This collecion of Southwestern stories reflects La Farge's love for the region and its people, whom he came to know as a visiting Harvard-trained anthropologist and, later, as a Santa Fean. It is not surprising that La Farge chillingly depicts the disastrous effects of white cifilication on Indian culture in stories that show an old medicine man's decline into alcoholism or an Apache sheepman's neglect of his family. But La Farge als ouses humor to explor the confusion that often accompanies the relations beetween well-meaning people with different world views, such as a young white woman learning rudimentary housekeeping from an Indian neighbor. Still other stories reveal the strengths of traditional Indian societies in spite of their contacts with white officials. --front end flap of book.