FREE: Pretty-shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows, by Frank B. Linderman

The listing, Pretty-shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows, by Frank B. Linderman has ended.

Paperback, Very Good condition
5 Out of 5 Stars: captivating
Amazon Review By kaioatey on June 13, 2009
I couldn't put the book down. Pretty Shield takes the reader by the hand and takes him/her into the times when buffalo were a-plenty, there was always a danger of a Lakota or Cheyenne raid, a grizzly behind the corner - yet there was always laughing, joy, aliveness and community. Growing up as a child was not being sheltered from the vicissitudes of life - on the contrary, it was taking life seriously by playing in it. It was living on the edge; and only by living on the edge one can really be alive.

One learns so much more from a book like this than from anthropological literature.

The title says "medicine woman" probably at the insistence of the publisher. While there may not be much about 'Crow Medicine' in the factual, "Western' sense of the word, the medicine - the power of life - creeps out of almost every page. The confidence, the taking-care of her family is a manifestation of her Medicine; the story-telling, the knowledge about the animal and little "People" (spirits), how one gets to meet them and gets their help and the stories of healing that these days could only be classified as miraculous, can be told only by someone who knows what they are talking about. In other words, Pretty Shield teaches obliquely, like the Indians do, through stories. And this book delivers them with sensitivity, respect and simplicity which show that Linderman learnt something about Crows and their medicine.