Book Reviews American Folklore and the Historian. By Richard M.

Dorson. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1971. xii, 239 p. $7.95.)

DOES THE HISTORY of Minnesota include the disputed legend of the Kensington rune stone, the dreams of Minne­sota contained in immigrant songs and letters, the stories explaining how the towns, counties, and lakes got their names, the yarns about Floyd B. Olson and Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., and the humorous stories told about Norwe­gians and Swedes? Richard M. Dorson does not ask these questions in this book about folklore and history, but if he did, he would answer in the affirmative.

Professor Dorson presents in this volume a theory of how folklore undergirds American history. In a way, the book is a history of Dorson's intellectual career, for the essays ap­pearing here have been read at conferences and published in magazines and books since 1945. He opens with a paper entitled "A Theory for American Folklore" and argues that the historical framework of colonization, westward move­ment, slaveiy and sectional conflict, immigration, and eco­nomic resources and geography could be enriched through investigation of beliefs, traditions, and songs of the com­mon folk. The first essay is followed by "The Theory of American Folklore Revisited" in which he enlarges the the­ory and takes issue with some of his critics in the historical profession. In other chapters he relates folklore to American studies, cultural history, state and local history, and litera­ture, and shows the role of lore in these areas of study. It is an impressive argument wrapped in voluminous biblio­graphical support and documentation.

In the years that Dorson has worked to make folklore a scholarly discipline and a proper field of research, history has been moving slowly toward folklore's corner. The work of Theodore C. Blegen has helped broaden the discipline to include folk history and helped give state and local history an improved status. In recent years, historians have renewed their interest in interviewing and taping the reminiscences of people who never went to Congress or never kept a diary of their workaday life. Dorson reminds historians that other, less literate, peoples — immigrants, Indians, ghetto Ne­groes— invite the collectors of oral traditions and folk memory.

This volume may not save many souls, not because the historian will reject the definitions of folklore and the theory of its use in American histoiy, but because the academic historian has his own folk beliefs about history and how to get along in the profession. He believes that advancement lies in publication of national history based on published or written documents. He believes the word "folklore" means such quaint beliefs as thinning blood with sassafras tea and not the folk knowledge of how a Minnesota pioneer "knew" good land when he saw it. This volume puts to­gether Dorson's contributions to a scientific definition of folklore and a theory of how the obscure oral tradition can strengthen and humanize history. He has long labored to separate "fakelore" from folklore and has been a strong critic of those who pervert the oral tradition for commercial purposes. The influence of this volume will be seen when (and if) some publisher offers the history of a state or the nation entitled The History and Lore of .

Reviewed by WALKER D . WYMAN, professor of history at Wisconsin State University at River Falls and a frequent reviewer of folklore histonj for this magazine.

The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements. By Hazel W. Hertzberg.

(Syracuse, New York, Syracuse University Press, 1971. ix, 362 p. Illustrations. $12.00.)

HISTORIANS have shown little interest in twentieth-cen­tury American Indian histoiy, and published material on this period is invariably part of general tribal histories. Hazel W. Hertzberg has taken a different approach in The Search for an American Indian Identity. Her interest is in pan-Indian movements from 1900 to 1934. The result is an important and informative book on a topic that, with the exception of the peyote cult, is unfamifiar to both Indians and non-Indians.

Pan-Indianism took several forms during the first third of the twentieth century. Founded in 1911 in the midst of the progressive era, the Society of American Indians was the first and most important pan-Indian reform organ­ization. It was representative of progressivism and con­sisted largely of educated, middle-class, non-reservation

Fall 1971 279

Indians such as anthropologist Arthur C. Parker, Reverend Sherman Coolidge, lawyer Thomas Sloan, and educator Henry Roe Cloud. They behaved in hard work and educa­tion and shared the enthusiasm and faith of progressive reformers. Their goals included the reorganization and im­provement of Indian education, the opening of the federal Court of Claims to Indians seeking financial redress, and a legal definition of Indian status, and several of their ideas foreshadowed New Deal reforms under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier. The Society of American In­dians held annual meetings, published a quarterly journal, and received the support of Anglo reformers, but within a few years it was rent by divisions over the continued exist­ence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the legal status of peyote. It disintegrated rapidly after 1917, but during the 1920s pan-lndianism revived with the development of urban-based fraternal organizations such as the Tepee Order of America and the Grand Council Fire of American Indians.

