364 : The American Naturalist. [April, 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
The Woodland of the Southwest, by Chas. F. Lummis.! 
—For those readers who have read but a few books of travel on the 
Southwest, this snug little volume will be quite a revelation. The 
contents of the twenty-two chapters scarcely contain anything that has 
been written or sketched before, except a few pages on the Moqui 
Snake dance and Indian superstitions. The thoroughness of his famil- 
iarity with Pueblo customs and folklore is only equalled by the graphic 
qualities of his style. In looking about the “strange corners” which 
the author describes, we are first attracted by a prairie-dog hunt, with 
the Navajo Indians put in scene to fill their larder. White people of 
the Southwest never think of killing this rodent for food, because it is 
so difficult to attain with a rifle ball; but these natives utilize abund- 
ant downpours of rain to conduct the floods into their tunnels and 
afterward haul up their dead bodies for a feast. To get rid of the 
prairie-dog plague, people have proposed to kill them with poisoned 
apple-quarters. The belief in witchcraft is as potent among the whites 
and Indians of New Mexico as it ever was during the middle ages. 
Manslaughter is committed for any act arousing even the suspicion of 
witchery, and the fact that one-half of the Isleta people are wizards. 
and witches speaks loud enough. The “Finishing an Indian Boy” 
shows principles of education in full force now, which our Northern 
Indians began to drop as early as one century ago. In the chapter 
“The American Sahara” the wide waste is delineated in colors none 
too sharp or cruel. Lieut. Wheeler is mentioned by mistake as its 
earliest explorer instead of Lieut. Whipple. The marvelous wealth of 
objects presented in Lummis’s volume will attract ever and again the 
class of readers and tourists which seeks instruction rather than pleas- 
ure in books of travel, and they will hold it dear as a publication of 
really scientific value, standing far above most of the productions of 
our present sensation-loving period of literature. 
“The Wanderings of Cochiti” is another very interesting sketch 
from our “ Wonderland” on the upper Rio Grande. It is printed in 
the “Century Magazine,” January, 1893, and describes and also pic- 
tures in photographic reproductions the people, customs, history and 
scenery of Cochiti, one of the Quéres Pueblos of Northern New Mex- 
e strange corners of our country, the Woodland of the Southwest, p- 270. p 
mo., richly illustrated. New York, The Century Co., 1892. 
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