Indian Fighter Research Articles

The Scotch-Irish Influence on American English

T IS GENERALLY ADMITTED that some linguistic influence must have been exerted on American speech by people known as Scotch-Irish, who were second largest national group in colonial America, after English. It has been estimated that up to 300,000 Scotch-Irish emigrants went to America in eighteenth century (Doyle 1981, pp.59-60, 73-74). Most of these were Presbyterians, descendants of Lowland Scots who had settled in Ulster as part of seventeenth-century Plantation of province. While Scotch-Irish have been eulogized for their contribution to spheres of religion, education, and politics, enjoying an almost mythical reputation as patriots, pioneers, and Indian fighters, full extent of their influence on American folk speech (and indeed folk culture as a whole) has yet to be assessed. This is a difficult subject, calling for detailed knowledge of dialects on both sides of Atlantic, and it is attended by several problems which will be outlined here. There are many differences from standard British English which are shared by Ulster and America. One difficulty is to decide whether a feature common to both varieties of language is attributable to influence of one on other, or merely a result of what Marckwardt calls the colonial lag(1958, pp. 60-80; cf. Braidwood 1969, pp. 22-32). The English language was transplanted to America and Ulster at same time. Jamestown in Virginia was founded in 1607, and plan for Plantation of Ulster was issued in 1609. Consequently, both America and Ulster have been able to preserve scattered features of Elizabethan English which died out in England. Archaisms which were once standard, such as deck of cards (Standard British pack), use of quit meaning 'to stop', and predicative use of sick for 'ill', have survived independently in American and Ulster (and such archaisms survive also in other British dialects). They do not indicate Scotch-Irish influence on American English. Another problem can be illustrated by American and Ulster dialect

Going Steddy: William Byrd's Literary Masquerade

Biography is always contrived. Autobiography is always contrived, too, although its contrivance includes the appearance of artlessness. Journals and diaries are another matter. Their artlessness seems utterly genuine, and we are captured by their unguarded frankness, where the personality of the writer is often revealed unconsciously and in fragments, a problem for reconstruction by the reader. History's eye synthesizes, turning a protracted and diffuse collection of events and observations strewn across the greater part of a lifetime into a single figure that takes on the qualities of a literary character. Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn illustrate the point, becoming to literary history essentially literary characters lifted from the imaginary novels in which they never appeared. That peculiar transformation from reality to art frequently has enormous imaginative and intellectual value. How welcome, for example, the naive confessions of a Michael Wigglesworth struggling to believe doctrines that his culture endorses but his intelligence denies! For us Wigglesworth innocently epitomizes the spiritual condition of a certain kind of colonial fanatic, paralysed by the impossibility of reconciling his contrary desires in the American wilderness. It is of course our synthetic reading of Wigglesworth's crude record that constructs this Wigglesworth he himself would no doubt repudiate in horror. If Wigglesworth is a literary character, it is we who make him one out of the scattered pieces of his diary. One may worry about the legitimacy of this kind of reconstruction until one remembers that diarists themselves are often reconstructing experience as they go, sometimes according to very specific expectations. Samuel Sewall, for example, kept his mundane and spiritual accounts with exceptional lack of control. Yet he tells us himself that his entries were often composed well after the events and reflections they record. The Indian Fighter Benjamin Church tells his story through a much later revision of on-the-spot field notes. Madame Knight also reconstructed her journal after the fact, and one suspects that her anticipations of the shape her experience would take often determined them before the fact. And Cotton Mather

Conversations with Bullwhackers, Muleskinners, Pioneers, Prospectors, ’49ers, Indian Fighters, Trappers, Ex-Barkeepers, Authors, Preachers, Poets and Near Poets, and All Sorts and Conditions of Men ed. by Mike Helm

