The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 77, July 1973 - April, 1974 Page: 147

Book Reviews

writes. He introduces his subject with some pertinent theoretical informa-
tion relative to the context of the Sun Dance in the overall societies of the
Indians. Following that is a well-documented chapter on the history of the
Utes and Shoshones and the devastating results of their conquest by whites.
This perhaps will be of greatest interest to the readers of the Southwestern
Historical Quarterly.
Yet, the person interested primarily in history will gain a far greater
understanding of the Sun Dance if he continues reading Jorgensen's last two
sections dealing with the cultural context in which this religious phenome-
non has continued into the I97os. The author concludes with some well-
written chapters on the ritual and ideology of the Sun Dance and an explo-
ration of these in the context of the politics and economics of reservation
life today.
In sum, not only can the reader appreciate the importance of the Sun
Dance as a means whereby the individual Indian can transform his own
being, but he can also gain insight into present-day reservation and neo-
colonial problems so much in the public eye, especially since the "Wounded
Knee confrontation" in the early spring of 1973.
Prescott College ROBERT C. EULER
Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, z840-s86o. By
Sam Bowers Hilliard. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1972. Pp. xi+ 296. Maps, notes, index. $Io.)
This is the latest in a succession of published doctoral dissertations pro-
duced by students of Andrew H. Clark, prominent historical geographer at
the University of Wisconsin. Hilliard, now a geographer at Louisiana State
University, studies the folk diet of the antebellum South, with an eye to the
degree of regional self-sufficiency in food supply. In short, Hilliard is con-
cerned with what southerners ate and where the food came from. Attention
is focused on an eight-state southern core area, and Texas is excluded from
all but peripheral treatment.
The typical southerner apparently ate too much pork and too little beef,
dairy products, and fish. Serious dietary deficiency diseases were averted
only by a fortunate consumption of molasses, sweet potatoes, and turnips,
the standard diet of the South. Surprisingly, Hilliard finds that "chitlins"
were a favorite of both blacks and whites and that hominy and grits did
not enjoy universal acceptance among southerners. The book is arranged
topically by foods, with chapters devoted to pork, food grains, beef and
dairy products, wild game, and so on.

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