l ook Reviews

Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the

Myth of Scientific Fact. Vine Deloria J r. New York:
Scribner, 1995.286 pp.
J OHN MOHAWK
State University of New York at Buffalo
Vine Deloria Jr.s new book, Red Earth, White
Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific
Fact, is designed to make anthropologists feel uncom-
fortable. Here he writes with the acid wit and energy
we saw in earlier works such as Custer Died f or Your
Sins (Macmillan, 1969) and God I s Red (Fulcrum,
1994). His target is established anthropology and three
of its theories: human migration across a Bering land
bridge as the origin of all Amerindian populations of
the Americas; the extinction of many species of North
Americas megafauna at the hands of paleehdians;
and the accuracy of radiocarbon dating technology.
With the style of a lawyer-he is, foremost, a social
historian with a law degree-he launches a barrage of
attacks at anthropologists who have promoted or
abided these theories.
Delorias concern is the theory embraced by an-
thropology that, some 11,000 years ago, ancestors of
contemporary American Indians crossed a land bridge
which then connected Asiaand Alaska and that they
found a land with giant creatures who were unafraid
of humans and therefore fell prey to skilled hunters.
The Indians embarked on a slaughter of these animals,
driving them to extinction. This version of prehistory,
he says, is taught by anthropologists in universities as
the unquestioned truth. Deloria argues the land bridge
theory is far more problematic than the anthropology
profession generally teaches, there is very little physi-
cal evidence and extremely fuzzy logic to support the
extinction of the megafauna at the hands of Paleolithic
Indians, and radiocarbon dating is an imperfect sci-
ence. He goes on to suggest that anthropologists
should pay more attention to American Indian stories
about what happened in the remote past for clues.
Some readers will approach these arguments al-
ready having agreed to disagree. Some will agree that
scientific knowledge such as is proposed in the radio-
carbon dating technology is hghly suspect, while oth-
ers will defend it fervently. Some will find the argu-
ments proposing land bridges in general and the
Bering land bridge in particular to be pure speculation,
while others will conclude that it remains the best
theory to explain how some species apparently mi-
grated from one continent to another. Deloria fires so
many arrows that some of his arguments are certain to
be singled out and subjected to excruciating interroga-
tion. By inference, all of his arguments may be de-
nounced as mendacious anthropology-bashing. Al-
though thi s seems certain to happen in some
instances, it would be extremely unfortunate if main-
stream anthropology leaves it at that and does not ad-
dress the points he makes at the core of his argument.
When advocates of anthropology reply that De-
lorias characterizations of their profession as a nar-
row-minded intellectual hierarchy are overstated, they
should also concede that dissent is narrowly tolerated
and often heartily punished within the established or-
der. They may argue that most of Delorias criticisms
about the inaccuracies of radiocarbon testing have
been corrected. Someone will point out that anthro-
pology has on several occasions seriously considered
much earlier dates for human occupation of North
America, but these were rolled back when the proof
was inconclusive or absent. In any case, it is clear that
the argument around the dates of human occupation
of the Americas is far from settled.
Deloria presents some of the land bridge issues in
a truly humorous vein (I found myself laughing aloud
at moments) as he pictures ancient bisons gathered at
the Asian shore of the Bering Strait waiting for the
land bridge to open so they could migrate across for-
midable mountain ranges and ice sheets to a new eco-
logical niche opening up in Kansas and Nebraska, all
the while meeting other species headed the opposite
direction. No one has yet adequately explained how it
could have happened in a way that gets these animals
past all the obstacles. Evidence that there was a land
bridge crossing by humans at that time is as yet incon-
clusive, or at least inconclusive enough that other
theories should be kept at hand. Deloria states, for
example, that perhaps ancient people came to North
America by water, and he points to an ancient Hopi
tradition that supports this. While no evidence exists
that ancient Amerindians arrived by boat, only a dog-
matist would believe it impossible and only a dogma-
tist would state that the Bering land bridge is a sure
American Anthropologist 98(3):65&706. Copyright 0 1996, American Anthropological Association
BOOK R E VI E WS 651
thing, given the state of our knowledge about ancient
peoples and how or why they moved from one place to
another.