192 Western American Literature Conversations with Bullwhackers, Muleskinners, Pioneers, Prospectors, ’49ers, Indian Fighters, Trappers, Ex-Barkeepers, Authors, Preachers, Poets and Near Poets, and All Sorts and Conditions of Men. Compiled and Edited by Mike Helm. (Eugene, Oregon: Rainy Day Press, 1981. x + 358 pages, $8.95.) It is a generous book that favors its readers with this much fine reading in the title alone. But even with its extended-epithet-like title Conversations with Bullwhackers still carries a sub-title: Voices of the Oregon Territory. Such a surplus of titles may give an initial appearance of redundancy; how­ ever, excess is not without purpose here, for between them the titles cooper­ ate in expressing the editor’s posture toward these “voices.” Where the diversity of the main title testifies to the nearly lunatic energy of the migra­ tion to the far West, the second title, like the “second line” at a New Orleans jazz funeral, defines the unity and exposes the heart of meaning within the experience. Not only are these the voices of old-timers who once competi­ tively jostled and elbowed each other in a race across the Great American Desert, but they are also the memories of the survivors of that race who made a human community of the Oregon Territory. That these memories exist at all seems to be due to the foresight of Fred Lockley, a writer for several newspapers in Oregon over the period from his arrival in the state in the 1890s to his work as “The Journal Man” for Portland’s Oregon journal in the 20s and 30s. At his death Lockley left files of notes from his interviews with survivors from the pioneer days in the Oregon Territory; these interviews rest today in 58 three-ring notebooks in the Oregon Collection of the library at the University of Oregon. The editing of these aging manuscripts has been undertaken by Mike Helm for the Oregon Country Library; three volumes, of which Bullwhackers is the second volume, are planned to represent Lockley’s work, and the first publi­ cation, Conversations with Pioneer Women, has also appeared in print this year. The historical utility of the interviews is suggested by the fact that they represent not only the pioneers’ descendants who were born during the making of community on the donation land claims of their parents but also those men and women who took part in the original movement across the plains, mountains and deserts to Oregon. Some indication of what power there was in that original energy is still attainable in these collective memoirs. It is no surprise either to discern a singular spiritedness on the occasions when the interviewees appear to be most deliberately aware of their roles as storytellers, and their tales become informed thereby with a sense of audience; therefore, it is also not surprising to find in these memoirs evidence of the American tall-tale tradition. Among these recollections of the authentic counterparts of Twain’s Jim Baker and Thorpe’s “Big Bear of Arkansas,” Fred Lockley has caught the oral possibili­ ties of his informants. One man in his nineties who had traversed the plains in an 1846 crossing that featured drunkenness, murder, encounters with hostile Indians, buffalo stampedes and fights among the women, begins his Reviews 193 yarn with this avowal of honest intent: “I’m not figuring on getting married or running for office, so I might as well tell you the exact truth about my age and anything else you care to ask me about. ... So as not to give a one­ sided picture, I am going to tell you the things that are not creditable about myself as well as the things that are.” So, as Twain himself might say, “There you are.” Many of Lockley’s old-timers recall with immediate detail the actual crossing; they recall their ages at the time, their physical conditions, their duties on the journey. At the age of 91 an informant remembers that “I was in my 17th year when we crossed the plains.” He goes on, “My job was to drive the loose cattle, and if youwant to knowwhat dust isjust drive a bunch of loose...

The Utah Photographs of George Edward Anderson

Within thirty years of the time the first Mormons settled in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, George Ed Anderson set out to photograph all he could see of his land and of his church. In his portable tent gallery, in front yards, on the steps of boxcar homes, and in his studio in Springville, he made thousands of portraits. He documented the building of Mormon temples, the civic celebrations of growing towns, the advances of the railroads and of industry.Anderson photographed railroaders, miners, tradesmen, and farmers at work, and pioneers at rest. Whether his subject was an old Indian fighter or a gandy dancer, Anderson captured the dignity of men and women who had made a home in the West.Always his images are sharp, and the most circumstantial details--buggy whips, washing machines, flowered hats and long skirts, watch-chains and tin cups, the bric-a-brac on a fine stone house, three boys' pet snakes--evoke a world that is gone.A generation after Anderson, Rell G. Francis traveled the same roads and entered the same houses with prints of Anderson's photographs in hand. From his interviews with old-timers, his research in historical documents, and Anderson's own diaries, Francis has written an introductory essay and captions that complement the richness of Anderson's photographs.George Edward Anderson (1860-1928) was born in Salt Lake City and lived most of his life in Springville, a small town near Provo. A devout Mormon, he photographed not only the Utah of his time but also Mormon landmarks in England, Canada, Vermont, and along the Mormon trail.Recent searchers for historical photographs have made few finds as astonishing as the hoard of Anderson's glass plates that Rell. G. Francis has recovered in Utah. Francis, an artist and himself winner of many photographic awards, prepared the unique collection upon which this book is based for the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art.

