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150 Western American Literature Inexhaustible as these categories seem, and brief as is this book, Cuna art emerges here in all its richness of color, composition, and imaginative symbolism. The text is thin. Dr. Keeler lets his full-color plates and blackand white photographs speak for themselves. How can one describe the Palewalla Tree of Life (the umbilical cord), the Earthmother giving birth to her prophets, an excursion on the Sunboat of Heaven? What modern designs there are too: of Adam and Eve being driven from the Garden of Eden, of a table set with Gorham silver abstracted from an advertisement in the Ladies Home Journal, a classical design of a French telephone done by a weaver who believed the dial to be a hunched-up rabbit! The now famous appliqued mola blouses—“cloth of the grandmothers”, and a “monument to patience”—are being sold in the fashionable shops of New York. The idols, carved ceremonial canes, pictographs, and face and body painting designs are practically unknown. But all compose a body of superlative art pictured here in profusion. Unfortunately, says Dr. Keeler, “The avenues for expression of native art among the Cunas are rapidly closing as acculturation from the Western world takes place, and all artistic outlets associated with the native Cuna religion will disappear when Christianity supplants it.” Many beliefs and ceremonies already have disappeared and taken with them the associated art. This disintegration and disappearance of a distinctive Indian art almost before it has become known accentuates the value and timeliness of this delightful book. F r a n k W a ters, Taos, New Mexico Wild Sports in the Far West. By Friedrich Gerstacker. 1854 English transla­ tion. Introduction and Notes by Edna L. and Harrison R. Steeves. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1968. xxix + 382 pages, illus. and notes. 36.50.) Although the reissue of this 1854 English translation of Friedrich Gerstacker’s account of his travels in the region of the Mississippi River Valley between 1837 and 1843 is a long-overdue and very necessary contribution to German-Americana, the appearance of this early work of Gerstacker’s points up the need for further scholarly exploration in this field. The editors, Edna L. and Harrison R. Steeves, have quite correctly indicated the need to rescue Gerstacker from virtual obscurity; they have pointed out his keen insight in guaging the American character and describing the frontier milieu. In their introduction the Steeves note that little information on Ger­ stacker is available in English, this, despite the fact that scholars such as Reviews 151 Dr. George H. R. O’Donnell, Professor William H. McClain, and Professor Augustus J. Prahl have long argued the need for an incisive study on Ger­ stacker. To date, however, almost one hundred years after Gerstacker’s death, there is still no authoritative biography on the man. The editors have adequately described Gerstacker’s physical prowess as a ranger of the frontier; not only have they indicated his influence on the Germans and Americans of his day, but they have also assessed the import of his observations and have adjudged these a valid and original documentation of American frontier life. Yet the Steeves note that “His [Gerstacker’s] activities were not intellectual, not directed to a great purpose, and not even very serious. . . . Although he spent a large segment of his life on the transMississippi frontier, he was after all a transient” (p. xxiv). The condescending tone the editors employ in the above excerpt is unfortunate, for it echoes the sentiments of far too many researchers who feel that, while Gerstacker is indeed interesting, he must not “after all” be taken too “seriously.” But Gerstacker really needs no apology for telling it like it was. This writer has long felt that Gerstacker, because of his so-called “limitations,” because of his non-intellectual approach to the rawness of frontier life, affords the reader perhaps one of the best opportunities to com­ prehend the frontier experience. What better perspective for viewing the frontiersman’s epic battle with the wilderness than that delineated by the ingenuous writer? Such a writer was Gerstacker; for all his artistic and stylistic lapses, one consideration remains: