Book Review

Plains, edited by Raymond J. DeMallie, is the most recent edition to the Handbook of North American Indians, begun in 1970 by the Smithsonian Institution to replace the set published between 1907 and 1910. DeMal-lie's background in the anthropology and ethnohistory of Plains Indians makes him an excellent choice to edit this two-part volume.	1
Volume 13 covers both the tall-grass prairies and the short-grass High Plains regions from the Upper Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. While the definition of the area is somewhat arbitrary, DeMallie discusses the history of the classification of the Plains culture area, noting that "cultural commonalities and historical patterns of interaction attest to the practical value of this classification" (p. 1). In the introduction to the section on the languages of the Plains, Ives Goddard further explains the practicality of the classification based on cultural similarities: "Their linguistic diversity was much greater than the diversity of other aspects of their cultures. . . . The general picture that is suggested is of diverse peoples retaining their distinct ancestral languages while adopting new and to a large extent shared lifeways after entering the Plains and coming into contact with each other" (p. 61).	2
The volume includes histories of archaeological, ethnological, and ethnohistorical research on the Plains, which will be an excellent resource for students of those disciplines. There are also individual chapters on environment and subsistence, languages, enigmatic groups, kinship and social organization, the Sun Dance, intertribal religious movements, celebrations, music, and art. The first half of Part 1 is devoted to the prehistory of the Plains region, focusing on hunting and gathering, Plains Woodland, and Plains Village traditions starting in 8000 BCE. Earlier prehistory will be more thoroughly discussed in Volume 3: Environment, Origins, and Population. There are also four chapters devoted to a historical overview of both the United States and Canadian Plains.	3
The majority of the volume is devoted to specific Plains cultural groups, divided into Prairie Plains and High Plains groups. These chapters focus primarily on preservation history and ethnography, with brief discussions of historical matters and the state of the Native languages. The volume concludes with a "special topics" section that discusses cultural and social issues that cut across tribal lines. As noted in the preface, some topics relevant to a study of the Plains are not included in this volume. However, DeMallie and William C. Sturtevant, the general editor, direct the reader to the volumes in which most of this material appears.	. . .