Ruth Landes

The elemental conflict of man against a hostile nature has nowhere been enacted more dramatically than in the experience of the Ojibwa Indians of Southwestern Ontario and Northern Minnesota, where the hunter, isolated by his vast lands and frozen winters, felt himself a soul at bay, against cosmic forces personalised as cynical or terrorizing. Out of this confrontation with a stark and hostile environment the Obijwa Indians shaped a distinctive society and cosmology, both emphasizing individualism. Ruth Landes describes the religious society known as the midéwiwin as it existed among the Obijwa. She presents conditions of Obijwa life during the 1930s as background for understanding the tribe's intricate ethical-religious system; she relates the origin tale in several variations, about the supernatural gift of midéwiwin; and she narrates in fascinating particulars the midé "Life" rituals for curing and for Shamans' indoctrinations; and the "Ghost" ritual that completes cure of a soul after death. The author's own observations are enahnced by comments and narratives from Will Rogers (Hole-in-the-Sky), a noted shaman, and Mrs. Maggie Wilson, daughter of a Cree missionary and daughter-in-law of an Ojibwa shaman.

"The City of Women, first published in 1947, is anthropologist Ruth Landes's study of candomble religious society in Brazil just before World War II. Afro-Brazilian candomble is a woman-centered, spirit possession religion developed by West African slaves in colonial plantation societies. Abandoning the scientific concept of culture that dominated anthropology in her time, Landes lets Brazil speak to her on its own terms. In The City of Women, she draws portraits of the priestesses and other women she visited in private homes and observed in candomble temples, all nuanced by her awareness of gender, race, and sexuality. Marketed as an exotic travelogue and dismissed by anthropologists when it appeared in 1947, The City of Women is now considered a classic of postmodern anthropology and a basic primary source for candomble studies."--BOOK JACKET.

This ethnological study of social behavior is the result of seven months' work in the field, financed by Columbia University, with close observation of village and tribal life, and a large collection of life histories of women as told by a Native American woman.