Brief vignettes of many obscure Tribes and Nations (both North and South America) as well as major ones. This is not an encyclopedia in the traditional sense but it has valuable (if brief) references to tribes that you would otherwise not hear about.

It is a very pretty book. That's all.
It excuses its lack of effort by being an encyclopedia. It has no articles that give real information, let alone insight. Practically any of the articles in this book would fit the inside cover of a book of matches. An occasional overview that would give some understanding of the archeological effort, the rites and everyday practices of the people discussed, anything above the age/sex/location format that is the overwhelming genre of this writing, would have been welcome.
This work is one of the few, though, that do address more of the American Peoples than just the major, picturesque ones with major relics or major presence in modern nations. The small nations both of remote South America as well as odd corners of North America are given as full a treatment as the Iroquis, Maya, or Inca. That is to say, not very much. ( )