Dateline Fort Bowie; Charles Fletcher Lummis Reports on an Apache War ed. by Dan L. Thrapp

54 Western American Literature Dateline Fort Bowie; Charles Fletcher Lummis Reports on an Apache TV • Edited by Dan L. Thrapp. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1 206 pages, $10.95.) The Charles Fletcher Lummis invoked here is the larger-than-life editor memorialized by Los Angeles's Southwest Museum and House; the Apache War is that of 1885-86; the editor-annotator one-time foreign correspondent and newspaper editor who has a number of books on the Southwest and the Apaches, most of published by the University of Oklahoma Press. The New England-born Lummis is an important figure in the in tual and cultural history of the Southwest, to which he quite literally ftom Ohio in the fall and winter of 1884-85, having prudently sent family ahead by train. He had, with a foresight he did not display in circumstances, contracted to furnish reports of his progress to the Angeles Times. The results were so successful that he found with the Times as a reporter. Thrapp's Introduction shows us that L attachment to the campaign against Geronimo and his allies was reporter's own idea following a year of desk-bound labor. In view of energetic activity to which Lummis devoted his life, this is hardly a Even for those who have read the chapters on Lummis in Clark Powell's California Classics and Southwest Classics (Ward Press, 1971 and 1974, but developed from series in Westways M first-hand acquaintance with Lummis's published work may be rare. is a figure of considerable importance in his time whose legacy has down to us but whose published work is almost inaccessible today. The greatest attraction of Dateline Fort Bowie is not, I should the actual events on which Lummis is reporting - depending on looks at it, he either got there too late (after the death of Captain Crawford under the guns of Mexican irregulars) or left too early ( Indian scouts talked Geronimo and his cadre into surrender). importance the book has lies in the insights of a shrewd, individual which views the \vorId in terms of its personalities and sees it both tively and clearly. Thrapp gives us a precise, just picture of Lummis in his He was a character, but one gifted with a brilliant, evercurious , ever-inquiring intellect, a man with no prejudices that could not be easily lifted, and a free-thinker in a Victorian period when free-thinking and free-acting were rarities. In appearance, with his rumpled clothing and wildly-floating aura of stubborn hair, Lummis might have seemed a precursor to the so-called "youth culture" of our day, but there was more depth and more warmth to him. He was something of a scientist in his clear and meticulous thought, and his views were generally sound. Thrapp has included here all he could identify of Lummis's from General Crook's field headquarters at Fort Bowie, Arizona Reviews 55 ',in the order in which they were written. This is not the order in which they,were printed in the Times, for Lummis wired some dispatches while mailing others, and postal vagaries are not new, much as they may have iiltensified. In addition, dispatches from other sources to the Times (such ,1i5those from Associated Press) are interspersed whenever editor Thrapp I()und them of value. In the end, however, it is not the historical event but the reporter's J(!sponse to it that comes through, often in surprising fashion. A prime eiample is his article of May 2, 1886, on "The Cowboy, a Good Fellow but No Indian Fighter," one of the shrewdest, most devastating, yet most kindly appraisals of that bewildering type that has yet seen print. And the point '1:S, here it sees print, and at least one much-spoken-of, little-read literary figure proves a writer, after all. ARTHUR FRIETZSCHE San Luis Obispo) California Literary America) 1903-1934: The Mary Austin Letters. Selected and edited by Thomas Matthews Pearce. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, ]979. 296 pages, $17.95.) Contributions in Women's Studies, No.5. A feminist, writer, and friend of the Indian, Mary Austin knew many of the leading literary, social, and political figures...

Literary America, 1903–1934: The Mary Austin Letters ed. by Thomas Matthews Pearce

