Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, Number 1, 1976

2 H

S

s

Bicentennial

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY EDITORIAL

STAFF

MELVIN T. SMITH,

Editor

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing MIRIAM B. M U R P H Y , Assistant

Editor Editor

ADVISORY BOARD O F EDITORS T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER, Provo,

1977

M R S . I N E Z S. COOPER, Cedar City, 1978 S. GEORGE E L L S W O R T H , Logan, G L E N M. LEONARD, Bountiful,

1978 1976

DAVID E. MILLER, Salt Lake City, 1976 L A M A R PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1977 RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden,

1976

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1978 J E R O M E S T O F F E L , Logan,

1977

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history. T h e Quarterly is published by the U t a h State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102. Phone (801) 533-5755.

Members of the Society receive the Quarterly and the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual dues; for details see inside back cover.

Single copies, $2.00.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-spaced with footnotes at the end.

Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor. T h e Society assumes no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors.

T h e Quarterly is indexed in Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals, America: History and Life, and on Biblio Cards.

Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

ISSN 0042-143X

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Contents W I N T E R 1 9 7 6 / V O L U M E 44 / N U M B E R 1

IN THIS ISSUE

3

CYRUS E. DALLIN AND HIS PAUL REVERE STATUE

RELL

FRAY FRANCISCO ATANASIO DOMINGUEZ AND FRAY SILVESTRE VELEZ DE ESCALANTE

.

.

.

G.

FRANCIS

ADAMS

40

JOAN RAY HARROW

59

ELEANOR

B.

4

JOSEPH L. RAWLINS, FATHER OF UTAH STATEHOOD

. . . .

THE AMERICANISM OF UTAH

RICHARD

D.

POLL

76

BOOK REVIEWS

94

BOOK NOTICES

105

RECENT ARTICLES

107

T H E C O V E R As Americans make special pilgrimages Revere

eagerly join in Bicentennial

to shrines of liberty

Mall they will admire the equestrian

Cyrus E. Dallin. Photograph

festivities

during

1976, many

United

States.

In Boston's

statue of the legendary

patriot

by Utah

in the eastern

by Rell G. Francis.

© Copyright 1976 Utah State Historical Society

will Paul

sculptor

Books reviewed L U L A PARKKR B E T E N S O N as told to DORA FLACK.

Cassidy,

Butch

My Brother

.

ROBERT J. M A T T H E W S . "A

.

.

.

JERRY SPRINGER

94

.

L A M A R PETERSEN

95

.

JAMES H . LEVITT

96

Plainer

Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible— A History

and Commentary

WALLACE STEGNER, ed. The

of Bernard

DeVoto

Letters

.

.

.

LEONARD J. ARRINGTON. David

Eccles: Pioneer

Western

Industrialist

ARCH

EGBERT

98

ROBERT A. MURRAY

98

FRED R. G O W A N S and E U G E N E E.

CAMPBELL. Fort

Bridger:

Island in the Wilderness

.

.

J A M E S B. A L L E N and T H O M A S G.

ALEXANDER, eds.

Mormons: Clayton,

Manchester

The Journal of William 1840 to 1842

.

.

WILLIAM D. R U S S E L L

99

C. GREGORY C R A M P T O N , ed. Sharlot

Hall on the Arizona Strip: A Diary of a Journey through Northern

Arizona

in 1911 . BARRY M . GOLDWATER

EDWARD C. J O H N S O N . Walker

101

River

Paiutes: A Tribal History

. CATHERINE S. FOWLER

102

J O H N LOGAN A L L E N . Passage

through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest.

R O Y E. A P P L E M A N . Lewis and

Clark: Historical Places Associated with Their Transcontinental Exploration

(1804-6)

.

.

.

BERT W. MARLEY

103

In this issue As several dozen prominent men assembled in Philadelphia two centuries ago to sign the Declaration of Independence, Utah was still two generations away from permanent white settlement. This notwithstanding, her history was beginning to assume definition at that very moment as the Franciscan friars Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante were making final preparation for their famous exploratory journey northward into the vast and varied domain of the Utes and the Paiutes. The details of that preparation, heretofore obscure, and a biographical sketch of these two valiant missionaries are fitting subjects for an article in this Bicentennial issue.

Equally appropriate, but more representative of the ethnic mainstream of Utah's history and therefore featured as the anchor article, is a piece on the Cyrus Dallin sculpture of Paul Revere. Begun when Dallin was a young man pictured below, newly arrived in Boston from his boyhood Springville home, the statue was not to be erected in Boston's Paul Revere Mall until shortly before the renowned sculptor's death sixty years later. The details of this amazing drama, more interesting and complex than those of the midnight ride itself, are recounted here for the first time.

Statehood for Utah is the subject of the two concluding articles, one of them focusing on politics and personalities, the other seeking an interpretive framework.

Complementary not only to each other but to the preceeding articles as well, they reinforce the suggestion that despite Utah's relative youthfulness as a state, her beginnings go far back in time and her history has advanced along a path broadly delineated by a larger national experience.

if u

mt efi*

Cyrus E. Dallin and his Paul Revere Statue

BY RELL G. FRANCIS

Opposite: Cyrus Edwin Dallin at about age thirty-nine when he began to teach at the Massachusetts Normal Art School. Photograph by Stillman Powers, official photographer of Dallin's works, courtesy of Hafen-Dallin Club, Springville. Above: the Paul Revere Monument.

.FN EAR THE OLD NORTH CHURCH in Boston, the nation's Bicentennial activities have centered around a bronze statue of the silversmith who made a dramatic ride across the countryside to warn the patriots that the British were coming. The vital message Paul Revere carried on that midnight ride over two hundred years ago rallied Americans in the fight for independence and brought fame to the courageous rider. However, few people who admire the equestrian statue of Revere know the name of the sculptor, Cyrus E. Dallin of Utah, or the facts of his half-century struggle to get Boston to fulfill its promises to erect his Revere statue.

If his name has been forgotten, Dallin's work is known. His public monuments in major cities remind Americans of their national heritage.

Mr. Francis is presently directing a Bicentennial program in fine arts for the city of Springville. This article is part of a forthcoming biography, Cyrus E. Dallin—Let Justice Be Done.

6

Utah Historical

Quarterly

T h e memorable Indian equestrian statue, Appeal to the Great Spirit, once almost as popular as the Statue of Liberty, still stands in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His Massasoit at Plymouth, Massachusetts, is also remembered for its vivid portrayal of a Native American.

In Utah, Dallin is represented by his monument Brigham Young and the Pioneers in downtown Salt Lake City, the Angel Moroni on the spire of the Salt Lake Temple, a replica of Massasoit on the State Capitol grounds, and his Pioneer Mother at the Springville City Park.

The story of Dallin's struggle to gain acceptance for his Revere statue—once described as "perhaps the most incredible tale in the history of American art" x —has never been fully told, nor has the controversy been unraveled satisfactorily in previous accounts. After careful study of original sources, most of the story has been reconstructed here.

EARLY TRAINING IN U T A H

While the Indian, not Paul Revere, was Dallin's principal subject, the Revere equestrian was his obsession. It was his first and last major work. Dallin himself believed it to be his masterpiece out of some two hundred fifty works, including several public monuments. In his persistent, fifty-six-year effort to get Boston to erect his Revere statue, Dallin often reflected upon his youthful inexperience and humble beginning in the West.

When one of his Boston critics asserted that Dallin "came from the Godless city of Salt Lake and must be a Mormon," 2 the sculptor denied that he or his parents were members of that church. But it was true that his grandfather, Tobias Dallin, and his father, Thomas, sailmakers from England, were converted to Mormonism in 1849 by a missionary, Cyrus Wheelock, from whom young Cyrus was to receive his name. Dallin's father met his mother, Jane Hamer, also a Mormon emigrant, when they crossed the plains to Utah with other pioneers in 1851. 3 1 Leo Rabbette, "Ashes of Famous Blaze over Paul Revere Are Rekindling," clipping from an unidentified Boston newspaper ca. 1930, Cyrus E. Dallin Collection, Robbins Library, Arlington, Mass.

2 "Says Hub's Elite Lost Him Award," unidentified Boston newspaper, March 7, 1936, clipping in Dallin Collection.

3 Information on Dallin's family and his childhood comes principally from a variety of clippings and other materials in the Dallin Collection, including Vittoria Colonna Dallin, "The 'Great Spirit' and Cyrus Dallin," typescript. Other sources include: Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Northeast Area Office, Boston; Martin K. Bovey's typescript biography of Dallin in Bovey's possession, Chelmsford, Mass.; and family records in the Genealogical Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

Dallin and His Paul Revere

Statue

The Dallins eventually settled in the small frontier town ol Springville, fifty miles south of Salt Lake City. Here Cyrus, second oldest of nine children, was born on November 22, 1861, in a log cabin surrounded by an adobe wall intended to keep out hostile Indians. Cyrus, better known as "Bird" or "Birdie" by his family and playmates, learned to get along with the Indians, ride their ponies, and shoot their bows. In fact, the outdoors was his first classroom and studio. The nearby Wasatch Mountains, so sculptural Dallin at age five with his mother, Jane in form, fascinated him and beHamer Dallin. Photograph courtesy of Mrs. E. Bertram Dallin. came an important stimulus in his life. In their shadows he molded figures of toys, animals, Indians, and playmates from clay he found along the spring-fed creeks and ponds.

In such an environment he indulged in fantasy to develop his imagination, but it was from his gentle mother that he gained an appreciation for art:

l^jfc<4~>

I owe my art to my mother, Jane H a m e r Dallin, who loved beauty. In childhood days she modeled things out of clay and baked them in the oven. It was a case of heredity. I always liked art and began sketching and modeling when just a child and she, with my father T h o m a s Dallin, gave me every encouragement. 4

At eight years of age, Cyrus attended the small neighborhood schools where he excelled only in drawing sketches on his slate. Later he gained additional education, devoid of any art instruction, at a mission-type school sponsored by the Presbyterian church. The Dallins, who soon found that they could not conform to the strict requirements of the Mormon faith, changed over to this denomination.

The townspeople first recognized Birdie's talent when at age twelve he modeled a clay bust of Fanny Sutherland, a playmate, and two earthen heads of Joseph and Hyrum Smith from clay busts of the Mormon prophet and his brother. Cyrus had briefly observed busts of the two martyrs in a traveling show conducted by Philo Dibble who 4

Harold H. Jenson, "True Pioneer Stories, Cyrus E. Dallin," Deseret News, June 7, 1934.

8

Utah Historical Quarterly

had been a bodyguard for Joseph Smith.5 At age fourteen Cyrus "had a definite purpose to be an artist," G but without formal training he sketched from nature and copied from available prints.

In the spring of 1879 Dallin went to work at his father's silver mine, the Golden Bell, a speculative venture in the Tintic Mining District about thirty-eight miles southwest of Springville. One day the miners struck a vein of soft white clay that Cyrus, with improvised tools, modeled into two life-size heads of a man and a woman. These busts, which were exhibited that fall at the territorial fair in Salt Lake City, attracted the attention of the Tintic miners and citizens â&#x20AC;&#x201D; partic- Dallin sculpted this head at age eighteen, ularly Levi E. Riter, who shortly before he left for Boston. Photograph courtesy of the Robbins Library, owned a store in Silver City, Arlington, Mass., loaned by Lawrence and C.H. Blanchard, a Bos- Dallin. tonian who had mining interests in the area. Both men recommended that Cyrus should have the opportunity to go back East to study sculpture.

