The North American Sketches of R. B. Cunningham Graham ed. by John Walker

Abstract

76 Western American Literature As he concluded this autobiography’swriting, already in his mid-nineties, Jackson observed that his long life embraced the Mexican War, the War of the Secession, the War with Spain, World War I, and the beginning of another war: altogether an extraordinary century in which to be alive. His life (1843— 1942] also paralleled the first hundred years of photography, from the daguer­ reotype to 35mm cameras and color film. Just as his life was marked by acceptance of and participation in changes in national events, he also adapted readily to changing technology in his profession. As a young photographer for the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey party to the Yellowstone region, Jackson spent from 1870-1879 accom­ panying these survey parties in the Rocky Mountains, making over 2000 images of the Yellowstone region, the Colorado mountains, and the newly discovered Mesa Verde. He was the first person to photograph most of these landscapes. During Ferdinand V. Hayden’s survey through Yellowstone, Jackson was in the company of the English painter Thomas Moran, official artist for the party. They learned from each other. In this expedition Jackson compiled his most impressive record of an area, transporting photographic equipment weighing nearly 300 pounds by mule or horse, loading and unloading for each picture, and developing each plate in a portable darkroom. His brief mention of the physical energy required for such operations shames today’s trekker who leaves behind as “too heavy” his Olympic 35mm. Jackson and Moran’s portfolios of watercolors and photographs moved Congress to enact the law setting aside the Yellowstone region as a national park. Though Jackson made many subsequent trips and covered a large part of the globe, eventually accumulating 80,000 photographs, nothing he did before or after left the impression on America’s sensibilities as the Hayden expedition up the Yellow­ stone River and down to Jackson Lake. Jackson’s title refers deftly both to his long professional career and to his ready involvement in strenuous promotion of the West. His account is modest and far too brief. He presents himself as a craftsman of growing skill, recep­ tive to advances in his profession, cheerfully opportunistic, subject to rising and falling fortunes, and successful in ways he could not have predicted at the outset. CORALIE BEYERS Utah State University The North American Sketches of R. B. Cunningham Graham. Edited by John Walker. (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986. 145 pages, £12.50 hard­ back, £7.50 paperback.) Beginning in 1878 a young Scottish laird and his bride spent two adven­ ture-filled years in the American Southwest and Mexico. The prose sketches Reviews 77 of R. B. Cunningham Graham and also one by his twenty-year-old wife, Gabrielle, are fascinating reading. For example, “Three Letters on the Indian Question,” “A Chihuahueno,” and “The Waggon-Train” are sketches that reveal that Graham and his wife were keen observers of the exploitation of the American Indians, aware of the racial and religious tensions between the Mexicans and the “gringos,” and intimately involved in the joys and pains of overland travel from Texas to Mexico City. Graham’sview of mankind ishumanitarian, progressive, and enlightened. His sketches reveal a mind that goes beyond stereotypes and simple travelogue writing. Graham in his lifetime wrote over thirty collections of travel literature over a period of forty years. These sketches have been edited by ProfessorJohn Walker in order to present Graham’s youthful impressions of the borderland from 1879 to 1881. The editor’s forward, critical introduction, prefaces to each sketch, footnotes, bibliography and glossary add rich background and detail to the book. Graham’s sketches present an early and unique view of the region and presage in many ways some of the observations of later European writings such as D. H. Lawrence’s Mornings in Mexico or B. Traven’s Land Des Fruhlings. ROBERT B. OLAFSON Eastern Washington University The Indians of Puget Sound: The Notebooks of Myron Eells. Edited with an Introduction by George Pierre Castile. (Seattle and Walla Walla: University of Washington Press and Whitman College, 1986. 496 pages, $40.00.) The publication of this book is over one hundred years late. The...