[Raven's Cry] is so thoroughly immersed in the life of the Haida, the remarkable industrial Indians of British Columbia … that the book is first-rate ethnography…. The story is poignant: firearms, Bible, gold, whiskey and smallpox play their traditional roles. But the Haida are so like us in their determination to excel—in skill, in trade, in wealth, in status—that the story is much richer than the pastoral tragedy of so many tribes. (p. 144)