The Dallins favored the proposal, but they had no means to support such a pretentious effort. Blanchard, convinced of the importance of having the boy receive the finest education, enlisted the financial support of a wealthy mine official, Joab Lawrence of Salt Lake City, and together they raised enough money to send young Dallin to the sculpture school of T. H. Bartlett in Boston in April 1880.7 B When Father Dibble, as Philo was called, saw young Dallin's clay busts he predicted that the boy would make busts of the Smiths for the temple. Dallin's persistent attempts to make the Smith statues would suggest that he was aware of Dibble's prediction.

"James W. Reardon, "Cyrus E. Dallin," Boston Sunday Advertiser, June 7, 1931.

7 Additional biographical sources on Dallin include: William Howe Downes, "Cyrus E. Dallin, Sculptor," Brush and Pencil 5 (1899) ; Don C. Johnson, A Brief History of Spring-

Dallin

and His Paul Revere

Statue

9

T H E M O V E TO BOSTON

Birdie Dallin's transition from the uncomplicated life of the West to the cultured environment of Boston is best described by Mrs. Cyrus E. Dallin: So the boy from the mountains went east, ready to meet adventure. There he expected to find the land of culture of which he dreamed, where people talked as they did in books. When he arrived, the awakening was heart-rending for the homesick, mother-sick boy. T h e following days were those of loneliness, disillusionment, and even hunger, for he had little money. H e entered the studio of T r u m a n Bartlett, who was noted for his art criticisms, but not for any creative work, that gift having been bestowed on his talented son, Paul. At the studio much of Dallin's time was occupied in chores by which he earned his instruction. 8

T r u m a n H. Bartlett, an academic sculptor, critic, and teacher who was fairly well known in the area for his monumental statues, had the only sculpture school in Boston.9 In his first day of class Cyrus started a small head of a tiger that he later cast under Bartlett's direction. During the following months the novice sculptor modeled various figures, reliefs, and parts of the human body; and he studied many art books provided by the public library, Bartlett, and his fellow students.

Bartlett was impressed with Dallin's rapid progress. His own gifted teenage son, Paul Wayland Bartlett (1865-1925), was away from home at this time studying sculpture in Paris, which may account for the empathy Bartlett expressed toward the youthful westerner: . . . I have had in my School of Sculpture and Modelling for a few months a young lad . . . from Springville, U t a h , by the n a m e of Edwin Dallin, his board is paid by his family and some few friends who are interested in him.

H e has m a d e such encouraging progress that I wish you to know about him. . . . As his father is not a man of means it is not probable that he can afford to pay his son's expenses very long. T h e tuition of the lad is free, and all that he needs is enough to pay his board and furnish him with clothes.

T h e lad has a fine talent for sculpture, and if properly educated will be an honor to himself and to those interested in him. . . . Natures so eviville, Utah (Springville, 1900), pp. 24, 113; M. Stannard May, " T h e Work of Cyrus E. Dallin, New England Magazine 48 ( 1 9 1 2 ) ; Edward W. Tullidge, "The Young Sculptor of Utah," Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine 3 ( 1 8 8 4 ) ; Alice L. Reynolds, "Interview with Mrs. Thomas Dallin, Mother of the Sculptor," Relief Society Magazine 9 ( 1 9 2 2 ) ; Alice Merrill H o m e , "Cyrus Edwin Dallin," Young Woman's Journal 21 ( 1 9 1 0 ) ; "Cyrus E. Dallin Scrapbook," Hafen-Dallin Club, Springville Museum of Art, Springville, U t a h ; and [William Howe Downes?], Dallin Biographical Manuscript, holograph, Dallin Collection.

H V. C. Dallin, "The 'Great Spirit' and Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 11.

9 Wayne Craven, Sculpture in America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1968), pp. 428-29, contains information on Bartlett and his son.

10

Utah Historical

Quarterly

dently artistic are rare anywhere, but for such an one to spring out of the life of the far west is something to be wondered at and admired. . . .

Why could not some project be undertaken for the erection of a statue in [Salt Lake City] of some worthy citizen, and the commission be given 10 to Dallin

In the fall of 1880, Bartlett gave up his Washington Street studio and moved his sculpture classes to his private studio. Here Dallin made an enlarged copy of Algerian Panther by Antoine Louis Barye, a French animal sculptor whom Cyrus greatly admired. By reproducing the model in terra-cotta, he was able to sell several copies. He earned additional money by working part-time at the adjacent Boston Terra-cotta Works.

His first commission, for which he received two dollars, was a seal for the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic's Hall, a new building in Boston.

Early in 1881, when his money ran short, Cyrus was permitted to sleep without charge at Bartlett's studio on bedding his teacher had generously provided. Despite this initial kindness, however, Bartlett began to display increasing annoyance and harshness toward the boy.

During this troublesome period Cyrus was befriended by W.C. Griffin and Clare Hubbard. The latter introduced him to Vittoria Colonna Murray of Roxbury, the girl Cyrus was to marry nine years later. Vittoria Dallin, who later recalled this event, also explained Bartlett's behavior: When modelling he [Cyrus] had confidence in his ideas, and naturally, this clear view of his aims and purposes annoyed the academic and conservative Mr. Bartlett. Soon he became impatient at the independence of the "wild western colt," and there was little sympathy between them.11

When his funds were depleted, Dallin took Bartlett's advice and went to work full time at the terra-cotta works, earning four dollars and fifty cents a week. Cyrus took little interest in this rough work that interfered with his schooling. On Dallin's occasional visits to the studio, Bartlett suggested the possibility of Cyrus going abroad to study, but the idea seemed futile and only added to his discouragement. During this time Dallin became acquainted with Sidney H. Morse, a student at Bartlett's night classes, who offered Cyrus a chance to work with him on some sculpture commissions at Quincy, Massachusetts. When Dallin told Bartlett of this opportunity, the authoritative teacher strenuously objected and accused the boy of ingratitude. Bartlett would not allow 10

"A Rising Genius," Deseret News, June 22, 1880.

V. C. Dallin, " T h e 'Great Spirit' and Cyrus E. Dallin," pp. 11-12. See also Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 4 ; A.J. Philpott, "Dallin Has Waited 50 Years to Model Statue of Revere," Boston Sunday Globe, October 22, 1933.

11

Dallin

and His Paul Revere

Statue

11

Cyrus to take the job. Believing this to be an infringement upon his rights, the young sculptor refused to be bound, and quit his job with the terracotta works. In M a y 1881 Dallin moved to Quincy where he lived and worked with Morse for fifteen months making cemetery statues and reliefs for a granite company.

Sidney Morse, a native of Ohio, sympathized with anyone struggling for an art education. H e greatly influenced Dallin's intellectual and artistic development by encouraging him to read the philosophical works of Goethe, Emerson, Kant, and other great authors. Morse also introduced Cyrus to important Bostonians, including Martin Milmore, the sculptor who h a d made the Civil W a r Memorial on Boston C o m m o n ; and Wendell Phillips, who with Morse edited and published the Radical Review, a magazine devoted to reform ideas. Phillips, who made caustic criticisms of Boston's elite sculptors, took a liking to young Dallin and later came to Cyrus's defense in the Revere statue controversy.1L> I n September 1882 Dallin returned to Boston where he soon rented a studio at 16 Pemberton Square, across the river from Charlestown, sharing the quarters with George Peterson, a fellow pupil of Bartlett's.

During the remainder of the year he made a plaster bust of E.H. Clement, editor of the Boston Transcript, and a statuette of the famous comedian William Warren. Additionally, Dallin produced a relief bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes; six half-size copies in plaster of the bust of Hermes by Praxiteles for Moyes and Blakeslee's store; and some heads to be used as models in the window of Jordan and Marsh's department store. These works and previous subjects steadily matured Dallin's sculptural ability, but they seemed to offer little preparation for the important equestrian statue that was to follow.

T H E REVERE STATUE COMPETITION

In February 1883 Cyrus Dallin began an equestrian model of Paul Revere which he completed in six weeks. It is not known when Cyrus learned of the Revere statue competition, sponsored by a committee of well-known Bostonians, representatives from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of Free Masons, and the Revere family. However, the committee did issue circulars in 1882 inviting artists to send in models by April 19, 1883. T h e " A . J . Philpott, "Dallin's Death Recalls a Distinctive Art E r a , " New York Tunes.

November 15, 1944; Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 5 ; William Howe Downes, "Monuments and Statues in Boston," New England Magazine 1 1 (1894) : 354, 369.

12

Utah Historical

Quarterly

entries were to be unsigned to ensure impartial judging. As inducement, three hundred dollars would be awarded to each of the three best designs submitted. Dallin was probably attracted to the competition by the cash prizes offered.11 The artists were asked to incorporate in their models ideas expressed in a certain verse of Longfellow's famous poem, "Paul Revere's Ride."

Dallin's entry, titled "Waiting for the Lights," was displayed at the Boston Art Club together with the other models that had arrived from such cities as Saint Louis, New York, and Philadelphia. With the exception of a standing figure of Paul Revere, all of the models were equestrian groups.11 To his surprise young Cyrus learned that his entry was chosen as one of the three prize winners.

For this statue of Paul Revere, which it is proposed to set up in the city, eight models were sent in, and the committee which was to select from these the three best designs has completed its labors. These three models have been placed on exhibition in the gallery of the Art Club. For each a prize of $300 is to be paid, although this does not pledge acceptance of any one of the designs. T h e entries for the prizes have been closed, but it is expected that other designs will be sent in including one from Mr. [Thomas] Ball. T h e successful competitors have been Mr. James E. Kelly of New York, M r . Daniel C. French of Concord, and Mr. C.E. Dallin of this city. T h e first shows Paul Revere on the Charlestown side of the river, just in the act of springing upon his horse, and casting a quick glance over his shoulder for the lights of the Old N o r t h Church. T h e model which received the second choice, that of Mr. French, shows the rider seated upon his horse, looking over his shoulder in impatient waiting for the signal. T h e other design also shows Revere seated upon his horse, but is less animated in pose and expression than Mr. French's model. 1 "'

Unfortunately, none of the three models was accepted for the statue.

One sarcastic critic, unhappy with the competition's meager prize offerings and the quality of the entries, accused French and Dallin of being unoriginal. After denouncing French's model, he continued: T h e second "premiated" model, by Mr. Dallin, although m u c h smaller, is of the same family as Mr. French's, the horse being apparently a near ,:l

Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 7; " T h e Statue of Paul Revere," Boston Evening Transcript, April 25, 1883.

11 Downes, "Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 6 (Downes's dates are incorrect); "Rare Stroke of Chance Saves Dallin Statue," Deseret News, July 31, 1937; " T h e Statue of Paul Revere"; "Revere's Statue," Salt Lake Herald, November 30, 1884.

15 "Art and Artists," Boston Daily Globe, April 29, 1883. Daniel Chester French, who became famous as the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and of other great works, was thirty-three at the time of the Revere competition. Dallin was twenty-one.

The two artists became close friends.

Dallin and His Paul Revere

Statue

13

relative of that which has borne the bronze figure of Washington so many years on the Boston Public Garden, while his rider presents all the dignified ease of attitude which is so desirable and fashionable among equestrian statues.16

Undoubtedly, this terse accusation and Dallin's youthful appearance and unknowTi reputation gave the committee second thoughts about its choice. There was another reason for the stalemate. All of the models were declared historically inaccurate. As Dallin later explained: The first time we submitted models in the competition it was interesting to see that each entrant had chosen the same dramatic moment, Revere seated on the horse and turning back to wait for the light, as. the Poet Longfellow put it: "He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns!"

