There is no doubt that the author's veneration of the old time Plains Indians borders on hero-worship; and if enthusiasm alone could guarantee accuracy, this would be a great book. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. I have studied Plains Indian culture for more than 30 years, and must agree with the previous reviewer from Montana that this book is riddled with errors from beginning to end. For example, Mails tells us that the Indians made bow cases from the tails of mountain lions. I am currently making a mountain lion quiver and bowcase myself, and I can tell you flatly that the mountain lion never lived whose tail was big enough for this purpose. Instead, the tail was always left as a pendant hanging from the mouth of the quiver. Since Mails' book includes a full page color painting, done by him, of a quiver with the tail hanging down in just that fashion, you wonder how he could make this error - but he did, and many others like it. Most of them could have been avoided if Mails had carefully read the primary sources listed in his own bibliography. This is a big, impressive looking coffee-table type book, and so our natural inclination is to believe whatever it says - an inclination strengthened by the fact that Mails makes every statement with an air of absolute authority. The reviewer from Pipestone, MN says that this book has all the answers, and it does. The problem is that those answers are so often completely wrong.