Book Notices

The Children Sang: The Life and Music of Evan Stephens with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

By RAY L BERGMAN (Salt Lake City: Northwest Publishing Inc., 1992. xiii + 289 pp. Paper, $9.95.)

Welsh-born Evan Stephens (18541930) was arguably the most influential Utah musician during most of his lifetime as a conductor of numerous choirs, a composer, and a teacher. In addition to presenting his life, the book also provides an inside view of the development of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—how it was transformed from an ordinary, though large, church choir into a widely recognized institution adhering to professional standards of musicianship.

Bergman has researched and pieced together a fascinating biography of a central figure in the state's musical culture. Included in the volume are twelve letters of Stephens to his friend Samuel Bailey Mitton.

The Jicarilla Apache Tribe: A History.

By VERONICA E. TILLER (1983; revised ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 x + 289 pp Paper, $12.95.)

Today the Jicarilla Apaches call northern New Mexico home, having given up a large aboriginal territory in parts of New Mexico and Colorado. Ethnically related to the Navajo but often allied with the Utes, the Jicarilla.

Apaches, starting in the 1840s, watched their land base for hunting and gathering shrink. Their history reads like that of many other tribes of this era—crooked agents, insensitive government, destructive diseases, land losses, mandatory schooling, and cultural annihilation. This is where many such stories end. Tiller continues, however, and carries this tribal saga beyond the positive effects of the Indian Reorganization Act of the 1930s into the 1970s. And in the revised edition, another ten years of history is added, making this a very complete work on a single tribe A far more positive picture, colored by self-determination, ends this story and illustrates the perseverance characteristic of this tribe.

The text is well documented and stands as the single best study of the Jicarilla Apaches. Though not written in a lively style, it is recommended for the serious scholar of Native American history and government relations.

The Seven Visions of Bull Lodge as Told by His Daughter, Garter Snake.

Gathered by FRED P. GONE. Edited by GEORGE HORSE CAPTURE (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 125 pp Paper, $8.95.)

This book records the spiritual life of Bull Lodge (ca 1802-86), a religious leader and healer of the Gros Ventre, and offers unique insights into a vanished way of life.