But some erudite gentleman wrote a letter to Boston's classic newspaper declaring that not only the artists had erred in depicting this gesture, but that the immortal Longfellow had exceeded his poetic license, had gotten off on the wrong metric foot, so to speak. The fact was, Paul Revere did not wait to see the "lantern aloft in the belfry arch," but from other signals knew the British were coming and set out to spread the alarm. 17

Eager to prove himself, Dallin asked the committee chairman for permission to submit a second model in the unresolved contest, and his request was granted. Within three weeks he had completed his design 10 American Architect and Building News 13 (1883) : 194. Since Dallin admired Thomas Ball's equestrian of Washington, the youthful sculptor may have been influenced by it. However, live horses were still seen on Boston streets and could have been used as models, and Dallin would have remembered horses from his boyhood as well. See Albert F. Cochrane, "Cyrus E. Dallin: Let Justice Be Done," Boston Evening Transcript, November 18, 1933.

17 Rabbette, "Ashes of a Famous Blaze."

The first Paul Revere model made by Dallin in 1883 for the competition. Present location unknown. Photograph courtesy of the Robbins Library.

14

Utah Historical Quarterly

and sent it to the Boston Art Club for a run-off competition limited to Dallin, French, and Kelly. The committee again considered "all the models that had been presented" but could not reach a decision. The committee then began negotiations with other artists that dragged on for more than a year. Different models were presented and considered.

In an effort to speed matters, a move was made to have the commission given to some artist without asking for a model, but this idea was rejected.18 The committee's failure to make a decision and the group's subsequent inaction were predicted by a critic who additionally charged that the committee was "now casting about for means of opening communication with those distinguished men who were not so reduced in purse or reputation as to contend for prizes." 1!' The committee was undoubtedly still waiting for Thomas Ball to enter his model, a surmise largely verified by a news item in the Transcript, June 23, 1883: Mr. Thomas Ball, the sculptor, has at his studio on Bedford Street a bronze statue of "Paul Revere's Ride." It is a spirited work, and is in many respects superior to some of the models recently shown at the Art Club of the same subject. . . . The work is interesting and unlike anything yet shown. The committee have not yet seen it, and a decision will not probably be given for some time yet. Mr. Ball will probably return to Florence in September.

1S Downes, "Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 6; "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, January 22, 1885; Cyrus E. Dallin, "Dallin, Autobiographical," Salt Lake Tribune, December 23, 1894: Dallin Biographical Manuscript, pp. 7 - 8 ; "Revere's Statue." Sculptors such as Augustus SaintGaudens and Paul Bartlett may have been the artists approached by the vacillating committee.

39 American Architect.

The second Revere model, made in May 1883, was not accepted by the indecisive committee, an indication of the inaction and vacillation that was to stretch over more than a half-century.

This model's present location is unknown. Photograph courtesy of the Robbins Library.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

15

Thomas Ball had made his Paul Revere statue in the previous year, 1882, according to his autobiography, My Threescore Years and Ten.20 Ball's interest in the Revere competition is also mentioned by Glad Maclntyre, who interviewed Dallin in 1940 : T h e n there arrived from Italy Mr. T h o m a s Ball, whose statue of George Washington stands in the Public Gardens. Mr. Ball had hoped to submit a model in the Paul Revere competition and was disappointed to find himself too late. Whereupon the committee, having regard to Mr. Ball's undoubted ability, held a second competition, including Mr. Ball's model as well as those of Mr. Dallin, Mr. French, and Mr. Kelly. 21

Newspaperman Thomas Carens verified the above account and asserted that the three winners of the "elimination contest" had no objection to Ball's entry into competition.

While he awaited some word from the committee, Dallin completed a number of smaller works, including Little Boy, exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in October 1883; Cowboy, Indian Chief, and Greaser, three equestrian statues; and a bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes. During the summer of 1883 Cyrus gave up his Pemberton Square studio and began traveling, sketching, and reading. Upon his return to Boston he rented space at the Studio Building at Tremont and Bromfield streets." In August, Dallin's second model of the Revere equestrian was placed on exhibit at Chase's gallery where it was favorably received: This new model presents Revere on his horse with a very spirited, unconventional and vividly d r a m a t i c pose and gesture. Reining back his excited steed, the "midnight messenger" points with a right straight a r m in the direction he has come, and his tense and anxious face almost speaks the message he bears for each farmhouse by the way. T h e action a n d "story" of the statue are powerfully given, and the whole strikes the eye as singularly fresh, earnest and original. 2 3

This encouraging appraisal of his work surely reinforced Dallin's confidence, for in September the sculptor wrote to LDS President John Taylor, calling attention to his success in Boston and proposing that he be commissioned to erect a memorial statue to Joseph Smith: Knowing the reverence with which Joseph Smith's memory is held in U t a h , a n d also knowing the generosity of the people, I know of nothing -°2ded. (Boston, 1892), p. 310.

21 "Story of a Statue," 1940, clipping in Dallin Scrapbook.

C2 Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 8; "A Skillful Sculptor," Deseret Evening News, February 1, 1884.

2:1 "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, August 25, 1883.

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Utah Historical

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more fitting with which to honor the prophet and the people than a portrait statue in bronze of Joseph Smith.2"4

Whether Dallin received an answer from President Taylor to his proposal is not known. Coincidentally, however, Mormon businessman Hiram B. Clawson and his son William R. Clawson, an art student at the Academy of Design in New York, called on Dallin at his studio in October. Impressed with Dallin's competence, the elder Clawson encouraged Cyrus to come to Salt Lake City and promised to use his influence in securing commissions for the young sculptor."'

At the same time additional good news came from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts where Dallin had entered his Revere model in an exhibit of contemporary American art. An art critic compared his statue to Thomas Ball's equestrian of Revere which was also in the exhibit: No feature of the current exhibition . . . is in its way stronger than the statuary. Most visitors will perhaps look first at Ball's bronze figure of Paul Revere on horseback, " T h e Mercury of the Revolution," but doubtless not a few will confess that it does not fill their ideal. Both horse and m a n are well modelled, and both are intended to express the utmost speed of motion; but somehow they don't express it. At least the horse does not. . . . If Ball himself were to view this lack in his work, a n d compare it with the spirited action of Dallin's plaster cast of Paul Revere . . . he would confess that the neophyte got ahead of the veteran in one respect at least. I n the young sculptor's work there is a perfect whirlwind of speed in both m a n and horse, while this force of expression does not detract from the reality of either. It is certainly a remarkable piece of work for so young a man, one of those things that make one fear it may be too good, as promising more than performance can redeem in the future.2<}

The wavering Revere committee should have been moved to more positive action by this glowing evaluation, but the critic's closing statement was the key to the committee members' indecision. They, likewise, had doubts that one so young was qualified to carry out such an important commission as the Revere statue.L'7 Dallin now experienced all of the faults of the open competitionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the jealousies, lack of funds, and indecisions of legislatorsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that more experienced sculptors avoided.

Months passed without any action by the Revere committee. Finding little work in Boston, Dallin's thoughts again turned to the West. On January 13, 1884, he wrote a second letter to President John Taylor: 24 Dallin to Taylor, September 11, 1883, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

25 Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 9.

26 "Art Notes," Boston Evening Transcript, October 31, 1883.

21 Philpott, "Dallin Has Waited 50 Years."

Dallin and His Paul Revere

Statue

17

T h e Committee of the Revere statue have decided not to do anything at present; so I cannot tell how long I shall have to wait before a decision.

I n the mean time, I have to live, and as everything is so dull here I am going to try what I can do in my native Territory. If you have anything in the line of sculpture you would like done, or if you know of anyone I should be most pleased to hear from you on my arrival in S.L.C. 28

Having received the last of the $300 prize money for the initial Revere competition, and with funds donated by friends, Cyrus was able to return to Utah in February 1884. He had been led to believe that he would be able to make statues of Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, or other prominent men. The Boston Transcript reported that he would open a studio in Salt Lake City "with the intention to study the picturesque subjects of his native Territory, such as Indians, cowboys, buffaloes, etc., with reference to making statuettes and groups illustrating real American life." If in his optimism, Cyrus had hoped to secure profitable commissions from Mormon church leaders and public officials that could finance the pursuit of these more "picturesque subjects," the dream did not materialize. Cyrus was welcomed home with all the fanfare of a hero, and Hiram B. Clawson, as promised, introduced him to influential Mormon leaders, but these contacts produced no commissions for work.29 T H E T H I R D M O D E L â&#x20AC;&#x201D; D A L L I N ' S FAVORITE

In mid-June Cyrus was notified that the Revere committee was ready to negotiate with him, providing he would make certain alterations in his model. O n hearing this encouraging news, Dallin immediately returned to Boston where he secured a small studio in the Lawrence Building and began a new Revere model that he finished in August. The new model was studied by the committee who found it unsatisfactory.

Additional alterations were suggested that resulted in still another model that Dallin completed and sent to the Boston Art Club on November 11, 1884. In the days that followed, the committee met and discussed the merits of the model and then adjourned to Dallin's studio.' 0 The details of Dallin's meeting with the committee members are revealing: 28

Dallin to Taylor, January 13, 1884, LDS Archives.

Dallin Biographical Manuscript, pp. 9 - 1 0 ; "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, February 4, 1884. Dallin never did make statues of Joseph and Hyrum Smith for the temple. However, he did make a plaster model for the Angel Moroni statue in 1891 and a plaster bust of Joseph F. Smith, the only statuettes that remain in the Salt Lake Temple, according to Linden W. Millgate, chief engineer, who was interviewed by the author on November 11 and 14, 1974, in Salt Lake City.

30 "A Laurel Wreath for Utah's Sculptor," Salt Lake Herald, June 22, 1884; "Revere Statue," Salt Lake Herald, November 30, 1884; Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 13.

29

18

Utah Historical Quarterly . . . Many of them saw our young sculptor for the first time and were astonished at his youthful appearance. H e was then nearly 23 years old.

H e was asked to leave the room, and underwent the final ordeal of suspense, walking up and down the corridor while they were discussing his fate within. At last they summoned him in, and declared their intention of giving him the contract.* 1

The persevering youth had finally won; the year and a half competition came to a close. On November 18, 1884, the Revere committee "almost unanimously" voted to award the contract to Dallin. To his dismay, Cyrus read the announcement in the Boston Evening Transcript that "Charles E. Dallin," a "twenty one year old" from Utah was the successful artist.32 Mrs. Daniel Chester French in her book, Memories of a Sculptor's Wife, described Dallin's mixed emotions upon learning of his award: . . . he was somewhat overwhelmed by the fact that he was not an Easterner, that he knew he would be looked upon as an outsider and that he went down to his studio the next morning somewhat discouraged and blue.

T h e first thing he saw was a small note pushed under his door. This he took into his studio and opened. It was from D a n French, saying, " I congratulate you. Yours was by far the best model. I'm glad vou won." 33 " D a l l i n Biographical Manuscript, p. 13.

12 November 19, 1884.

83 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1928), p. 209.