Reviews 55 ',in the order in which they were written. This is not the order in which they,were printed in the Times, for Lummis wired some dispatches while mailing others, and postal vagaries are not new, much as they may have iiltensified. In addition, dispatches from other sources to the Times (such ,1i5those from Associated Press) are interspersed whenever editor Thrapp I()und them of value. In the end, however, it is not the historical event but the reporter's J(!sponse to it that comes through, often in surprising fashion. A prime eiample is his article of May 2, 1886, on "The Cowboy, a Good Fellow but No Indian Fighter," one of the shrewdest, most devastating, yet most kindly appraisals of that bewildering type that has yet seen print. And the point '1:S, here it sees print, and at least one much-spoken-of, little-read literary figure proves a writer, after all. ARTHUR FRIETZSCHE San Luis Obispo) California Literary America) 1903-1934: The Mary Austin Letters. Selected and edited by Thomas Matthews Pearce. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, ]979. 296 pages, $17.95.) Contributions in Women's Studies, No.5. A feminist, writer, and friend of the Indian, Mary Austin knew many of the leading literary, social, and political figures of her day, a range of acquaintance that justifies the title of T. M. Pearce's selected edition of her l~tters. The subtitle - The Mary Austin Letters - is a misnomer, however, SID:e all but seven of the 115 letters included in Literary America were Wfltten to Austin, not by her. Almost all the letters do, though, show us ~ustin as her contemporaries saw her, and Pearce gives a detailed introductIon to each letter, as well as a comprehensive index and biographical sketches of selected literary figures mentioned in the letters. Indeed, Pearce's introductions constitute the books' major strength, ~a~ing it a literary and intellectual history of the period, although one ~nl!ted by Austin's range of correspondents and fragmented by the gaps ~tween the subjects of each letter. Pearce evidently wishes to convey a full ~lew of Austin's life from 1903 to 1934; and to achieve that effect he even Includes letters that are far from complimentary to Austin, the most striking ~xample being Arthur Davison Ficke's devastating critique of American Alhythm. But because so few of her own letters are included, Mary Austin Seems less of a presence in the book than do some of her friends. Among 56 Western American Literature her correspondents were many western writers, and Pearce selected letters' from such westerners as Ina Coolbrith, Andy Adams, Stewart Edward White: Edwin Markham, Jack London, Alice Corbin Henderson, Sinclair LeWis' Willa Cather, Witter Bynner, Robinson Jeffers, and Eugene Manlov~ Rhodes. Other important writers and leaders - Herbert Hoover, Van wyck1 Brooks, and Sherwood Anderson, to name a few - wrote letters to Austin' that Pearce has also included in this edition. Unfortunately, Pearce does not' explain his criteria for selection. He says only that the letters were selected. from the Mary Austin Collection in the Huntington Library. He does nag say how many letters are in that collection nor how many letters by and to Austin are held in other collections. Without knowing more about existing. Austin letters, the reader will probably wonder why Literary Americ;.' includes more discussion of Austin's lesser works (especially her plays) than' of The Land of Little Rain. Pearce's arrangement of the letters is less than ideal. He groups letter~; not only according to Austin's place of residence, but also by writer, and', therefore the reader must jump back and forth chronologically. Letter 59; (January 31,1927) is followed by Letter 60 (February 28, 1931), Letter61~ (December 23, 1923), and Letter 62 (March 1'1, 1921) - an extremei example, but one that's illustrative of the problem. ,'~ Nevertheless, some of the individual letters in this selection are of sudr! importance and are prefaced by such informative introductions by Pearce; that Literary America should be in every public and college library. Eugene Manlove Rhodes' puns and Jack London's statements about his intentions' in writing The Sea Wolf and Martin Eden are...

The End of the Trail: The American West of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler

Journal Article The End of the Trail: The American West of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler Get access Joseph C. Porter Joseph C. Porter graduate student and teaching assistant department of history University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 6, Issue 4, October 1975, Pages 411–424, https://doi.org/10.2307/967777 Published: 01 October 1975

The Little Lion of the Southwest: A Life of Manuel Antonio Chaves

Manuel Antonio Chaves' life straddled three eras of New Mexican history: he was born (1818) at the tag end of the Spanish colonial period, he grew to manhood in the rough and heady days of the Santa Fe trade during the quarter century of Mexican rule (1821-1846), and he spent his mature years under the territorial regime established by the United States. Manuel Chaves' long career (died 1889) was interwoven with almost every major historical event which occurred during his adult life-the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition, the Mexican War, the Civil War, skirmishes with Utes, Navajos, and Apaches. He was called El Leoncito, Little Lion, having earned the name as an Indian fighter. He lived for two years in St. Louis and was a well-travelled man, doing business in New Orleans, New York, and Cuba. A hundred years ago when men still gathered around campfires and storytelling was a well-developed art, Chaves' exploits were known to all New Mexicans. But history has a capricious memory and his name became virtually forgotten. Around the turn of the century, Charles F. Lummis' flowery pen recalled brief attention to Chaves' life, and in 1927 he appeared as a minor character in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop-but otherwise was virtually forgotten. Alas. Too few of our Spanish frontiersmen have been studied in depth. Manuel Chaves and his life should not be lost. He was of the legendary but real men who pioneered and built the 19th century Southwest. Howard R. Lamar laments: The Spanish-American population of New Mexico still lacks a historian. Marc Simmons' biography of Manuel Chaves helps fill that gap. Marc Simmons was called by another writer one remarkable caballero. He certainly is. He has been a Wyoming ranch hand, a movie extra with Warner Brothers, a Peace Corps training officer, a horseshoer, and has taught history at the University of New Mexico. Simmons is probably the only professional farrier in the Southwest with a Ph.D. He now lives in Cerrillos, New Mexico in an adobe house he built himself, and concentrates on horses, mules, research, and writing. He is at work on his next book, Trailing the Long-Ears: An Informal History of Mules and Burros in the Southwest.

