E THNOL OG Y 421

A stronger point of the book, and for that reason more instructive, deals with the changing structure of agricultural and politi- cal arrangements that took place during the years of study, and the impact these changes had on the formation of groups. Although Rogers does not intentionally choose this as one of his major points of concern, he does provide data which point to a correlation between a change in structural relationships, the effects that change has on human group- ing, and its support of new forms of pattern- ed behavior.

The evidence presented by Rogers clearly suggests that Thomas County was squarely in the plantation community tradition. The county town served as the center of political and economic activity. The county also had social groups consistent with a plantation community type: planter aristocracy, slave class, independent farmer, freedmen, and poor white.

An injustice would be done to Rogers if we failed to briefly mention other aspects of this work. He describes the panorama and diversity of life in Thomas County-from its broad economic base, political parties, churches, and schools, to its picnics, parties, and promenades. If you have any illusions that the “rural” south was simple, uncom- plicated and mundane, Rogers’ Thomas County Georgia, 1865-1900 will be an eye opener.

The White Ethnic Movement and Ethnic Politics. PERRY L. WEED. Praeger Special Studies in U.S. Economic, Social, and Politi- cal Issues. New York i?z London: Praeger, 1973. xi + 243 pp., tables, bibliography. $16.50 (cloth).

Reviewed by NORMAN LEDERER Camden County College

Perry Weed, a political scientist at North- western who has worked closely in the past with the National Project on Ethnic America of the American Jewish Committee, has written a sketchy and somewhat chaotically organized account of the modern-day ethni- city movement, if that it may be called, and, BS an added fillip, provides an account of recent-day ethnic politics leading up to but not including the 1972 Presidential election. One of the short-comings of his analysis of

ethnic politics is that it ends before the elec- tion, thus omitting information concerning the outcome of the rather strenuous efforts made by the major political parties t o attract ethnic voters to their standard.

Scholars during the 1960s have been amazed to discover that in many instances the presumed all-encompassing “melting pot” has not indeed operated to completely eradicate ethnic identity, and that in truth there is still something unique in being Italian- or Polish-American despite the end of mass immigration and the general homo- genization of American society. It is almost as though there is a persistence of cultural traits onto the third and even fourth genera- tion ethnic, making for identifiable differ- ences between him and the mass of the American majority. Weed, in the first section of his book, is less concerned with exploring the possible causes for this persistence than he is with describing the implementation or even manipulation of ethnic identity by community and institutional groups and organizations.

Weed’s section on ethnic politics contains considerable material of interest regarding political campaigns designed to attract various ethnic groups in urban areas, past and present, and also a depiction of the growing interest in ethnic groups on the part of the major political parties, but this part of the book is badly organized and ill-digested, and seems in parts t o consist of note cards arranged into chapters rather than as a smooth-flowing, integrated analysis.

American Folk Legend: A Symposium. WAYLAND D. HAND, ed. UCLA Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology, Publications: 11. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971. x + 237 pp., index. $7.50 (cloth).

Reviewed by JOHN W. ADAMS University of South Carolina

The fruits of this symposium are suf- ficiently specialized that I assume its con- tents are already familiar to folklorists. It will probably strike an anthropologist, how- ever, as being more an ethnographic docu- ment of an academic cult than a source of help in analyzing folklore. Again-or still- the most pressing concern would seem to be

422 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [77,1975]

taxonomy, this time of legend, with only a few papers reaching beyond this problem to wider issues.

Several papers offer definitions of legend, all admittedly failed and inelegant; Georges suggests the “riddle” that “a legend is a story or narrative that may or may not be a story or narrative at all; it is set in a recent or historical past that may be conceived to be remote or anti-historical or not really past at all; it is believed to be true by some, false by others, and both or neither by most” (p. 18).

Interesting points are made, however, which deserve notice. Dorson reminds us that the corpus of American legends includes materials from different historical epochs, each with its characteristic themes. Dundes offers psychological re-interpretations of several legends from an American point of view (in contrast to interpretations which had been proposed for them by a European). Brunvand sketches a useful account of the extent t o which legends are utilized by Mormons today and how belief in them and the ways in which they are told vary from individual to individual. Even more useful are two papers which ask why folklorists are not concerned to collect and analyze nar- ratives from our own culture, using Reader’s Digest for instance, or television and the movies. Only Carl Jung, apparently, has paid attention to reports of UFO’s as folklore

These papers (by Friedman and by Degh), though only suggestions, offer a challenge. How we use folklore in our own lives, how we generate it, what it means to us, is a great problem facing folklore research today, one which is far more pressing than taxonomy- or so it seems to me. Many people not included in this symposium are, of course, researching just this question. Meanwhile we may ask if it is true or false or neither, only in the remote past or just today, that several of our leading folklore institutes collect only the folklore of ethnic minorities, never the folklore of the researchers’ own culture?

(Degh).

Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America. GARY B. NASH. History of the American People Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. xvii + 350 pp., figures, bibliographical essay, index. $9.95 (cloth), $5.95 (paper).

Reviewed by ERNEST SCHUSKY Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

Red, White, and Black is a text for comprehensive study of the relations among native Americans, Afro-Americans, and Euro-Americans in the Colonial Era. For anthropologists it is a useful introduction to some revisionist thought in history, and the work is a warning that historians are under- taking problems once thought the province of anthropology.

Nash condemns much historical study as “ethnocentrism in action”; his reaction is to present a history of the peoples of North America between 1550 and 1770. These peoples are Africans, Europeans, and Indians but Nash emphasizes the diversity within all three groups; he notes the Natchez differed from the Iroquois more than the English differed from the Spanish. A history should account for the perspectives of all these peoples-a chronicle that details the culture, society, and world view of each and their eventual interaction.

The author’s commitment to such aims will be greeted with enthusiasm by anthro- pologists, but Nash is not always able to achieve his goal. Since he has exhausted most of the written sources, the work indicates the extent to which an historian can analyze past societies, cultures, and processes such as acculturation. The work falls short in presenting the cultures of the coastal Indians. Partly they seem unrepre- sented because Nash is so thoroughly ac- quainted with the Euro-Americans he makes them come vividly alive, but the major difficulty lies with the paucity of written sources on groups such as the Niantics, Pamunkeys, and Saraws. If the cultures of these peoples are ever described in depth, it will be through use of non-written records.

The interior Indians, especially Iroquois, Creek, and Cherokee, do reach par in cul- tural detail with the Euro-Americans, and Nash is particularly concerned with how the Red perception of Whites influenced Indian policy toward the European powers. The author’s documentation of Indian sophistica- tion in foreign affairs should make anthro- pologists realize “Indian policy” was always two-sided; it can no longer connote only federal policy.

Although most of Nash’s review of Black culture is compacted in two chapters, he