I liked the book in general, there are some very interesting stories that give us a good look at the culture, and the verbal tradition of the Western American Indians. I wouldn't have included all of the stories that were picked, but in general the book accomplished what it set out to do.

theodora kroeber is a lovely storyteller

Dedication: "THIS BOOK is dedicated to the ancestors and descendants of its nine heroines."

CONTENTS:

I Foreword by Oliver La Farge.

[II Map of the 'Ancient Yurok World']

II Introduction (by the Author--or rather, as she explains in the last segment, the editor.)

STORIES:

I THE INLAND WHALE: In the title story a boy who is declared by the standards of his people to be a bastard (his parents are married, but the family doesn't approve or validate the marriage) rises to prominence with the help of the eponymous Inland Whale (also a bastard, who had been swept inland by a tsunami caused by people not dancing enough), and by extended family (notably his mother, paternal grandmother, and great-grandfather) who don't defy his maternal family's fiats--but find ways around them.

II LOON WOMAN: I found the horror involved in what is essentially a minor story of incest (unintentional, on the part of the brother) more than a little overblown. Even if one could justify murdering a young woman for deliberately soliciting incest, what possible justification could there be in slaughtering EVERY loon encountered? The incidents happened ONCE. There's no probability of them being repeated--even on a 'sins of the [mothers]' basis, since the 'Loon Woman' has no offspring. It's almost as if the tellers believed that the sinner would not stay dead. The elements of horror are not proportionate.

III BUTTERFLY MAN: The elements of this wish-fulfillment-fantasy=turned-nightmare story are not only intended to be minatory ('don't stray after extramarital affairs'). They're also intended to warn against failing to carry out rituals properly. The implication is that if the woman HAD obeyed orders, she could have simply contracted a new marriage, and might have lived 'happily ever after'.

IV DANCE MAD: This is more or less a geography lesson through dance. The 'World Map' depicted between the Foreword and the Introduction (Kroeber refers to it several times, but doesn't give a page #, so I'll cite it in the Table of Contents, to help readers find it) is a quite literally circumscribed space. The dancers retain a gaiety throughout. They don't suffer any ill effects (even exhaustion is prevented by occasional rest breaks). They learn quite a lot (including new sources of food--mostly salmon), and at the end of a year of (literal, by their standards) dancing around the world--and around the seasons, they arrive home, end the dance, and record their acquisitions. Probably this story was accompanied by a (shorter) dance in the telling.

V LOVE CHARM: Although Kroeber argues that there's equity between the roles of women and men among the peoples of Alta California sampled in this book, it's evident that in courting, men are prescriptively supposed to take the initiative, even if the women are presented as being able to evoke responses in the men. I should note that although men are expected to take the initiative in marriage, they are not allowed to remain unmarried. There are few bachelor men in these stories, though there are several unmated women.

VI UMAI: Several of these stories have common elements. In this and the next story, the notion that there's a place where the sky quite literally collides with the ocean, creating and subject to waves is developed in more or less the same words. With the right timing (remember to catch the TWELFTH wave), it's possible to get past the collision zone, and into the Ocean beyond The World, and to the Land beyond The World, where there are nightly dances.

VII ABOUT-THE-HOUSE-GIRL: This involves the process of an arranged marriage, which comes into being rather despite than because of people's planning (with the possible exception of the wife). I found the two women who want to marry the Flute player more than a little extraneous: I wonder if they're from another story, maybe? One amusing element is that the Flute player is able to find the woman he wants because of his greed for dried seaweed, prepared by the 'girl's' aunt.

VIII TESILYA, SUN'S DAUGHTER: Kroeber's editorial alterations are most noteworthy in this story. In the explanatory sections in the second half of the book, Kroeber explains that she's combined several characters to form the Sun's Daughter--but she thinks this is justified because she thinks the story once DID have only one wife/mother. One amusing element is that the story begins explaining why little is known about the women in the story by saying (with a sidewise wink) that it's not necessary to know about women's lives, which are not interesting. In fact, in this story, the woman is the MOST developed character. The men are often so generic that if their names were not given, it'd be difficult to tell them apart. Even the villain isn't very thoroughly described. His motivations are essentially causeless.

I should say that this story encourages blood-feud--so if it weren't for the female character, it would be pretty deplorable.

