The Zuni and the American Imagination

By Eliza McFeely

Book Overview

The Zuni society existed for centuries before there was a United States, and it still exists in its New Mexico desert pueblo. In 1879, three anthropologists--Matilda Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Stewart Culin--came to study Zuni and, fearing it might be destroyed, to salvage what they could of its tangible culture. Though their methods are now disparaged and ignored, their work vividly imprinted Zuni on the American imagination. The complex relationship between the Zuni as they were and are, and as they were imagined by these three remarkable, eccentric pioneers, is at the heart of Eliza McFeely's important book. Stevenson, Cushing, and Culin found professional and psychological satisfaction in submerging themselves in an alien world and in displaying Zuni artifacts in America's new museums and exhibit halls. McFeely puts their intellectual and personal adventures into perspective; she enlightens us about America, about the Zuni, and about how we understand each other.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080901629X
• ISBN13: 9780809016297
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.0"