While reform and fraternal pan-Indian movements con­sisted of urban Indians, religious pan-lndianism, which was expressed in the peyote cult, was largely a movement of reservation Indians. It developed on the southern plains in the late nineteenth century and spread rapidly under the leadership of such men as Comanche Chief Quanah Parker — despite growing opposition from Indian leaders. Christian churches, Anglo reformers, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Native American Church was incor­porated in 1918 as a successful defensive measure, and this form of rehgious pan-lndianism became the largest and most lasting of the organizations of the formative period. However, like the other pan-Indian movements from 1900 to 1934, it sought an accommodation with the larger white world and was strongly influenced by educated Indians, especially those who had attended Cailisle Indian School (Pennsylvania) and Haskell Institute (Kansas).

The SearcJi for an American Indian Identity will be of considerable value to scholars and will provide current In­dian leaders with a historical perspective in which to place pan-Indian movements of the past forty years. The author not only describes and interprets the organizations of 1900-1934 but also describes briefly developments after 1934. Moreover, she relates pan-lndianism to Indian life and places it in the broader context of American histoiy.

Reviewed by RICHABD N . ELLIS, professor of history at the University of New Mexico and author of "Political Pres­sures and Army Policies on the Northern Plains, 1862-1865" which appeared in the Summer, 1970, issue of this magazine.

The Progressive Mind: 1890-1917. By David W. Noble . (Chicago, Rand McNally and Company 1970 196 p. $2.95.)

ALTHOUGH David Noble's students and reading public will immediately recognize the central thrust of this bril­hant essay, it is considerably more than a rehash of his previous work. One can easily agree with the claim ad­vanced by the Editor's Preface that the book "not only syn­thesizes the current secondary literature on the progressive movement, but supplies major new interpretations on pro-

280 Minnesota History

gressive social and cultural thought based on . . . original research."

By 1890 the advance of urban industrialism and a cor­responding retreat of the frontier of virgin land was strain­ing the credibihty of the national self-image that visualized Americans as "a chosen people" whose "ancestors had escaped from the cultural complexity of Europe, a com­plexity characterized by conflict, to the natural simplicity of the New World where timeless peace was possible." The consequent cultural crisis evoked varying responses within the American community. Perceiving finance capitalism as a nefarious conspiracy threatening the nation's pristine inno­cence, Ignatius Donnelly believed the power of government should be mobilized on a massive scale "to preserve the national covenant with nature." Economist and sociologist William Graham Sumner drew a diametrically opposite con­clusion. He argued that enhancing the role of govemment was a step toward Old World "cultural complexity" which would imperil progress. With some oversimplification, it can be said that when confronted with the apparent im­possibility of preserving both laissez-faire and a yeoman-based democracy — two cherished American values — Donnelly chose to sacrifice the former and Sumner the latter.

Following the lead of historian Charles A. Beard, the dominant wing of national progressivism responded to the crisis by interpreting industrialism as an evolutionary force which, if properly directed, would abolish medieval pattems of "cultural complexity" and eventuate in a final triumph of "natural" millennial simplicity and the American dream.

This notion, Noble argues persuasively, informed the frames of reference of such diverse personalities as Henry Ford, John Dewey, Charles H. Cooley, Walter Rauschen-busch, Charles Ives, Frank Norris, and Theodore Roosevelt. In other words, it served as the cultural motif of the pro­gressive era — notwithstanding its rejection by many rural progressives, particularly in the South where the black com­munity became the scapegoat for agrarian defeat. Accord­ing to Noble, it also laid the groundwork for American participation in the crusade to make the world safe for democracy. "The collapse of this millennial dream by 1919," he writes, "would mark the beginning of dramatically differ­ent attempts to create new patterns of cultural identity for a nation that not only failed to purify the world but had even failed to purify itself."

Space precludes comment on the many provocative is­sues raised by this volume. Not all readers will accept un­reservedly every contention made, but most will agree that Noble^ has produced a coherent interpretation of progres­sivism's cultural impact.

Reviewed by CARL H . CHRISLOCK, professor of history at Augsburg College and author of The Progressive Era in Minnesota, 1899-1918, soon to be published by the Minne­sota Historical Society.

For space reasons, the "News & Notes" section has been omitted from this issue. It will appear again in the Winter, 1971, magazine.

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