[.ca] Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian (ISBN 0300002270)

Sun Chief Review:
This book is incredibly uninteresting and poorly written. The writing style doesn't flow well, and there is no particular plot to speak of. I wouldn't recommend it.

One star is being very generous!!!!!!!!:
If I were to pick a more accurate rating I would make it a -2. This is book is very thorough and detailed to the point of boredom. It should have about 160 pages instead of 380. If you are into this topic then you would love it. But as for me I had to force myself to read 5 pages in a setting. The only reason I read it was because I had to write a paper on it.

Insight into turn-of-the-century Hopi:
I enjoyed this book so much that I finished it in a couple of days. In my opinion, Don Talayesva is a charming narrator. His sometimes humorous, many times heart-breaking recollections underscores the tremendous cultural, social and religious upheavals the Hopi tribe were going through at the beginning of the 20th century, as no anthropological or historical work could ever do.

Excellent view of Hopi lifestyles in transition:
It's a little ironic that they listed the "author" of the book as Leo W. Simmons when this is actually an autobiography of Don Talayesva. Nonetheless, it's an excellent account of the life of a Hopi man during a time of great change. Talayesva was born in 1890 and the book covers his life up to 1940. This was a period of great change for the Hopi in the pueblo of Oraibi. Talayesva lived through the great social conflict that caused the split of the village and the aftermath of that split, as the traditional ways at Oraibi were steadily eroded by the white Christian government, settlers, tourists, and missionaries. Talayesva's account of his life is an important and lasting record of the hard life of the traditional Hopi people. Unfortunately, nobody has taken the time to complete the account of Talayesva's life and I was left with a sense that the story is unresolved. Surely, he had another 10 to 40 years of life left after the end of the book, but that isn't covered here.