Whether by land or by sea, it is agreed by every-
one who is serious about the topic that big game hunt-
ers were on the North American landscape some
11,000 years ago, in time to be named as suspects in
the mysterious extinction of a significantly long list of
large animals, including some of the largest and fierc-
est fur-bearing predators on record. Anthropologists
have theorized that these animals had no defenses
(such as fright) against invading hunters, who, wield-
ing stone and wooden tools, were able to slaughter
these animals at will. Even children engaged in this
deluge of bloodletting until there were no big game
animals left and predators such as the saber-toothed
tiger starved to extinction. A good defense attorney,
defending his Indian client against the accusation that
his ancestors were unecological slaughterers on a
scale not equaled until Euro-American invaders
slaughtered the buffalo in the 19th century, Deloria
wants to know why the saber-toothed tiger did not
simply dine on smaller animals that escaped extinc-
tion. When Europeans arrived, there were (conserva-
tively) 60 million American bison, and millions each of
elk, caribou, deer, and so forth. Perhaps some future
anthropologist was time-machined back to their era
where she or he persuaded the giant carnivores not to
eat deer and elk because to do so would render a
perfectly good anthropological theory problematic,
and these species of predators all starved to death in
support of a good cause.
Deloria also asks where the murder weapon is,
where the piled heaps of bodies bearing knife marks
are, where this evidence that would connect the al-
leged perpetrator to the scene of the crime is. No
American Indian would deny his ancestors were great
hunters, but even the most autochthonocentric of us
would have trouble with the picture of teenagers (or
adults, for that matter) wandering into a herd of mam-
moths and slaughtering them one after the other with
spears until they stood surrounded in a mountain of
carcasses. It is more likely that when anyone saw one
of those creatures he or she was more interested in
getting out of its way than in killing it, and it is much
more likely that climate changes or some kind of bio-
logical chain reaction set the stage for the extinctions.
Deloria speculates that perhaps an ice comet struck
the earth, somehow rendering a number of species ex-
tinct. Clearly more work is needed, but anthropolo-
gists could start by restraining themselves from glee-
fully pointing to the ecological foibles of the Indians
and using as an example what may be the most laugh-
able tenet in all of surviving anthropological theory.
Vine Deloria J r. is (obviously) not an anthropolo-
gist and feels no need to offer nine kowtows to the
profession's established order. His book will be widely
read among Indians and others who are already alien-
ated from the arrogant certainty with which some an-
thropological theories are argued. His book is not an
attempt to deconstruct anthropology in the same way
the field of cultural studies has deconstructed British
sociology in recent years, but his is distinctly a call for
reevaluation and reflection. Deloria does not actually
accuse anthropology of being Eurocentric, but his
book rings with this as a subtext and the record cer-
tainly supports the accusation to a degree. Many indi-
vidual anthropologists are guilty to a lesser degree
than the whole, most have distanced themselves from
the errors of the past, and the general trend is toward
a less authoritarian discipline where, indeed, many are
working actively toward change. Deloria's book is cer-
tainly a nudge in that direction, and an entertaining
read as well. W
Black Elk's Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakotu Catholi-
cism. Clyde Holler. Syracuse: University of Syracuse
Press, 1995.246 pp.
WILLIAM K. POWERS
Rutgers University
Appearing at the end of the millennium, the sud-
den rash of books on Black Elk, the subject of J ohn G.
Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (William Morrow, 1932),
suggests a kind of rush to declare a prophet is born,
albeit posthumously.
The author of Black Elk's Religion, Clyde Holler,
holds a Ph.D. in religion and has previously published
on Black Elk ("Lakota Religion and Tragedy: The The-
ology of Black Elk Speaks," Journal of the American
Academy of Religion, 1984; and "Black Elk's Relation-
ship to Christianity," American Indian Quarterly,
1984). These essays were published in the same year
Vine Deloria J r. edited his tribute to J ohn G. Neihardt,
A Sender of Womls: Essays in Memory of John G.
Neihurdt (Howe Brothers), declaring Black Elk
Speaks an American Indian bible. Also in 1984, Ray-
mond J. DeMallie edited The Sixth Grandfather: Black
Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihurdt (Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press), an analysis of Neihardt's origi-
nal interviews, much better than the original.
Following in rapid succession are Paul Stein-
metz's Pipe, Bible and Peyote among the Oglala Lak-
otu (University of Tennessee Press, 1990); J ulian
Rice's Black Elk's Story: Distinguishing Its Lakotu
Purpose (University of New Mexico Press, 1991); Mi-
chael F. Steltencamp's Black Elk: Holy Man of the
Oglala (University of Oklahoma Press, 1993); and