Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of Michigan's Upper Peninsula
“An important re-introduction of an American folklore classic.”—Carl Lindahl, University of Houston “A collection of traditions, tales, superstitions, practices, and folk biographies that range from the slyly humorous to the bawdy. . . . These are human beings, a folk, not sitting for a portrait, but caught alive as it were in fine amber, a permanent possession.”—Thelma G. James,Journal of American Folklore “Dorson’s first great book—published amidst Cold War clamoring for Americanism defined in narrow, Eastern-oriented, Anglo-Protestant, assimilationist terms—asserted unequivocally that the Upper Midwest, with its unruly democratic mixture of indigenous and immigrant peoples, its rustic working class babel of Native and foreign tongues, was also an American place, and a quintessential one at that. In writing what he did when he did, Dorson anticipated a whole generation of scholars dedicated to challenging canons by emphasizing the power, worth, and endless creativity of grassroots, plural, hybrid, and creolized cultures fermenting at the margins of staid, hierarchical social orders.”—James P. Leary, from the introduction