Dallin's third model, present location unknown, won the Revere monument contract for the youthful sculptor in 1884. His favorite of the Revere models, it was lost while he was studying in Paris. Photograph courtesy of the Robbins Library.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

19

Although abbreviated, his name, "C.E. Dallin," had been correctly printed in at least one newspaper, the Boston Herald, that reported that young Dallin's model of Revere had been warmly praised by eminent artists whose opinions had been requested by the statue committee.31 The committee had called for expert opinion because: the monumental statues of Boston have been so severely criticised by some persons that the committee who had charge of the proposed Paul Revere statue were determined to act with caution, and before accepting Mr. Dallin's design they secured the opinion of more than twenty prominent artists and connoisseurs. One said, "The horse is marvellous; the pose is splendid." Another wrote, "The general effect surprised me as being very speaking and decidedly monumental." A third declared that "it is a spirited work of art, and if carried out will make a statue of which we should be proud." 35

The Transcript announced that Dallin's model would be cast into plaster and exhibited at some prominent place in the city. Additionally this newspaper made the following appraisal of the Revere group: This is not a statue of Paul Revere, but one in which Revere is a happy accident. It may be said to represent, in a deeper sense, the fire, enthusiasm and patriotism of the Revolution. The motive of the work is the famous incident in the life of Paul Revereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his memorable ride to Lexington. . . .

The face of the rider in an ideal conception and not a likeness of Paul Revere, though there is some resemblance in the general shape. The body is that of a vigorous man, and determination seems to be expressed in the whole carriage of the figure intended to commemorate the act of the Revolutionary patriot. 36

The Boston Advertiser best described Dallin's third model, with particular emphasis upon his horse: . . . The narrative character of the composition is its strong point. The horse, a powerfully built animal, has been pulled up so short that he still preserves some of the momentum of his furious flight, and is full of spring and fire, elasticity and quivering life. His noble head is brought back close to his breast, the neck sharply arched, the mouth opened, by the force of the rider's restraint, and one may almost hear him pant, so well expressed is the impression of suddenly arrested motion. The left foreleg is lifted as high as possible from the ground, while the right hindleg is still in the air. . . . The mane is long and abundant. . . . A thick forelock flies out between the ears, which are laid back. . . . . . . We think Mr. Dallin has comprehended the spirit of the incident, expresses its picturesque phase well, and has given us a dashing work, well 84

November 20, 1884. " T h e Paul Revere Statue."

36 Ibid.

38

20

Utah Historical Quarterly studied, not especially learned, not too profound, but effective and enthusiastic; not an inanimate lump like some of our statues, but a work whose faults are those of youth and inexperience. 37

The contract to start the final work seemed to be assured, but Dallin's "inexperience" was now to reveal itself in matters of business with politicians. By some oversight of the committee, Mayor Augustus P. Martin, who was to be replaced by incoming Mayor Hugh O'Brien, failed to sign the contract, rendering it invalid until July 4, 1885.3S Early newspaper accounts and Dallin's writings provide some clues to the specifications of the 1884 contract. The statue was to be of bronze, double life-size, mounted upon a granite pedestal in Copley Square.

Dallin would be allowed twro years to complete the monument for which he would receive $25,000. "I shall probably go to Paris to do it, although I shall have it cast here," Dallin wrote to a friend.39 Boston City had already donated the site for the statue and had appropriated $5,000 to be paid on completion of the monument with the understanding that the Revere committee would raise $20,000 more by public subscription. The committee had previously raised sufficient money to pay for the expenses and the prizes for the preliminary competitions, and it hoped to secure enough funds to defray Dallin's expenses in Europe where he proposed to study for the purpose of perfecting the statue. Subcommittees for advertising and finance were organized to solicit and collect funds from the public. Unfortunately, the expected contributions did not come in.4" On July 4, 1885, a new agreement for the Revere statue w7as signed

by Mayor Hugh O'Brien and Dallin. The tentative 1884 contract was revised and updated. The new restrictive specifications were full of loopholes that would limit the sculptor's artistic freedom: the Revere statue, to be completed by September 1887, was subject to any modifications the committee might suggest; Dallin was to receive $30,000 for the monument, but the cost of the pedestal was not specified in this fee; the money was to be secured by public subscription; and the mayor and the committee members were not to be held personally responsible if their :

" "The Fine Arts: Mr. Dallin's Paul Revere," Boston Advertiser, December 19, 1884.

Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 13.

39 Boston Herald, November 20, 1884; Boston Evening Transcript, January 22, 1885; "Mr. Dallin's Plans," Salt Lake Herald, December 18, 1884. Dallin completed five commissions in anticipation of going to Europe in spring 1885. By summer funds were still inadequate, and the Paris plans were postponed. See "Art and Artists," Boston Evening Transcript, April 9, 1885, and Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 14.

40 "Cyrus E. Dallin," Territorial Enquirer (Provo), December 2, 1884; Dallin Biographical Manuscript, p. 14.

38

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

21

efforts to raise the money should fail. The remaining articles stipulated how the statue was to be protected against loss and where it was to be cast. Although not mentioned in the contract, Boston City had pledged $5,000 to the statue to make the contract more binding.

The new contract brought unexpected opposition rather than fresh hope. Early accounts mention only that the Revere project failed because of lack of funds. Later sources, originating from Dallin's public testimony in the 1930s, revealed the antagonist who had destroyed public confidence in the Revere statue: Dallin's former teacher, Truman H. Bartlett, whose troublesome personality and opinion had considerable influence in the art circles of Boston. Bartlett's interference is best described by A.J. Philpott, a life-long friend of Dallin and art critic of the Boston Globe: T h e first intimation young Dallin had that anything was amiss about the Paul Revere statue was when he thought he discovered a coolness and reserve in some members of the committee. . . . . . . All he could learn was that doubts about young Dallin were being whispered around, doubts about the wisdom of awarding so important a commission to a comparatively unknown youth from the Far West. . . . And then the real reason for all this whispering and hostility came to the surface in a sensational letter to the Boston Transcript—a letter about two columns in length—written by Freeman [ T r u m a n H.] Bartlett, a local sculptor who had not been in the competition.

In this letter Bartlett severely criticised Cyrus E. Dallin's model for the equestrian statue of Paul Revere and protested against the award of the commission to so youthful and inexperienced a sculptor.

I t was the sort of letter which sounds as if written with the best of intentions in the world and from the standpoint of protecting the public against a grave danger. I t was well done, and it had its effect—especially on the committee. For without m u c h of any excuse—and without any explanation to Mr. Dallin—that committee practically dropped the whole thing. 4 1

Although Bartlett's original denouncement of Dallin's "impossible man on an impossible horse" and the date of its issue in the Transcript have not been located, other writers verify Philpott's account. Bartlett's criticism had the desired effect.42 Contributions were not forthcoming and the project was once again derailed.

Dallin, out of deference for Bartlett's reputation, did not publicly accuse his teacher of injustice until well after Bartlett's death in 1923.13 11

Philpott, "Dallin Has Waited 50 Years."

"Report from New England Mission," Deseret News, December 14, 1940; Rabbette, "Ashes of Famous Blaze."

4,1 Toward the end of his career Dallin was quoted as saying: "When the Paul Revere 42

22

Utah Historical Quarterly

Reflecting upon the frustration he had experienced with the Revere competition, the indomitable Dallin later noted: I was disappointed, but not defeated. I learned that life is full of disappointments. But I have also learned to leave disappointments behind me and go on to something else. 44

In hopes that he could counteract Bartlett's opposition and restore the committee's confidence in his work, Dallin set out to gain the recommendation of America's most noted sculptor at this time, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who was presently at work on his Abraham Lincoln, Shaw Memorial, and other important commissions. S a i n t - G a u d e n s Dallin, upper left by clock, and his wrote to Dallin, January 12, fellow art students in Paris. Photo1887, expressing sympathy for graph courtesy of the Robbins Library.

Cyrus's position in the Revere statue predicament. Saint-Gaudens said he would write "encouraging words," but he was reluctant to give an "entire approval" which would put responsibility on himself: I think the horse is very good and strong and certainly if carried out as shown would be a work not to be ashamed of. T h e rider I must frankly say I do not like and I think you might do better. There is so much that is good in the horse, and it shows so clearly that you have a good sculptor's conception of form that, I think, with time and no worry you might make a credible figure to say the least. I t seems to me that as the matter is so important to you that an offer on your part to put up the work full size and ask that the committee pay your expenses only until that is done and reject the work if unsatisfactory would make so small an outlay competition came I made my model. Truman Bartlett's son Paul entered a model, too. I won and Truman was angry when his son lost out. Mr. Bartlett didn't get along very well with me nor I with him." See Ada M. Barron, "An Interview with Cyrus E. Dallin," August 18, 1940, Salt Lake City, typescript in "Cyrus Edwin Dallin, Sculptor: A Collection of Photographs and Facts of His Life and Works," p. 221, scrapbook, comp. Ada M. Barron and Beulah C. Whiting, Springville Museum of Art. 44 Mrs. Peter Bertocci, "Cyrus Edwin Dallin," p. 2, typescript, Dallin Collection.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

23

that they might consider it, or better still you might make other studies of the man until satisfied.

You seem so just in your appreciation of situations that I am sure you will understand my position, particularly when you consider that what I have stated about your work is exactly what I think and it would not be fair to the gentlemen you mention, the public, or myself, should I commit myself to approve of a part of your work that does not satisfy me.45

It is reasonable to believe that Dallin accepted the advice of SaintGaudens and others and worked on the figure of Revere to make the changes that are apparent in his future models.

STUDY IN PARIS

In the fall of 1888 Dallin's fortune changed when Mrs. David P. Kimball, a distant relative of his fiancee, Vittoria Murray, gave him money for study in Paris. Before leaving for Paris in August 1888, he signed for the second time an extension clause in the Revere contract, setting the new completion date to September 1, 1891. Like many of his American contemporaries who traveled to Paris, the undisputed sculpture center of the world, Dallin entered the Academie Julian where he studied under the noted sculptor, Henri Michel Chapu.40 In the spring of 1889 Dallin applied for entrance into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and although he passed the examination, he did not take advantage of the opportunity inasmuch as he had secured an important commission from Thomas W. Evans, an American dentist. Dr. Evans wanted to present an equestrian statue of the Marquis de Lafayette to France, in the name of the American people. Dallin made the bronze model of Lafayette that was prominently displayed near the entrance of the American Industrial Department at the Paris Exposition of 1889.

Prior to the opening of the exposition. Dallin wrote to his brotherin-law, Sid Southworth, explaining his recent work: I have been working very hard for the past months. . . . I have a bronze model of an equestrian statue at the exposition which I am to put up in the city of Paris. The subject is Lafayette, and is given to Paris by a rich American who lives here, and he has commissioned me to do the work, so you will see that in one sense all goes well with me. This will be quite 45

Saint-Gaudens to Dallin, January 12, 1887, microfilm, roll 141, Archives of American

Art. ""Vittoria C. Dallin, "The Family of Cyrus E. Dallin and V. C. Dallin and Facts about Them," p. 7, notebook in the possession of Lawrence Dallin; Craven, Sculpture in America, p. 419; Down'es, "Cyrus E. Dallin, Sculptor," pp. 9-10.

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Utah Historical

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a great thing for me, as I shall be the only American who will have a statue in Paris. 47

Dallin's Lafayette was praised by the newspapers and by France's eminent sculptor of animals, Emmanuel Fremiet. For some unknown reason the statue was never erected in colossal (double life-size) proportions as planned. Ironically, Paul Bartlett, son of Dallin's contentious teacher, had his own equestrian statue of Lafayette placed in the courtyard of the Louvre as a gift from the American school children in 1908.

Were it not for this later date, one could suspect that the Bartletts had again interfered with Dallin's success.ls During his second year at Paris the young sculptor learned that Buffalo Bill and his company of Indians were performing in the city.

Naturally, Dallin was drawn to their encampment where he made a small model of a mounted Indian. While engaged in this work, Cyrus became friends with the famous painter of animals, Rosa Bonheur. This mannish-looking artist worked alongside Dallin making sketches of the colorful Indians and their ponies. From his small study of the Indian, Dallin reproduced a life-size equestrian statue titled Signal of Peace that brought him additional recognition when it won an award in the Paris Salon of 1890.49 Pleased with his new success, the maturing artist wrote to his fiancee: I have been awarded an "Honorable Mention" by the Salon of 1890. I wish you were here just at this moment, as I should feel entirely happy could you put your arms around me and say how happy it all made you feel.

Well, I have worked hard for it, and I should have been frightfully disappointed had I not received it.

I have one source of downright pleasure, and that comes from knowing that I have honestly earned my honors, as I did nothing in any way which approached wire pulling. I find over here it is the thing to do, but as I don't believe in it I would not lower myself to do it, consequently, I feel proud that my honor was honestly won.

47 As quoted in "A Utah Boy in Paris," Salt Lake Herald, May 28, 1889.

48 "Dallin's LaFayetteâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Burne Jones and the Parisians," microfilm roll 182, Archives of American Art; Dallin to his parents, July 26, 1889, in possession of William B. Patterson; Craven, Sculpture in America, pp. 430-31, 457.

49 V.C. Dallin, "The 'Great Spirit' and Cyrus Dallin," pp. 15-17; Downes, "Cyrus E. Dallin, Sculptor," pp. 10-11.

Signal of Peace, one of many Indian subjects sculpted

by Dallin is in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Photograph

by Harold Allen, courtesy of Thomas Leek.

Dallin and His Paul Revere

Statue

25

. . . This has given me confidence in myself, and I shall try to make others believe the same. I hope to see Governor Ames soon and will then know just what I am to expect from the Revere affair. This ought to boom my stock "way up," and if the Bostonians don't come to terms now they never will. 60 T H E F O U R T H AND F I F T H MODELS

Dallin returned to America in August 1890 to find that his success abroad had been recognized, but despite his renewed efforts to get the Revere committee to activate the project, he found the Bostonians were not ready to "come to terms now." No doubt a contributing factor to this new disappointment wras yet another unexpected tragedy. His contractwinning model of Revere was lost. Upon his return to Boston, Cyrus learned that the shop where he had left the model had closed and the owner had died. The model could not be located.

There is good reason to believe that Dallin began reworking the unacceptable Revere model that he had completed in August 1884, again making changes suggested by the committee. This stiff-legged model, which bears the date 1884 on its base, shows a maturity of modeling and surface technique that demonstrate Dallin's European training. Dallin used the braced front legs stance and action of the horse similar to his Greaser equestrian of 1883. The resemblance of the two equestrians gives additional support to the theory that the fourth Revere model had been started in 1884.51 O n June 16, 1891, Cyrus E. Dallin married Vittoria Colonna Murray, the Roxbury girl he had singled out to be his bride nine years 50 Dallin to Murray, June 3, 1890, pp. 10-11, Dallin Collection.

51 Lawrence Dallin to Charles H. Harvey and Co., no date but after 1940, Dallin Collection, describes the history of Cyrus Dallin's work on the Revere models from 1883 to 1940. A plaster model, approximately thirty-six inches high, of the fourth model is owned by the Paul Revere Insurance Co., Worcester, Mass.

The horse of the fourth Revere model resembles that of Dallin's Greaser equestrian of 1883. Photograph courtesy of the Robbins Library.

26

Utah Historical Quarterly

previously. Dallin facetiously remarked in later life that, in one respect at least, he had "put one over" on the great Michelangelo. He explained that Michelangelo had also admired a woman named Vittoria Colonna, but they were never married. "I won my Vittoria Colonna," Dallin said proudly.'"

During the next nine years Cyrus started a family of three boys: created a variety of works for the Mormon church (1891-93); produced several private commissions; entered equestrian models of famous generals and other public figures in competitions; taught sculpture for a year at Drexel Institute in Philadelphia (1895-96) ; and returned to Paris for additional study under Jean Dampt. The most important works of this period were the Angel Moroni and the Brigham Young and the Pioneers Monument at Salt Lake City; Sir Isaac Newton for the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Bertha Cashing, Don Quixote, and the Indian equestrian Medicine Man, all of which were completed in Paris.

Sixteen years had elapsed since the original Revere competition.

When Dallin returned to America in 1899 his reputation as a sculptor was firmly established, and he secured a permanent teaching position at the Massachusetts Normal Art School in Boston. With the sale of his Medicine Man to the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia he was able to purchase a fixed residence in Arlington Heights, a suburb northwest of Boston.51 Dallin was again hopeful that a new city government would accept his Revere statue. Modifying slightly his previous stiff-legged model, he created his fifth Revere equestrian. The obvious difference between the 52 "Decorated by Pupils, Pretty Feature of Vittoria Murray's Marriage to Edwin Dallin," unidentified clipping in Dallin Collection; "Famed Sculptor, Native of Utah, to Attend Unveiling," Deseret News, July 22, 1932.

5:1 V.C. Dallin, " T h e Family of Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 21. The school where Dallin taught is now called the Massachusetts College of Art (Brookline and Longwood).

While Dallin had sold Medicine Man, the money would not be available until the statue was delivered. Therefore Dallin turned to a Utah organization to ask for a cash advance. See Dallin to Heber M. Wells, October 28, 1900, Brigham Young Monument Association Manuscript File, LDS Archives.

Dallin presented this plaster model, his fifth Revere sculpture, to the Springville public schools in 1903. It and a painting by John Hafen gave birth to the Springville Museum of Art. Photograph by Rell G. Francis.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

27

fourth and fifth models was the raised front leg of the latter that attempted to duplicate the action of the statuette that was lost. When the work was completed Cyrus petitioned Mayor Thomas N. Hart to renew the Revere contract. Hart contended that the council order of 1884 and the contract of 1885 with Dallin were no longer valid, and "if any action were to be taken it would have to be by a new committee."

The mayor promptly appointed such a group to make arrangements for erecting the statue.'1 The new model was formally approved by the Boston Art Commission on December 4, 1899, and the following month it was exhibited at Dallin's studio on Harcourt Street where Gov. Winthrop M. Crane and other important officials were invited to examine the statue. The Transcript gave its approval to the Revere statue and urged the public to support its completion: . . . It will be remembered that the first efforts to raise the requisite funds for this monument met with so little success that the project was for the time being allowed to be virtually pigeon-holed. But Mr. Dallin, who, as a sculptor, had received the most encouraging endorsements of his models for the statue, especially from the most eminent artists in the country (including St.-Gaudens) . . . never lost sight of the possibilities of this enterprise, and never ceased to improve upon his original work ) working on it in season and out, and remodeling it at least five times^ until in the judgment of the experts, he had made of it a plastic work well worthy of a prominent location in Boston. T h e statue, thus improved, is one in which mobility and dramatic fire are well blended with harmonious lines and rhythmic poise. T h e horse, suddenly pulled u p by his rider, is a most spirited and picturesque type of arrested movement; and the attitude and gesture of the m a n tell the stirring story of Revere's errand to the Middlesex minutemen with sufficient emphasis . . . , r 1 he sculptor in his classroom at the but without violence or Massachusetts Normal Art School bombast. T h e original inwhere he taught for many years. w Unidentified news clipping, Photograph courtesy of the Robbins Dallin Collection.

Library.

28 tention was, we believe, to place the Revere m o n u m e n t in Copley Square, b u t this is a m a t t e r that must be left to the decision of the Art Commission.

T h e point now most vital is to arouse the interest of the people, so as to bringabout tangible results. . . .Gr'

Despite the renewed sponsorship of public officials and the persistent efforts of Francis H. Appleton of the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution to move the project to its completion, the Revere monument died again for lack of funds. The Revere model of 1899 was, however, reproduced 55

"Fine Arts," Boston Evening script, December 26, 1899.

Tran-

Above: Dallin with Massasoit, now at Coles Hill, Plymouth, Mass. A plaster cast of the famous Indian friend of the Pilgrims was presented to Utah March 20, 1922, by Dallin.

For many years it stood in the rotunda of the State Capitol. In 1959 it was cast in bronze by the Nicholas G. Morgan, Sr., Foundation and now stands on the south grounds of the Capitol. Photograph courtesy of the Hafen-Dallin Club. Left: the sixth Revere model, location unknown. Photograph courtesy of Martin K. Bovey.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

29

in plaster by P. P. Caproni and Brother after 1907, and hundreds of copies were sold to schools and other collectors in the years that followed.'"

I N T E R E S T IN REVERE STATUE REVIVED

During the next three decades Dallin's reputation continued to grow, as he produced significant public monuments and Indian subjects.

Two of the works from this period were installed on prominent sites in Boston: Appeal to the Great Spirit in front of the Museum of Fine Arts and Anne Hutchinson in front of the State House. Only the Revere statue remained out of reach. Each year when Boston reenacted Revere's ride, Dallin reportedly would go to his studio, uncover his Revere model, and reflect upon his bitter disappointment.'' 7 In the late 1920s the news media revived interest in the Revere monument and again took up the plea to have Dallin's statue erected.

With the New England tercentenary approaching, responsible citizens of Charlestown recommended that Dallin's statue be placed at the City Square in Charlestown, a spot near where Revere's famous ride originated. Nothing came of this suggestion, however. 58 During the early 1930s, Dallin exhibited a new model of Revere at the New Museum Galleries in Boston. This sixth equestrian somewhat resembled the award-winning model except for the horse's front legs, its raised tail, and the full cape of the rider. It is possible that Dallin developed this idea over a period of years, because his wife recorded in her family journal of 1912: "New model of Paul Revere with cape."

Unfortunately, Mrs. Dallin offered no additional information. 59 Photographs of the sixth model were widely printed in the newspapers of the 1930s, and, in most cases, captions referred to it as the "original" model of the 1880s. One sculpture historian, the late Loring Holmes Dodd, used a photograph of this model in one of his articles to demonstrate that this statuette was Dallin's "first and what he intended to be the final model of the equestrian Paul Revere." Dodd was fond of the "stirring" action of the horse which "must skid several paces before he can come to a full stop," and, therefore, he was disappointed 50 Appleton to Dallin, January 10, 1903, Dallin Collection; P.P. Caproni and Brother, Caproni Casts: American Indians and Other Sculptures by Cyrus E. Dallin (Boston: P.P. Caproni and Brother, 1915), catalog in Boston Public Library; Thomas Carens, "Paul Revere Statue Designed for Copley Sq. Never Erected," Boston Herald, April 18, 1927.

05 Carens, "Paul Revere Statue." w Unidentified news clipping dated April 20, 1927, Dallin Collection; "Paul Revere," Journal and Year Book for St. John's Church Fair 19 (1929). ** "Patriot Unhonored," October 1933.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

when Dallin decided to abandon this design for yet another model. "Why did you make a change?" Dodd asked the sculptor. "A fellow sculptor suggested it," Dallin replied.6" Dallin's long obsession with Revere received a new stimulus following the death in the early 1930s of his friend Frederick B. Hall. Among his effects was a forgotten photograph of Dallin's award-winning model of 1884, the sculptor's own favorite that had been lost while he was in Paris. Analyzing its design, as shown in the recovered photograph, the venerable sculptor commented: I don't know how I did it. There must have been something psychic in it.

I don't believe I could do better now. It must have been one of those things that a young fellow can do in a tremendous onrush of enthusiasm.

I sculptured better than I knew. Notice that triangular composition, something that all the masters strive for. T h e figure and the horse have tremendous energy and strength.

Sometimes a m a n will do his best work when he is a mere youth. Some of the best work of the masters has been done before they were 25. 61

In his mid-seventies, the bearded sculptor was trying to outdo himself, working on a seventh model that would duplicate the action of the 1884 statue. Friends and critics agreed that Dallin had not improved his Paul Revere in its many revisions. Stillman Powers, official photographer of Dallin's works, offered this opinion: "Equestrian Statue Recalls a Tale," Evening Gazette (Worcester, Mass.), January 3, 1962.

"Rare Stroke of Chance Saves Dallin Statue."

The seventh and final Revere model was made after a photograph of the ost third model, Dallin's favorite, was found. Photograph courtesy of the Robbins Library.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

31

During these years he made other models of Paul Revere, none of which seemed to equal those first models made in youth. These first models were full of the fire of colonial patriotism and of action born of an urgent necessity. The later models plainly show the influence of unfair criticism, a thing which always tends to thwart the inspiration of any artist.02

Dallin's close friends also encouraged the aging sculptor to renewed activity. Daniel Chester French, always the gentleman and advocate of fair play, entreated Boston to fulfill its long debt to Dallin. Before his death in 1931, French wrote one of his last letters to Mayor James M. Curley urging that Dallin's statue be erected.61 Concurrent with Dallin's work on the seventh model, A.J. Philpott, dean of the Boston art critics, started a campaign in 1933 to arouse concern for Dallin's cause. Philpott reviewed the tragic events in Dallin's fifty-year struggle to get Boston to accept the Revere statue. He noted that a "new committee had been formed to see that justice is done both Paul Revere and Cyrus E. Dallin." Other writers who shared Philpott's sentiments recommended that the year 1935 would be an appropriate time to unveil the monument as it would be the two-hundredth anniversary of Revere's birth.64 With the statuette completed and encouraged by the support from the newspapers, Dallin sought financial aid from the mayor of Boston and the other trustees of the George Robert White Fund. This charitable trust fund was established in 1922 by a gift of $5,000,000 to Boston City under a provision in White's will that stipulated that the income from the fund was "to be used for creating works of public utility and beauty, for the use and enjoyment of the inhabitants of the City of Boston." 65 Before the trustees of the White Fund could act on Dallin's request, a meeting was held in January 1935 at the Old North Church by Mayor Frederick Mansfield who reviewed the story of the Revere statue and promised that it would be erected. The mayor suggested that the statue be placed in the nearby Paul Revere Mall, a man-made park that had been recently constructed through financial aid from the White Fund.

Shortly after this meeting, the trustees of the White Fund interpreted " 2 Stillman Powers, "Cyrus Edwin Dallin, M.A., A.N.A., Sculptor (1861-1944)," typescript, Hafen-Dallin Club.

83

Philpott, "Dallin Has Waited 50 Years,"

04

Ibid.; "Bicentennial of Birth of Paul Revere Recalls Competition for Equestrian Statue at Boston," Federal Architect, January 1934, p. 17.

65 V.C. Dallin, "The Family of Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 59; Will of George Robert White, Article Fourteenth, typed copy in Dallin Collection.

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the restrictions of the will as not permitting the funding of the Revere statue. Dallin's request would have to be denied. 66 But the aging artist remained determined to succeed this time. He decided, as one last effort, to put into effect the advice Saint-Gaudens had offered nearly a half century ago. At his own expense he would make the statue in heroic dimensions (one and a half life-size) even though there was no promise of financial support from the public. The sculptor, now stooped with age, completed the enlargement of his seventh model in four months, with the aid of his thirty-year old son, Lawrence. 67 Vittoria Dallin described her husband's efforts: For months he toiled, handling great quantities of clay, going up and down a ladder day after day, from morning till night, working with feverish intensity. T h e cost of such mental and physical exertion for a man in his late seventies was tremendous, and Cyrus Dallin was a mental and physical wreck after the huge model was completed. 68

The ten-and-one-half-foot statue, made in Dallin's Arlington studio, required three tons of modeling clay, some of which was furnished, in an emergency, by the sculptor's devoted students at the Massachusetts School of Art. Summing up his experience with the huge clay model, Dallin said: "I have thought about it and dreamed about it so long that I decided to get it off my chest before I died." 6<J The full-size clay model of Revere was placed on exhibit at the Boston Historical Society at the Old State House. Dallin prepared to take his fight to the public. He addressed "an appeal to the citizens of Boston" from the creator of the Appeal to the Great Spirit in which he described the events that led to the signing of the 1885 contract with Mayor Hugh O'Brien. His letter said in part: Whether after a lapse of half a century this ancient document has any legal value I know not, but I am assured by those who should know that in the minds of just men it represents a moral obligation. . . . It was a compact made by the committee and myself in good faith and should be carried out in good faith whenever the opportunity arrives. As I have recently finished the full size model, I have fulfilled my part of the compact, and I now call upon the Citizens of Boston to do their part by subscribing the necessary funds to put the statue into bronze as the " V . C . Dallin, " T h e Family of Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 60; Everett B. Mero, "Dedication in Boston of a Bronze Statue and Tablets in Paul Revere Mall," American City, November 1940, p. 46.

67 Interview with Lawrence Dallin, July 14, 1972, Chatham, Mass.; A.J. Philpott, "Model for Heroic Equestrian Statue of Paul Revere Completed," Boston Globe, October 23, 1935.

68 V.C. Dallin, "The 'Great Spirit' and Cyrus Dallin," p. 18. w Philpott, "Model for Heroic Equestrian Statue."

Dallin and His Paul Revere

Statue

33

Committee intended. Furthermore, I feel the honor and integrity of Boston and its Citizens are involved too seriously not to pay attention to this appeal. . . .

T o those citizens who are really desirous of helping and cannot give, I would suggest their writing to the Trustees of the George Robert White Fund (His Honor Frederick Mansfield, chairman) asking that a part of the Annual Income should be used for the memorial.

T h e income of the White fund was given for the "Creation of works of utility and beauty for the use and enjoyment of the inhabitants of Boston." T h e use of the work "Creation" by the Donor is significant as had he intended only works of utility he never would have used this word.

Whereas, had he intended some work of art this word only would have been used. Works of utility are made, constructed, or built; works of art are created. 70

O n March 6, 1936, the gray-bearded sculptor appeared before the Legislative Committee on State Affairs at a hearing at the statehouse and told how the provincial prejudices of Boston's elite citizens had robbed him of completing his Revere statue. A bill was introduced to erect the bronze Revere statue on the capitol grounds for the suggested fee of $25,000 to $50,000. A.J. Philpott and other speakers, representing various community organizations, spoke in favor of the bill which also had the endorsement of Gov. James Curley. The governor believed, however, that the statue should be erected near the site of Revere's residence in the Italian colony in the North End. 71 During 1936 the new Revere model received the approval of the Boston Art Commission, and the heroic-size equestrian statue was reproduced in plaster by the Caproni Galleries of Boston. This firm, originally named P. P. Caproni and Brother, had produced most of Dallin's works of the past forty years in plaster. The statue was painted to simulate the patination of a finished bronze, and the completed plaster equestrian was exhibited at the company's showroom. 72 VINDICATION C O M E S AT L A S T

In 1937 Dallin offered to sell the Revere to Arlington, Massachusetts, for $10,000 less than what Boston would have to pay for it. Drawings were made to demonstrate how the statue would look if placed on ; " Cyrus E. Dallin, "An Appeal to the Citizens of Boston," holograph, Dallin Collection. '' "Teacher Was Jealous, Explains Cyrus Dallin," March 7, 1936, and "Says Hub's Elite Lost Him Award," March 7, 1936, unidentified news clippings in Dallin Collection.

7 " "Cyrus Dallin is Honored in Boston," Springville ( U t a h ) Herald, April 29, 1937; L. Dallin to C.H. Harvey and Co.; "It Speaks for Itself," April 1937, unidentified news clipping in Dallin Collection; V.C. Dallin, "The Family of Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 62.

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Massachusetts Avenue in front of the Arlington High School. It was argued that this site was near the route Revere had traveled to Lexington on his "midnight" ride.7:i Perhaps Arlington's proposal forced Boston to more positive action.

A committee from the Boston Chamber of Commerce organized a program for an Art Week and invited Dallin to cooperate by allowing his large model to be featured in its exhibition. Possibly in hopes of creating public interest in his work, Dallin permitted the plaster statue to be temporarily erected. On April 24, 1937, the bronze-colored enlargement wras unveiled in simple ceremonies at the Esplanade, a wide paved walk bordering the Charles River at the end of Revere Street. Gov. Charles F. Hurley, one of the guest speakers for this occasion, termed this event a "vindication" of Dallin. The seventy-four-year-old sculptor responded briefly by saying the Revere statue was his swan song and concluding: "More than half a century ago I began this work, my best work. I will say nothing further. I'll let my work speak for itself." 71 While the statue was on exhibit at the Esplanade, portions of the model were damaged, requiring a new arm and other minor changes.

During the next twro years the statue was displayed at other public places, and Dallin continued to hold conferences with various committees attempting to secure funds for the project.

During 1938 and 1939 Dallin continued to write appeals to citizens and public officials, including ex-governor Alvan T. Fuller, but a growing despondency came over the bewildered sculptor. In a letter to his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Bovey, Dallin dejectedly concluded: Things haven't been very heartening this last year and I am beginning to feel that art isn't anything much anyway. However I realize this is not the way to write to you and please forgive me. 70

In the fall of 1939 Dallin again petitioned the White Fund for financial aid. His appeal took a new form this time with a poem describing the history of his Revere statue. The poem, a parody of Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," was submitted to Mayor Tobin and the other trustees of the White Fund.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the ignoble failure of Boston to rear ,:1

"Chamber Views Plans to Erect Dallin Statue Here," Arlington

Advocate,

February

4, 1937.

74

"Cyrus Dallin Is Honored in Boston." " C y r u s Dallin to Mr. and Mrs. Martin K. Bovey, May 21, 1939. Copy in author's possession.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

35

T h e greatest creation of my long career.

T h e Equestrian Statue of Paul Revere.

A citizens' committee of well known men Selected my model from a competition of ten.

O n July the fourth, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, T h e committee, of which not one now is alive M a d e a contract with me all legally signed T o erect in Copley Square my statue designed T o honor the hero whose cry of alarm Aroused every Middlesex village and farm For the country folk to be up and to arm.

Alas! no statue now graces Copley Square.

'Tis enough to make even an angel swear But being only human I refuse to despair.

And I hope that means will be found somewhere So after the lapse of many a year D u e honor be paid to Paul Revere. 76

Later the good-humored Dallin recalled how the poem had moved Mayor Tobin to take interest in his request. "By gum, I think that it must have amused him and started him thinking again about the statue. I'm not exactly a poet but I was able to put a lot of feeling into that poem."