A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee

In his own inimitable style, Davy Crockett describes his earliest days in Tennessee, his two marriages, his career as an Indian fighter, his bear hunts, and his electioneering.

Red, White and the Army Blue: Empathy and Anger in the American West

most honored tradition in our histories of the Indian wars. The statements of Indian fighters have seemed eloquent indictments (or, more rarely now, defenses) of the winning of the West. And yet anyone who reads what Army officers said about the final Indian wars must feel that these men have never been listened to closely. As a consequence, I think, a good deal of criticism of American expansion has been blunted in two ways.1 First, it has been easy to forget the limitations of our own empathy and appreciation for native American culture. The officer corps in the last Indian wars provides a useful check on the historian's pride in his cultural relativism and moral compassion. Friends of native Americans can learn humility, I suspect, from some of the red man's old enemies. Second, without paying closer attention to the attitudes of conquerors we cannot identify what distinctive aspects of the dominant culture we wish to criticize. Many 19th century states dispossessed primitive natives; it is an open question what special features of American culture affected our conquest of the West. Comparative studies may make this clear (as comparative studies have shown us what was distinctive about American slavery) but we are now a long way from knowing if our Indian fighting was a peculiar institution. If we listen closely to an articulate group like the officer corps (an institution we find, of course, in most expanding nations) we take the first step toward this comparative approach.2

Colonel John Robert Baylor: Texas Indian Fighter and Confederate Soldier (review)

BOOK REVIEWS69 terly ridiculous." Thus runs Mrs. Ellison's analysis. Her conclusions seem irrefutable. An Epilogue by Peter d'A. Jones entitled "The History of a Myth" traces 100 years of erroneous affirmation of strong support for the North among British cotton operatives. Many leading historians are shown to have been taken in by this myth, which Professor Jones asserts "was born in propaganda and was sustained because it suited the purposes and self-images of those who sustained it." This "illusion, necessary alike to the Marxist and American world views, is now evaporated." Nine valuable tables and an extensive bibliography round out this excellent study. Norman B. Ferris Middle Tennessee State University Colonel John Robert Baylor: Texas Indian Fighter and Confederate Soldier. By Jerry Don Thompson. (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Junior College , 1971. Pp. viii, 114.) John R. Baylor, when he is mentioned in general histories of the transMississippi Civil War, is treated only briefly. He is acknowledged for his military success in Texas and his role as governor of the shortlived Confederate territory of Arizona. Since the South was unable to maintain control of this area Baylor's fame is equally fleeting. In a slim monograph, Jerry Don Thompson has written a life of this Texas figure. He traces Baylor from his medieval ancestors through his birth in 1822 to his 1894 death. He discusses Baylor's various roles as Indian agent and Indian fighter, Confederate Army officer, member of the Confederate Congress, governor of Confederate Arizona and post-Civil War rancher. He also relates how Baylor killed two men in grudge fights and issued an order calling for the "extermination" of Indians in Texas. (This edict caused such a stir that Jefferson Davis responded to insure its non-fulfillment.) This book is based mainly on the Baylor Papers in the University of Texas Archives. Strangely, however, several important books on Texas are not mentioned in the bibliography and a number of pertinent articles are also among the missing. The writing style is at times labored except in those places where Thompson is recounting anecdotes (e.g., the two fights). The key weakness, however, is that, although most of the book deals with Baylor's military activities, Thompson never clearly indicates Baylor's significance to Texas Civil War history. He intimates that if Henry Hopkins Sibley had not replaced Baylor, the Confederate advance into Arizona-New Mexico might have been more permanently successful. Unfortunately, he does not make this point strongly nor does he attempt to prove it. This book has some merit for those interested in a brief account 70CIVIL WAR HISTORY of John R. Baylor and early Confederate military activities in Texas. It is too brief to be thorough biography or military history. John F. Marszalek, Jr. Mississippi State University L. Q. C. Lamar: Pragmatic Patriot. By James B. Murphy. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Pp. 294. $11.95.) Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1825-1896) was a pivotal figure in the reconstruction of the nation and his life and career have attracted biographers. In 1935 Wirt Armisted Cate published Lucius Q. C. Lamar , Secession and Reunion, which, until now, has been the standard life of the Mississippi statesman. Long, laudatory, and laced with effusive claims about Lamar's abilities as an original thinker, a political theorist, and a great jurist, Cate's biography stands with the DunningBowers school of southern historical writing. In contrast, James B. Murphy draws a much more sober, and probably more accurate, picture of Lamar's career and his accomplishments. Based on a thorough investigation of manuscript sources, a detailed reading of the Congressional Record, and extensive work in newspaper files, Murphy's judgments about Lamar's character and career are firmly rooted and convincing. Thus, he sees Lamar as "essentially an orator and a propagandist" and not "an original thinker" (p. 45); a politician who combined "statesmanship of a high order" with "bald deception of the northern people" on the race question (p. 133); a transitional figure between the Sumner eulogy and the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876 which cemented Mississippi Home Rule (p. 187). In his appointive offices Murphy found Lamar a "reasonably competent" Secretary of the Interior (p...

