The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 85, July 1981 - April, 1982 Page: 231

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Book Reviews

aspects, he could have greatly improved our understanding of Chey-
enne factionalism and motivation. Instead, he relied too heavily on
restating material previously covered by historians such as Donald J.
Berthrong, George Bird Grinnell, and Mari Sandoz. Utilization of the
Doris Duke Collection of Indian interviews at the University of Okla-
homa might also have added highly personalized material to the book,
but Hoig was content merely to list the collection in his bibliography.
Likewise, his use of pejorative words such as "squaws," "braves" and
"young bucks" stands in marked contrast to his desire to place Chey-
ennes in a more positive light.
In short, this book is useful to scholars and buffs alike, but the
author could have provided a more incisive analysis of Cheyenne life.
University of Nebraska, Omaha MICHAEL L. TATE
The Choctaws: Cultural Evolution of a Native American Tribe. By
Jesse O. McKee and Jon A. Schlenker. (Jackson: University of
Mississippi Press, 1980. Pp. xx+27. Preface, introduction, tables,
illustrations, appendix, bibliography, index. $17.50.)
This work seeks to assess the cultural effects that 300 years of white
contact had upon the Choctaw Indians of Oklahoma and Mississippi.
The authors divide their study chronologically into five chapters, with
each having two sections. The first section briefly traces the historic
events of the period under consideration, while the second seeks to
assess the cultural impact of those events. The authors, one a geogra-
pher and the other an anthropologist, demonstrate that three centuries
of non-Indian contact-and especially Protestant missionary contact-
produced profound cultural change, as well as geographic and political
division, among the Choctaws. But social, economic, political, and
structural change within the tribe was never even. Some Choctaws re-
sisted change, while others were shielded from it by geographic isola-
tion. The latter was especially true of those who remained in Missis-
sippi after the majority of their brethren were moved to Oklahoma in
the 183os. Yet this group also accepted nontraditional lifeways after
the turn of the century, although to a lesser degree than those residing
in Oklahoma.
This study has two basic strengths. One is it conscious effort to
establish causal relations between historical events and cultural change.
Missionary teaching, for example, apparently caused the Choctaws to
alter descent patterns from matrilineal to patrilineal, and government

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 85, July 1981 - April, 1982, periodical, 1981/1982; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101208/m1/265/ocr/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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