in manuscript.  It has finally been edited, annotated, and published by Michael Scullin, a veteran gardener who has spent decades replicating Native American plains agriculture, as well as doing much other horticultural work.  Scullin’s knowledge of plants and gardening is greater than Wilson’s was, so a great deal of new useful information is brought to the interpretation of Hidatsa and Mandan material.  In addition to ethnobotany, this book provides much data on Hidatsa life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  During this time, they were impacted by settler society, changing from independent warriors and hunters to settled reservation dwellers who had adopted much Anglo-American culture.  Indispensable to anyone interested in Native American life on the plains; valuable for ethnobiology and Native American studies.

--E. N. Anderson, University of California, Riverside

Summing Up: Essential. Most levels/libraries.