Andrew Jackson's Indian Policy: A Reassessment

A GREAT persons-not excluding some notable historians-have adopted a devil theory of American Indian policy. And in their demonic hierarchy Andrew Jackson has first place. He is depicted primarily, if not exclusively, as a western frontiersman and famous Indian fighter, who was a zealous advocate of dispossessing the Indians and at heart an Indianhater. When he became President, the story goes, he made use of his new power, ruthlessly and at the point of a bayonet, to force the Indians from their ancestral homes in the East into desert lands west of the Mississippi, which were considered forever useless to the white man.1 This simplistic view of Jackson's Indian policy is unacceptable. It was not Jackson's aim to crush the Indians because, as an old Indian fighter, he hated Indians. Although his years in the West had brought him into frequent contact with the Indians, he by no means developed a doctrinaire anti-Indian attitude. Rather, as a military man, his dominant goal in the decades before he became President was to preserve the security and wellbeing of the United States and its Indian and white inhabitants. His military experience, indeed, gave him an overriding concern for the safety of the nation from foreign rather than internal enemies, and to some extent the anti-Indian sentiment that has been charged against Jackson in his early career was instead basically anti-British. Jackson, as his first biographer pointed out, had many private reasons for disliking Great Britain. In her, he could trace the efficient cause, why, in early life, hle had been left

Ossian, Scott and Cooper's Indians

Though Mark Twain's phrase ‘the showiest kind of book-talk’ undoubtedly represents the apogee of the attacks on Cooper's diction in general, the grandiloquent speeches of Cooper's Indians had drawn the fire of the proponents of verisimilitude from the earliest. The North American Review, with The Last of the Mohicans before it, criticized the author's idealization of Indian speech and character (‘We should be glad to know, for example, in what tribe, or in what age of Indian history, such a civilized warrior as Uncas ever flourished?’). Nor, two years later, did the reviewing of one of Cooper's sea novels seem an inappropriate occasion for a fresh onslaught upon his Indians: ‘This bronze noble of nature, is then made to talk like Ossian for whole pages, and measure out hexameters, as though he had been practising for a poetic prize’. Adding weightily to the chorus, as the years succeeded, would be the Indian fighter Cass, who expressed ‘regret that [Cooper] did not cross the Allegany, instead of the Atlantic, and survey the red man in the forests and prairies’, as well as the author of The Oregon Trail and historian of the eighteenth century's struggle against the Five Nations: ‘We do not allude to his Indian characters, which it must be granted, are for the most part either superficially or falsely drawn; while the long conversations which he puts into their mouths, are as truthless as they are tiresome’.

Favor the Bold—Custer: The Indian Fighter (review)

Favor the Bold—Custer: The Indian Fighter (review)

The Ingham Indian Collection

Since the discovery of America the western world has responded enthusiastically to the lore of the natives of the New World. Early Spanish accounts of the Indians of Mexico and South America were translated and widely read in Europe. With the English plantations a new series of reports dealing with the coastal North American tribes appeared. Works on all American natives continued to be written dur­ ing later colonial times when Spaniards moved into northern Mexico and California and when the English temporarily took Florida and filled in the region east of the Appalachians. Indian literature in English received a new stimulus in the nineteenth century with the crossing of the mountains and the rapid extension of white influence into the Midwest and far West. We are perhaps most familiar with the romanticized natives of fiction: the rhythmic Hiawatha, or the unreal but curiously convinc­ ing Indian of James Fenimore Cooper. Pocahontas is the prototype of innumerable Indian maidens who were romantic companions of white men. Writers of history played upon appealing Indian themes, as in the conquest narratives of Prescott and in Parkman’s treatment of imperial clashes in the wilderness. These works, as many readers recognized, successfully combined the popular attractions of fiction with the solid dignity of historical fact. As a larger number of Ameri­ can settlers came into contact with Indians still other genres arose. Explorers, trappers, Indian fighters, and frontier settlers wrote “Per­ sonal Recollections” of their contacts with the Sioux or the Kiowas or the Blackfeet. A common type was the “captivity”, a record of the days, months, or years spent as a prisoner in Indian hands. Another was the military narrative, a description of a particular battle or series of battles against the red men. Increasingly the scientific value of Indian description came to be recognized, and accounts of all kinds took on a sober anthropological tone. Yet much that was purely ex­ otic appeared under the guise of ethnographic legitimacy.

