num_pages: 113
description: The impressive four-day and four-night Mescalero Apache girls puberty ceremonial provides the structure for Farrer's consideration of the ways in which old myths and legends inform contemporary actions and beliefs. Why people behave as they do is as much a focus as is their actual behavior. Through instructions given to Farrer by Bernard Second, her Apache teacher for fourteen years, readers gain insight into the importance of narrative, not just in ceremony but especially in everyday living on a contemporary Indian reservation in the American Southwest. Sights and smells are almost palpable as the author provides the best in reflexive ethnography by allowing readers to see her as a person rather than an all-knowing anthropologist. She neither romanticizes nor patronizes the Apachean people, who are presented as people with foibles as well as possessing much worthy of admiration.
language: English
title: Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present
titlecomplete: Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present
genres: School, Ethnography, Anthropology, Textbooks, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 127
publisher: Waveland Press Inc