VII THE MAN'S WIFE: Most cultures of Alta California enforced a very strong division between the living and the dead. It was strongly required not even to TALK about the dead. This somewhat Orphean story is of a man who refuses to accept that his wife no longer has any place in his life, and stalks her on her journey to the Land of The Dead. Kroeber explains that there are many versions of this story, most of which end up with the man being unable to bring his dead wife back--mostly because he violates the terms of the return. What becomes of him also varies. It's not clear whether, if he had suicided, he would have been able to reunite with his wife in the Land of The Dead, either.

SECTION II: METHODOLOGY

A: SOME QUALITIES OF INDIAN STORIES: Theodora Kroeber was the wife of the anthropologist AL Kroeber. The Kroebers were disciples of Boasian anthropology, but because most of their work was done in the early 20th century, they were more than a little handicapped by earlier vocabularies. Thus Theodora uses words like 'primitive' to describe societies that were (nearly) contemporary with her own. She speaks of people who had stable lives, which they believed had always been the same, and always would be: but these people had been subject to major disruptions, which (in their opinions and in the opinions of many observers) substantially reduced the quality of their lives. It's not surprising that there's a strong element of nostalgia in many of these stories. This section contains several maps of Alta California, showing the locations of the tribal territories of the main peoples sampled for this book.

I should say that I think the eternal unchangingness of the people's lives was probably largely imaginary (aspirational, at best). Many of the peoples eat corn, for example, which is an import from South America. Probably there was extensive trading with various Mesoamerican societies over time. And of course, since humans originated in Africa, the 'eternal' timescape of the legends is almost certainly not more than a few tens of thousands of years--long when measured against human lifespans, but far from endless.

B ABOUT THE STORIES IN THIS BOOK: This is Kroeber's explanation of how she edited and otherwise altered the stories. The original stories were oral, and therefore contained a lot of redundancy--essential in oral stories, to keep the elements clear in people's minds over long storytelling sessions, but more than a little tiresome in a written version, where the reader can just turn the page back to check on something forgotten.

In addition, Kroeber chose elements from several different versions of particular stories. She tended to pick elements which were most widespread: but she also edited out large sections she felt detracted from the narrative, and often combined elements from different stories which were related, but not technically the same story.

She did this to increase the literary elements. She describes what type of literature the original stories most resembled (sometimes, I suspect, she tended to overstate the resemblance). The main reason for her edits, I suspect, was to change the elements from literal transcriptions of storytelling sessions into sensible narrative plots in 'Western' tradition.

She may be doing them a disservice--but she's also translating them for a wider audience. Few people, probably, are going to go back to the original recordings, transcripts, etc (in the original languages, few of which survive intact). For the rest, these versions give an idea and sampler of the kinds of stories once told repeatedly by master storytellers (of which there are few left).

APPENDIX: SOURCES.

This is a bibliography of the original collectors of written and recorded versions of these stories. People with anthropological backgrounds will find many of the names familiar (notably, AL Kroeber himself, and also Edward Sapir, the linguist behind the Sapir-Whorff Hypothesis) Theodora Kroeber also mentions several informants who have tried to retain and restore the old bardic traditions of various tribes, and explains their methods, as well.

One note about the illustrations: they're mostly pretty sketchy. They might, indeed, have come from sketchbooks of the illustrator, Joseph Crivy. I don't know whether Crivy also drew the maps, but I suspect if they'd come from somebody else, there'd be a different credit for that.

Later editions have different illustrators (except, probably, for the cover drawing). Later editions also include a foreword by Theodora Kroeber's son Karl, rather than Oliver La Farge.

All in all, a good effort to highlight the female characters of stories that too often develop an 'another planet without women' air.

There is a helpful, short introductory essay and a longer, more in-depth scholarly essay that bookend these 9 tales drawn from the original inhabitants of California (mostly from the north). Aficionados of mythology and folklore from whatever part of the globe will doubtless find much here on which to whet their appetite. There are cheerful stories, scary stories, romantic stories, and some just plain weird ones. The concluding essay does a nice job of situating these stories both geographically and in terms of their place in literature.

I don't enjoy short stories collections very much, but I love reading folklore and myth. These were stories I'd never heard and they were well told. Quick read.