Sociological Symbolism of the "Adult Western"

A socio-psychological analysis of the recurring ideas and emotions that inifluence and produce the adult with a theory as to why it has appeared at this time. The adult is treated as a art form that expresses the emotions, fears, inadequacies and psychoses of modern man. VERY culture has at some precise time in its growth created a folk-type art form in response to its inner turmoils and strivings to satisfy its need for expression of its character. Thus, various art forms such as the Elizabethan theatre, Grecian sculpture, Arthurian legends, impressionistic painting, classical ballet, ethnic folk singing, Flamenco dancing, and so forth, arose as the answer to a need for expression of the culture. For example, the Elizabethan theatre arose in greater part to articulate intense feelings of nationalism, to provide an outlet for the craving for romanitic adventure, to resonate the thoughts of a people just throwing off the shackles of feudalism and searching for knowledge, and to contribute to tlhe enthusiasm and passion for the newly formulated language. The Spanish Armada had been decisively defeated by an all-English navy; English explorers were planting the flag throughout the world and carrying back exotic stories of foreign lands; the Renaissance had liberated the soul and endowed it with a great questioning attitude toward its environment, and the advent of printing had stabilized and focused attention on the nascent language. In such a manner, the adult has evolved at this precise time in our culture as a new art form delineating our motivations and psychoses and permitting their vicarious catharsis. It must be understood that we are not speaking of art in the classical sense, but rather in its secondary meaning as the systematic application of knowledge or skill in effecting a desired result by the adaptation of ideas or emotions to a form of expression. What, then, are these recurring ideas or emotions that influence and produce the adult and make it so enjoyable to all segments of our society? First, the Western contains the spirit of foreign adventure, of new and exciting places; the same element which made the operettas of the twenties and thirties so popular, the locale that is foreign to ours and that gives us a chance to escape our every-day environment and visit some place exotic. Shakespeare used this element successfully in his tales of the kings and the histories which all used foreign locales in the plot. Hollywood used this element in the thirties with a raft of pictures about tropical islands in the prewar South Pacific. Remember, although the western takes place in the United States, the locale is still exotic and foreign, because this locale is not in evidence today and few people have a living memory of it. Coupled with this spirit of foreign adventure is the inherent romance of the West. As the Greeks were concerned with their Trojan Wars, and the Spaniards with their new world conquests, and the English with their colonization, so the American is preoccupied with the West of the beautiful landscapes, with the wide open spaces, the valleys, canyons, mountains, and other scenery. The very landscape breathes heroism between not men but giants. To exist in this land you need heroic will. To the average city dweller, confined to a neighborhood of row houses, a stretch of prairie or mountain range extending as far as the eye can see offers a transcending exhilaration. A second feature lending form and direction to the western format is the unique western hero; for with the western, America has developed its first universal-type hero. America has always been hero-shy; all its heroes are either modern, like movie stars or sports figures, or men of a limited locality such as Paul Bunyan or Rip Van Winkle. Americans have never made a fetish of their Navy and Army heroes as the British, or as the Russians of tlleir Cossacks. America has no mythology as the Europeans, she has no ties with the land or the past as the Israelis, she has had no kings or conquerors leading her armies. The closest America has to heroes are its frontier scout-hunter or Indian fighter and its Babe Ruth's and Lou Gehrig's. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.211 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 06:51:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Cooper's Eloquent Indians

