Paula R. Hartz

This is a basic, non-intimidating introduction to Native American religions among the tribes historically located in what is now the United States and Canada. Considering the hundreds of tribes on the continent, this book does a good job of showcasing aspects of religion and society that are common even from the Zuni in the Southwest and the Ojibwe in the Northeast. However, because of the great breadth of the topic, this book does not go into depth beyond specific examples from a handful of show more tribes. This makes the book good to read if you don't know where to start to learn about Native American culture and you can develop specific ideas to study from here.

As a general book with relatively little text (it was in the teen section of my library and has larger font and lots of images--GOOD, fascinating images) I still managed to take several pages worth of notes of useful references and interesting trivia, which is one of my criteria for ranking nonfiction reads, and earns a solid 4 Stars. show less

A brief overview. Not horrible, but the gloss on the historical elements make me question the accuracy of the book as a whole. Some things may be wrong. It probably makes for a decent introduction but should be supplemented by books of some depth. I wonder if the brevity is misleading, since it is a tradition that goes back centuries.

299

299.7