Finally, in December 1939, the trustees of the George Robert White Fund reconsidered Dallin's requests and ruled that the fund could finance the statue. Immediately, negotiations began between the Dallin family and the White Fund manager, Joseph F. O'Connell. Lawrence Dallin, who was a successful businessman, did most of the bargaining for the family. He asked for a sum in excess of $50,000 to pay for his father's lifetime efforts. This amount was in agreement with a fee A.J. Philpott had suggested six years earlier. Philpott pointed out that had the original $5,000 appropriated by the city council in 1885 been banked at compound interest, the money would have increased to $50,000 by 1933.7S Sometime during the 1930s Dallin had anticipated that he would receive $80,000 or $85,000 for his finished Revere monument. His personal handwritten accounts titled, "Items of costâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Paul Revere Statue, covering period of 51 years," list approximate expenses totaling $18,135.

One of these expenses was a $1,500 bond on a "contract of $85,000."

Other curious figures subtracted from the $85,000 show additional disbursements of $6,000 (with a notation of "s") and $30,000 (with a ' c "Cyrus Dallin's Dream of 50 Years Realized," Boston Globe, January 6, 1940. " Ibid.

78 V.C. Dallin, " T h e Family of Cyrus E. Dallin," p. 69; Lawrence Dallin interview; Philpott, "Dallin Has Waited 50 Years."

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notation of "b"). 7 9 Perhaps these figures, separate from the $18,135 expenses, may represent Dallin's out-of-pocket costs for the bronze statue and for the base or pedestal.

When the White Fund manager proposed a counteroffer to Dallin of approximately $30,000 for the statue, Lawrence objected to the meager sum; but another brother favored acceptance of the offer, saying: "The money doesn't count. Just do it anyway. My father needs it." ° The final business transactions, as related by Lawrence Dallin, seem more incredible than all the previous political maneuvers and opposition that had robbed Dallin of his commission for more than fifty years.

When Joseph O'Connell, the manager of the White Fund, presented his estimate of costs of the monument, it was at once apparent to Lawrence Dallin that his father would receive very little money for his efforts. Knowing that the statue could be cast into bronze by the Gorham Company of Providence, Rhode Island, for half the price shown on the estimate (the fund manager had indicated that this final casting was to be done by T.F. McGann and Sons at Somerville, Massachusetts), the Dallins insisted upon handling the business of completing the monument themselves. Already the separate parts of the statue were being prepared

by Caproni Galleries for shipment to the bronze foundry. Lawrence Dallin made the following accusation: . . . I went in and fought the thing out with a bunch of grafters and the City Hall. . . . Tobin was the mayor at the time but this O'Connell who ran the White Fund had all the final word of how the money was to be spent. . . .

But, they really tried to get me when I tried to pull the rug out from under them and let Gorham do it . . . and they actually sent, as I told you, those 7i

' Holograph, Dallin Collection.

Lawrence Dallin interview.

80

Dallin in his studio with a marble bust of his mother and a bust of his son Lawrence.

Dallin and His Paul Revere Statue

37

gangsters over with a big black sedan, and stole the parts from Crabtree [manager of Caproni Galleries] and he said, "I didn't dare stop them. It looked like they had guns and everything." . . . They walked right in.

They knew just what they were after and took the essential partsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the horse's head, Paul Revere's arm, Paul Revere's leg. . . . I got stuck. . . .

There was a five thousand dollar graft went to somebody on that end of it and over twenty-five thousand graft went on the pedestal. So they got thirty thousand dollars. They got just as much out of it as we did. 81

When the newspapers announced on January 6, 1940, that the city of Boston would erect the statue, Lawrence commented: No contract with the White Fund trustees has been signed, but we have agreed upon the price. If they say they want the statue to be unveiled on April 19 [Patriot's Day] I'm afraid they're going to be disappointed. It's pretty much of a rush order to get the bronze cast in such short time.82

The newspaper also reported that "except for one leg of the horse the entire statue is now at foundry of T.F. McGann in Somerville."

The Dallins reasoned that to protest this virtual fait accompli would only result in more delays and heartaches. Therefore, they chose to remain silent, conceding to the demands of the unscrupulous officials and helplessly watching as the appropriated funds were skimmed off by undeserving persons. On January 17, 1940, Cyrus E. Dallin, with shaky handwriting, signed a contract with the city of Boston to execute the Paul Revere statue in bronze for the fee of $27,500. The statue would be erected at the Paul Revere Mall between Hanover Street and the Old North Church.85 This long-awaited victory should have brought continued joy to Dallin in his declining years, but his anxieties were heightened by yet another unexpected tragedy. Dallin's son, Arthur, an artist who had gained local renown for his stained-glass windows for Boston's cathedrals, decided to join the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of World War II. Arthur who had been born in France while his father studied there in 1898, felt a strong loyalty to that country. While the final preparations for the Revere dedication rites were being made in the summer of 1940, news came to Cyrus Dallin that Arthur was missing in action. It was months after the Revere dedication rites before the sorrowing sculptor knew that his son had been killed in action. The physical and emotional strain affected Dallin's health and mental awareness.81 M

ibid.

"Cyrus Dallin's Dream of 50 Years Realized."

8:1 Lawrence Dallin interview; contract in Lawrence Dallin's possession; John P. Comerford, assistant manager, George Robert White Fund, to Rell G. Francis, J u n e 3, 1974.

1 "Boston Sculptor's Son Wins Coveted French War Cross," Boston Globe, October 6, 8,2

A crowd gathered for the dedication of Dallin's Revere monument on September 22,1940, at the Paul Revere Mall, Boston. Photograph courtesy of the Hafen-Dallin Club.

At last, on Sunday September 22, 1940, Cyrus E. Dallin's heroicsize bronze equestrian statue of Paul Revere stood on a polished Milford granite pedestal in the narrow court of the Paul Revere Mall adjoining the Old North Church. The huge monument measured twenty-one feet from the ground to the top of Paul Revere's hat, and the bronze weighed four tons. The pedestal had been designed by J. Lovell Little, a descendant of Revere, in collaboration with Raymond A. Porter, a colleague of Dallin's at the Massachusetts School of Art. The monument was surrounded by thirteen bronze tablets sponsored by the White Fund commemorating other early patriots.

The impressive dedication ceremonies began with the presentation of the statue and tablets by the city manager to Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, who accepted them for the city of Boston. In his address Mayor Tobin stated that the dedication of the statue "rights a great wrong." 85 Paul Revere, Jr., of Canton, a nine-year-old great-great-great-grandson of the 1917; "Utah Sculptor Asks U.S. to Find Soldier Son," September 21, 1940, and "Man Honored in World War by France Pays With Life," December 16, 1940, unidentified news clippings in Barron and Whiting, "Cyrus Edwin Dallin Sculptor: A Collection of Photographs and Facts of His Life and Works."

85 "Cyrus Dallin's Paul Revere," News Letter, Massachusetts School of Art Alumni Association, November 8, 1940. See also the dedication program in the Dallin Collection.

Dallin and His Paul Revere

Statue

39

Revolutionary hero, unveiled the bronze statue as several thousand people cheered its creator, Cyrus E. Dallin. The Boston Post reported the sculptor's reaction: Cyrus Dallin said nothing. He bowed when he was introduced, but that was all. Watching him, spectators got the impression that his heart and mind were too filled with emotion to permit him to do anything but sit quietly in the sun while the orators praised the name of Paul Revere and the deeds of the early patriots. 86

Justice had finally come to Cyrus Dallin and Paul Revere. The work of fifty-seven years had reached fruition. Every obstacle had been removed, and Cyrus Edwin Dallin realized the crowning achievement of his eventful life.

EPILOGUE

Cyrus Edwin Dallin was a man of faith and sentiment. Before his death in 1944, he returned once more to his birthplace in the West. The sight of the Rocky Mountains always affected him deeply, for he believed that the lowlands and the prairies produced the painters, but it was the mountains that produced the sculptors. "I was born in the West in the mountains," he said, "but never in my life have I been able to return to them without breaking down and weeping."87 Boston's "Cyrus the Great" had gained international honors and fame, but his heart remained in Springville with the mountains and the mother he adored. s " "Dallin Honored at Dedication Ceremony," Springville Herald October 24, 1940, reprinted from Boston Post, September 23, 1940.

87 George H . Brimhall, " T h e Influences of Natural Environment," Improvement Era 24 ( 1 9 2 0 - 2 1 ) : 148.

In 1884 Dallin painted the Springville log cabin in which he was born.

Photograph courtesy of the Hafen-Dallin Club.

Cartography by John Kessell and artwork by Michael S. Berry,

Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante

BY ELEANOR B. ADAMS

MONDAY, JULY 29, 1776, two friars of New Mexico, sons of the Franciscan Province of the Holy Gospel with headquarters in Mexico City, set out from Santa Fe on a journey of exploration "happy and full (JN

Miss Adams is research professor-at-large, emeritus, University of New Mexico. © 1976 Eleanor B. Adams.

Dominguez

and Velez de Escalante

41

of hope," trusting that their brethren would remember them "in their sacrifices and prayers." Their hope was to discover a route from New Mexico to Monterey, California, but "even if we should not attain our end . . . the knowledge we could acquire of the lands through we traveled would represent a great step forward and be of great use in the future." 1 The stories of Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante, and that of their expedition, belong not merely to New Mexico and to Utah but are an integral part of the final struggle of the far-flung Spanish Empire in America to maintain and advance its borderlands in North America. By the middle of the eighteenth century it had become clear that the cumbersome and underfinanced systems of government and defense in New Spain were in need of drastic revision if the northern frontier was to survive the threats posed by constant Indian hostilities and encroachment by European rivals. Charles I I I , who had ascended the throne in 1759, well aware of the need for reforms at home and abroad, sent Jose de Galvez to New Spain as visitor general. The visitation lasted from 1765 to 1771.

Although Spain had lost Florida to England in 1763, she had acquired Louisiana from the French, and plans were afoot for the colonization of Upper California at a time when the frontier was already too extended for practical purposes of defense. Therefore, in 1765, Charles I I I also appointed the marques de Rubi to inspect the long thin line of presidios and to make such recommendations as his findings might suggest. For two years, from March 1766 to February 1768, Rubi traveled through the northern provinces of the viceroyalty of New Spain. 2 Then, in 1772, don Hugo O'Conor became commandant inspector of the interior provinces to reform and strengthen the military organization. Finally, in 1776, Charles I I I , pursuant to the recommendations of Galvez, now minister of the Indies, created a new governmental unit for the Provincias Internas. Nueva Vizcaya, Coahuila, Texas, Nuevo Mexico, Sinaloa, 1

Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez to Provincial Fray Isidro Murillo, Santa Fe, July 29, 1776, in Eleanor B. Adams and Fray Angelico Chavez, eds. and trans., The Missions of New Mexico, 1776 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1956), p. 282. " Luis Navarro Garcia, Jose de Galvez y la Comandancia General de las Provincias Internas (Seville, 1964), pp. 1 3 6 - 4 1 ; Max L. Moorhead, The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), pp. 56-74. Capt. Nicolas de Lafora's diary has been published in Spanish and in English translation: Vito Alessio Robles, ed., Relacion del viaje que hizo a los Presidios Internos situados en la frontera de la America Septentrional perteneciente al Rey de Espana (Mexico City, 1939) ; Lawrence Kinnaird, ed., The Frontiers of New Spain: Nicolas de Lafora's Description, 1766-1768 (Berkeley: Quivira Society [University of New Mexico], 1958). Plans and maps of twenty-one towns and presidios made by 2d Lt. Jose Urrutia have been reproduced in Navarro Garcia, Moorhead, and other publications.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Sonora, and the Californias were placed tinder a commandant general who was, at first, directly responsible to the king. Under the first commandant general, don Teodoro de Croix, an overall policy to cope with the mutual problems of the beleaguered northern provinces came into being.