In the recurrent derogation of Cooper's Indian characters as unrealistic and idealized, their figurative language has been the chief specific ground of attack. In most cases, it has been the only concrete issue raised. Thus General Lewis Cass—whose condemnation inflicted lasting damage because of his eminence as Indian fighter and Indian agent—delivered his major broadside against Cooper incidentally, in the course of an article of almost fifty pages devoted to consideration of the current status (in 1828) of study of the Indian languages. After quoting from The Last of the Mohicans and The Prairie some twenty figurative expressions, he declared: “This is not the manner in which Indians talk, nor is it the manner in which any people talk.” Further consideration of the language which Cooper had put into the mouths of his Indian characters brought Cass to his damning and often quoted conclusion: “His Uncas, and his Pawnee Hardheart … have no living prototype in our forests. They may wear leggins and moccasins, and be wrapped in a blanket or a buffalo skin, but they are civilized men, and not Indians.” Another critic who knew Indians at firsthand, William Josiah Snelling, in reviewing the autobiography of Chief Black Hawk in 1835, found the authenticity of the work “unquestionable” except for the figurative language employed in it—blame for which he proceeded to lay on Cooper. “The only drawback upon our credence is the intermixture of courtly phrases, and the figures of speech, which our novelists are so fond of putting into the mouths of Indians. … The term pale faces, often applied to the whites in this book, was, we think, never in the mouth of any American savage, excepting in the fanciful pages of Mr. Cooper. There are many more phrases and epithets of the like nature, and we only mention them, because we think it time that authors should cease to make Indians talk sentiment.” Even more formidable authority was ranged against the authenticity of Cooper's Indian characters, and on the same grounds, by Francis Parkman's dictum in his survey of Cooper's work shortly after the novelist's death: “his Indian characters … it must be granted, are for the most part either superficially or falsely drawn.” The only concrete reason given by Parkman for this condemnation was that “the long conversations which he puts into their mouths, are as truthless as they are tiresome. Such as they are, however, they have been eagerly copied by a legion of the smaller poets and novel writers; so that, jointly with Thomas Campbell, Cooper is responsible For the fathering of those aboriginal heroes, lovers and sages, who have long formed a petty nuisance in our literature.“ Some ninety years later, John T. Flanagan emphasized the attacks of Cass and Snelling on the figurative language of Cooper's Indians, with special reference to The Prairie, adding as his own conclusion: ”Admitting … literary convention … one can yet reject as unnatural the tropes of the Indians.“ James Grossman, who in his James Fenimore Cooper (1949) accepts in general the view that Cooper's Indians are idealized, observes of two major characters in The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, the chief Conanchet and the Puritan Heathcote: ”Unfortunately the two derive their speech, if in different degree and with different authenticity, from the same model, the King James Bible“ (pp. 69–70). It remained for a European scholar to report ”the discovery … that the language of Cooper's Indians was modelled … on the style of Ossian.“ He concludes that Cooper's Indians ”are idealized; they are related to Scott's clan chieftains, Byron's pirates, and Ossian's Celtic heroes; all these figures are but phases of the same romantic movement. Cooper saw his Indians in the light of romantic idealism. … Cooper's Indian rhetoric is a poetic creation and not the speech of living men.“

Finn Burnett, Frontiersman: The Life and Adventures of an Indian Fighter, Mail Coach Driver, Miner, Pioneer Cattleman, Participant in the Powder River Expedition, Survivor of the Hay Field Flight, Associate of Jim Bridger and Chief Washakie

Finn Burnett, Frontiersman: The Life and Adventures of an Indian Fighter, Mail Coach Driver, Miner, Pioneer Cattleman, Participant in the Powder River Expedition, Survivor of the Hay Field Flight, Associate of Jim Bridger and Chief Washakie

Don Benito Wilson: An Average Southern Californian

C APRICIOUS is the fate that decides for what a man shall be remembered: Benjamin Franklin for his kite, George Washington for his cherry tree, Paul Revere for his midnight ride, James Ohio Pattie for his prophylactic peregrination, and the hero of this sketch, Benjamin Davis Wilson, for the mountaintop observatory that perpetuates his name. Published history, as formulated by Don Benito's self-estimate2 and conventionalized by Hubert Howe Bancroft's interpretation, adds that he was a California pioneer of i 841, an inglorious captive at Rancho El Chino, a doughty Indian fighter and grizzly-bear hunter,3 and the first mayor of Los Angeles. Manuscript materials in various California repositories, and especially in the B. D. Wilson Papers4 at the Huntington Library, reveal other facts about Don Benito, possibly more significant than those on Bancroft's classic list. His varied experiences in the fifties, sixties, and seventies exemplify the multiple phases of the transition through which southern California was moving. He appears, not as an exceptional leader, but as a prominent, respected, and moderately successful citizen, an average southern Californian. Wilson's earlier activities may be briefly summarized.5A native of