Mohawk Blood: A Native American Quest

In this slight but sometimes resonant memoir, Baughman recounts his efforts to live within modern-day culture yet preserve the Mohawk part of his heritage. A few chapters, like one on a stop at Pine Ridge Reservation and Wounded Knee, are barely anecdotes. More substantively, Baughman, a contributor to Field & Stream, recalls his Pennsylvania boyhood, facing Indian stereotypes in cowboy movies, his stint in New York City marching as an Indian in a humiliating Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and his sad encounter with an Indian brother and sister whose hopes to leave Oklahoma ended in death. Baughman's best efforts here concern the outdoors and his Native American legacy: tracking deer on foot as his grandfather taught him; visiting the remote area of California where Ishi--``the last wild Indian in North America''--emerged in 1911; spending a week alone in the Cascade Mountains, returning ``with a clearer understanding of both Ishi and my own limitations.'' Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)