October 2005    

Fossil Legends of the First Americans Author: Adrienne Mayor Publisher: Princeton University Press $29.95 Cloth (446 p.) ISBN: 0691113459 B&T         YBP Reviewed by James Roberts, Continuations Department Following up on her previous work, First Fossil Hunters, where she established a case for early fossil study in the ancient Mediterranean, Adrienne Mayor turns her attention now to the Americas and shows she has lost none of the spirit of discovery that fueled her previous work. This book is intended as a repudiation of George Gaylord Simpson's rather narrow-minded opinion that First Americans were too unscientific and too close to nature to add anything useful to our knowledge of the fossil record. In taking on Simpson's opinion, Mayor is taking on one of the most prominent paleontologists of the twentieth century. And she does a fabulous job of it. She's never quite able to demonstrate that the oral traditions of First Americans around fossils constitute formal scientific investigation, but she does prove out that "Native Americans observed, collected, and attempted to explain the remains of extinct invertebrate and vertebrate species long before contact with Europeans, and their cultural connection with fossils continues today." And she doesn't make her case with a few scant examples and gallons of supporting text. Instead, she spends nearly three hundred pages detailing oral histories of First Americans, from the Northeast to the Southwest, from the Prairies to Mexico and parts of Central America (what she calls "New Spain") and out to the High Plains - in essence, the entirety of the United States and then some. The centerpiece of the book is the collection of fossil stories. At points humorous, serious, irascible and entertaining, the narrators, whether they be old wise men or young trail keepers, bring a sense of life and purpose to their stories. Mayor does an excellent job of sorting these tales into sub-chapters, and within those sub-chapters she sequences them so that they flow almost as though you're sitting in a room, listening to the stories for the first time. Perhaps the two most important sections of the book come at the end. The last chapter, "Common Ground," is where we find the meat of Mayor's arguments against Simpson's dismissal of First American fossil accounts. It's well-written, cogent and respectful to the man while still stripping down every one of his opinions to the bone. The appendix, "Fossil Legends and Specious Legends," is a scant dozen pages or so, but does a respectable job of separating fact from fiction, and is followed by some fifty pages of endnotes for the chapters. Incorporating the work of a skilled oral historian, a wealth of paleontological evidence and historical research along with excellent discursive prose, Mayor not only succeeds in repudiating Simpson, but also gives a sterling example of the excellence that scholarship can attain when it strikes out to find new ground. Published by YBP Library Services 999 Maple St., Contoocook, NH 03229 USA v: 800.258.3774   f: 603.746.5628 w: www.ybp.com   e: academia@ybp.com All rights reserved.