Book Notices

Neither Wolf nor Dog: American Indians, Environment, and Agrarian Change.

By DAVID RICH LEWIS (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xiv+ 240 pp $29.95.)

This highly sophisticated study focuses on three separate Indian groups—the Northern Utes of eastern Utah, the Hupa of northwest California, and the Tohono O'odham of southern Arizona—in a detailed look at government-sponsored farming programs from the 1880s to the postNew Deal era The author identifies five distinct reasons in explaining the causes and processes offailure: lack of consistency within the government program, environmental limitations, market vagaries, cultural resistance, and divergent expectations.

Yet failure is a relative term, and the careful reader of this analysis may conclude that the agrarian experience was not quite as myopic or as devastating to native culture as commonly supposed Chief Washakie's terse remonstrance, "God Damn a potato," was only one response along a continuum of nonexclusive strategies open to andexercised by thevarious native communities Some groups were more receptive and came surprisingly close to the success envisioned by Euro-American ethnocentrism. In those instances, the grand experiment foundered on flinty soil and harsh market economies.

Through it all, the Native Americans managed to reproduce older patterns to meld with the new,thereby maintaining their cultural identity.

Navajo Country: A Geology and Natural History of the Four Corners Region.

By DONALD L BAARS (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. xiv+ 255pp. Paper, $19.95.)

This layman's geology book discusses the creation of rock formations, the evolution of place names, and the economic development of mineral resources in and around the Navajo Reservation Of particular interest to Utah readers are sections concerning Monument Valley, the San Juan River, oil and uranium development, and various scenic sites.

The text contains excellent geologic information but has some questionable historic data.

Forlorn River.

By ZANE GREY (1926, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.xii + 338 pp. Paper, $12.00.) Nevada.

Forlorn River and its sequel, Nevada, which appeared less than a year later, feature the gunslinger "Nevada"Jim Lacy, a morally ambiguous figure patterned after Owen Wister's Virginian and Grey's own Lassiter, who finds it necessary to operate on the fringes of the law in order to promote civilization. Although both novels are minor parts of the Grey corpus, these installments in the handsome "Authorized Edition" of Grey's works being issued under Nebraska's Bison Books imprint (five titles are currently available) areof interest because of the introductions by the author's son, Loren Grey, which give the circumstances of their composition, reception by the public, and cinematic adaptations. Asone might expect, filial loyalty dulls Loren's critical acuity, but the introductions provide firsthand data unavailable elsewhere.