Montana: The Magazine of Western History: Landscape Traveled By Coyote and Crane: The World of the S

LANDSCAPE TRAVELED BY COYOTE AND CRANE The World of the Schitsu'umsh (Coeur d'Alene Indians) Rodney Frey, in collaboration with the Schitsu'umsh University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2001. Illustrations, map, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. xii + 329 pp. $40.00 cloth, $22.50 paper.

The Coeur d'Alene Tribe is one of the many Salishspeaking tribes living in the Columbia and Fraser River drainages. The Coeur d'Alenes' territory once included the greater Spokane River drainage, but an 1873 executive order restricted them to a reservation that land cessions and the Dawes Act reduced to the area surrounding the southern shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. Notwithstanding the inadequacy of reservation resources, the Coeur d'Alenes have long distinguished themselves as one of the "most successful of all the tribes in the northwest region" (p. 76). At the turn of the century, many were highly successful farmers, growing wheat, potatoes, oats, peas, and hay. They invested in state-of-the-art farm implements and produced one hundred thousand bushels of wheat in 1896. Nowadays, in addition to a range of cultural and educational institutions of its own, the tribe runs a multimillion-dollar bingo and casino operation. Net profits apparently totalled $9.2 million in 1998, and the tribe invests heavily in tribal and nontribal institutions. For example, in 1999 it donated $255,000 to the Plummer-Worley School District, $40,000 to the American Indian Art Institute of Santa Fe, and $30,000 to North Idaho College. The Coeur d'Alenes are also known for their long-standing commitment to the Catholic Church.

Landscape Traveled by Coyote and Crane is a "collaborative" attempt to portray ethnographically the "world" of the Coeur d'Alenes. The book includes a foreword by tribal chairman Ernie Stensgar; chapters describing precontact society, contact history, the identities and activities of the supernatural First Peoples (Coyote, Crane, and others), key subsistence practices (digging water potatoes, camas, and bitterroot, hunting deer, acquiring songs), key ceremonial practices (first fruits and sweat house ceremonies, powwows, jump dances, and giveaways); and two appendixes, one addressing research considerations, the other listing native plants and animals.

The book makes no attempt to address Coeur d'Alene cultural dynamics nor does it address Coeur d'Alene agency in the unfolding history of the Pacific Northwest. Frey's goal is to "reveal quintessential aspects of Schitsu'umsh culture," and to that end he relies on the work of early anthropologists, including James Teit, Verne Ray, and Gladys Reichard. Vignettes from interviews and ethnographic notes interspersed throughout add color and convey a sense that the traditions are enduring.

The book has many strengths. The emphasis on such rites as first fruits ceremonies, sweating, and jump dancing is uniquely revealing of central themes in Plateau life. Almost all the vignettes excerpted from interviews are rich and support Frey's depiction of quintessential aspects of culture. If read somewhat differently, many of the vignettes also suggest, rather forcefully, that essential aspects of Coeur d'Alene culture are less at issue to Coeur d'Alenes than when and how Coeur d'Alene culture per se might be activated. This would not be entirely unexpected given the extent of Coeur d'Alene involvement in many of the defining institutions of the Pacific Northwest (farming, Catholicism, gambling). If the book has a weakness, then, it is that it focuses on the essential aspects of culture in a situation in which these cultural practices alone seem not to capture the distinctive historical role of the people in question.

David Dinwoodie University of New Mexico, Albuquerque