Swedish scholar Åke Hultkrantz is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on American Indian religions. This collection of fifteen of his essays on the religious attitudes and practices of a variety of North American Indian communities brings together some of his best work over the last twenty-five years. The essays are grouped into four areas: belief and myth, worship and ritual, ecology and religion, persistence and change. Topics include the importance of myths and rituals; religious beliefs among the Plains Indians and Wind River Shoshoni; the cult of the dead; the Spirit Lodge, the Sun Dance Lodge, and the Ghost Dance; the spread of the peyote cult; feelings towards animals and natural phenomena; and the problem of Christian influence on Northern Algonkian eschatology. To students of American Indians Hultkrantz reveals the integrity of Indian religion as a subject in its own right, not divorced from culture, history, or ecology, but religion as an effective force in Indian life. To students of comparative religion he offers American Indian religious phenomena as a treasure trove of data to be mapped and related to the religions of the world. Christopher Vecsey's introduction summarizes Hultkrantz's major ideas and outlines the field work and research methods which distinguish his scholarship. Åke Hultkrantz was professor of comparative religion and head of the Institute of Comparative Religion, University of Stockholm; his work focused on Native American religion.

From 1948 to 1990 he repeatedly lived and conducted research among the Shoshone of Wyoming and Idaho the Arapaho of the Northern Plains and the Native American tribes of California. He was adopted by the Shoshone in 1948. He taught at many universities throughout the U.S., Europe and Scandinavia and authored of more than a half-dozen books and hundreds of articles on American Indian religion. Åke Hultkrantz died in 2006.