Meanwhile, in 1769, Fray Junipero Serra had founded San Diego, the first mission of Upper California. The port of Monterey was settled in the following year. When the news reached Sonora both the military and the religious envisaged golden opportunities in the California enterprise. The opening of good land routes between the old frontiers and the new establishments on the Pacific Coast could assure successâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;increase Spain's dominions and God's faithful. The soldier don Juan Bautista de Anza and the friar-explorer Francisco Garces were eager to do their part.

Anza's proposals received prolonged and careful consideration in Mexico City. Viceroy Antonio Maria Bucareli y Ursua sought opinions and assistance from every likely source. In response to his request, the prelates of the Province of the Holy Gospel and its Custody of the Conversion of Saint Paul of New Mexico notified the missionaries, ordering them to seek out and provide any data they could obtain relevant to the possibility of finding overland routes from New Mexico and Sonora to the South Sea.3 Certain friars received individual instructions, and among these was a fledgling priest called Silvestre Velez de Escalante. Fray Fernando Antonio Gomez, secretary of the Province of the Holy Gospel, one of Fray Silvestre's mentors at the Convento Grande, gave him his orders and kept him furnished with all the pertinent information he could acquire.

The fame of this talented and dedicated young man has long overshadowed that of his friend, and superior, Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez. His letters and other writings received more widespread attention in his own time, and many of them have been available to later historians for more than a century. Over the years they were used not only by Spanish civil and military authorities in the formation of their frontier policy but by those of the United States after much of the old northern frontier of New Spain had become our Southwest. :1 Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante to Gov. Pedro Fermin de Mendinueta, Zuni, November 7, 1775, copy transmitted by Velez de Escalante with a covering letter to Fray Fernando Antonio Gomez, Zuni, November 7, 1775, Archivo Franciscano, legajo 10, nos. 19 and 28a, Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico City ( B N M ) . Translations (incomplete) of these documents are found in A. B. Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers: A Study of the Spanish Indian Policy of Don Juan

Dominguez

and Velez de Escalante

43

Escalante, then in his mid-twenties, went to New Mexico late in 1774, the same year as the first expedition of Anza and Garces. He was born in the villa of Treceno, valle de Vandaliga, in the mountainous northern province of Santander, Spain, about 1750. Unfortunately no record has been found of his physical appearance, but one suspects that his skin was fair and his eyes were grey—in Mexican terminology, giiero. He may even have had blond hair. When he arrived in Mexico City is not known, but he took the Franciscan habit in the Convento Grande in 1767. There he passed through the usual courses in philosophy and theology and had been ordained priest before he was sent to New Mexico. His first signature in the extant parish books of New Mexico appears in the baptismal records of Laguna pueblo on December 21, 1774.

H e must have been on his way to Zuni, where his signatures begin on January 13, 1775.1 It is likely that before he took up his assignment as one of the mission fathers at Zuni he had spent long enough at Santa Fe to discuss his other assignment with Gov. Pedro Fermin de Mendinueta and Lt. Diego Borica, for a year or so later he wrote to Provincial Fray Isidro Murillo: With regard to the friendship and good relations which your Paternity says we should endeavor to cultivate with Don Diego Borica, I have already conveyed your Paternity's admonition to the religious I have been able to see. Long before this I had formed a close friendship with him, and I am trying to keep it with this gentleman and with the lord governor. And to both I owe unequivocal expressions of the most sincere affection and friendly confidence. Indeed, if I a m to speak with due frankness, I should prefer that it were not so great, for my youth and lack of talent do not compass the discretion necessary to marry politics with the religious state and the priesthood. Moreover ? it usually deprives m e of the peace I thought I should find in this out-of-the-way place. 5

This was not the only occasion during his short life that he was to express his diffidence and his longing for a quiet life far from the hurly-burly of secular concerns—a wish that was never to be granted.

His companion at Zuni was Fray Damian Martinez. How long he had been stationed there when Escalante arrived is not known, but he too had been asked to gather information. Commandant Inspector O'Conor, knowing that Martinez had been assigned to Zufii "asked Bautista de Anza, Governor of New Mexico, 1777—1787 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1932), pp. 150-58. and Herbert S. Auerbach, ed., Father Escalante's Journal, 1776-77 (Utah Historical Quarterly 11 [1943]), pp. 15-23.

4 See Eleanor B. Adams, "Fray Silvestre and the Obstinate Hopi," New Mexico Historical Review 38 (1963) : 97-138. s Zuni, May 21, 1776, in Adams and Chavez, Missions, 305-6.

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him to employ 'every means his intelligence and prudence might dictate in an endeavor to learn the truth' of 'the flying reports I have picked up on this frontier about the existence of a settlement of Europeans on the opposite bank of the river named Tizon [the Colorado] which is to the northwest of New Mexico.' ' ; Fray Damian wrote to O'Conor on April 1, 1775, repeating the story of a Christianized Navajo Indian who had traveled as far as the Colorado with his people. At the river he encountered "a white man on horseback with clothing and armament of the type we use. He spoke to him in Castilian and in his Navajo language, and he says that the man did not reply but only smiled to himself when he used our language." Martinez also summarized the accounts of friendly Yutas who had offered to guide the Spaniards to the lands of these people through the Moachis and Paiuches in the interior.

They said that the trip would take twenty days, and although such projects had been considered by some goyernors, "jAdams, "Fray Silvestre," p. 100^

Drawing of Fray Velez de Escalante teaching at the Zuni Mission by Architects J Planners Alliance.

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the individuals to whom they were entrusted have been some poor settlers who are incapable of raising their thoughts very high or appreciating the importance of the matter in the service of both Majesties [God and the King]. These u n h a p p y wretches have been content to reach the Yutas a n d bring back four pelts in exchange for trifles, and to find pretexts at their fancy to excuse their evil doing.

This is not the place to go into the problem of the early trade from New Mexico to the northwest. While some scholarly work has been done, the details are obscure and some key documents have not been found.'

Although Velez de Escalante was skeptical about such information, observing that "not only the infidel Indians, but even the Christians, in order to raise themselves in our esteem, tell us what they know we want to hear without being embarrassed by the falsity of their tales," Commandant Inspector O'Conor took Fray Damian's reports more seriously and wrote to Viceroy Bucareli that the existence of the European settlement seemed likely enough to justify an expedition he proposed for May 1777. Although Bucareli was not impressed by Father Martinez's report, he went astray in another direction, saying that according to the maps he had consulted it was not unlikely that Monterey could be reached in twenty days and that perhaps the white man mentioned by the Navajo could have been from that presidio. s Although, like many earnest young priests, Escalante had undoubtedly traveled to the frontier missions with glowing visions of great accomplishments in the spread of the Faith, his inborn critical sense, when confronted with the kind of information he was acquiring about the unknown territory between New Mexico and California, provides an interesting contrast to the credulity of highly qualified and experienced administrators like O'Conor and Bucareli. As time went on Escalante was to become more and more annoyed by the misuse and misinterpretation of his cautious and carefully considered reports and opinions, which were widely circulated to those concerned with the expansion and consolidation of the New Spain frontier.

Meanwhile, during Lent of 1775, Escalante was presented with an opportunity to further both his religious and political aims. A group 7 Dominguez and Velez de Escalante mention the diary kept by Juan Maria de Rivera of his travels in the 1760s when he may have reached the fringes of present-day Utah. Andres Muniz, the interpreter of the 1776 expedition, had not only accompanied Rivera but had gone as far as the Gunnison River as recently as the previous year, 1775. See Herbert E. Bolton, ed. and trans., Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante Expedition to the Interior Basin, 1776 (Utah Historical Quarterly 18 [1950]), pp. 7, 11, 152.

"Adams, "Fray Silvestre," pp. 101-3; O'Conor to Bucareli, Carrizal, August 9, 1776; Bucareli to O'Conor, Mexico City, September 11, 1776, Historia vol. 2, exp. 9, Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City ( A G N ) .

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of Hopi, wrho came to Zuni to trade, invited him to visit their pueblos.

Not only could he hope to be the one to bring the apostate Hopi back into the fold at long last, but he considered that it would greatly facilitate my going on to the Cojninas, which I had already thought of doing, in order to proclaim the gospel to them and to find out the nature and number of the tribes who dwell on both sides of the Rio Grande [the San Juan], and finally, to acquire more accurate information than we have about the Spaniards rumored to be on the far side of the Rio del Tizon. 9

H e wrote to the vice-custos asking permission to go, and also to Lieutenant Borica, who notified Gov. Pedro Fermin de Mendinueta.

Although he had planned to take only a guide and an interpreter, the alcalde mayor of Zuni, don Juan Pedro Cisneros, and the Zufii Indians refused to permit it, saying that the Hopi were not to be trusted. It is quite likely that they all were eager for the chance to do some trading.

The party that left Zufii on June 22, 1775, included Cisneros, who was later to accompany the Dominguez-Escalante expedition, seventeen Zufii, and a Christianized Hopi from Sandia pueblo to serve as interpreter. From Fray Silvestre's point of view the expedition was a failure that caused him "great chagrin and mortification." 10 Although some of the common people treated him in a friendly way, they dared not disobey their leaders' commands to resist his attempts to evangelize them. He did obtain some information about the Cosninas from two Hopis who had visited them. And, despite efforts by the Oraibis to prevent it, the head of a delegation from the nearest Cosnina rancheria succeeded in reaching him. After the friar and the Cosnina had shared the traditional smoke, they conversed for nearly two hours. On the sudadero of a saddle the Indian drew with charcoal "a rough but clear map of the road that goes from Oraibi to his land, indicating turns, stages and watering places, the area his people occupies and inhabits, the distance from the last rancherias to the Rio Grande and the direction in which it flows, and the bordering tribes." Escalante responded to messages of good will from the Cosninas by telling their messenger that he would "have gone with him to see his people, whom I already loved as my sons" had he not been ill and his horse worn out.11

9

Adams, "Fray Silvestre," p. 119.

Ibid., pp. 118, 119.

11 Ibid., pp. 131-32.

M

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The account of the Hopi journey gives the first indication that Fray Silvestre suffered from attacks of a serious chronic ailment which almost completely incapacitated him when they struck. And on the day after his meeting with the Cosnina his hopes for good results with the Hopi were completely blighted when he was suddenly exposed to a sight that upset him so that he decided he could no longer remain among them." Then and thereafter the young missionary was shocked to the very core of his being by ceremonials that he was incapable of seeing as anything but abominations inspired by the enemy of mankind.

Although he reached Zuni on July 6, Escalante could not bring himself to send a full report to Mexico City until August 18. When they received it, the Franciscan prelates transmitted copies to the viceroy, who, in turn, forwarded a copy to Father Garces at the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers. Garces had already gone upriver and did not receive it until October 1776, after returning to San Xavier del Bac." In 1774 don Francisco Antonio Crespo, governor of Sonora, had proposed to Viceroy Bucareli a general campaign on the frontier to back up the advance into Upper California and facilitate the opening of a land supply route to Monterey. Military conquest of the Hopi and a road between Newr Mexico and Sonora to permit trade between these provinces and the Californias were part of the plan. On August 2, 1775, the viceroy requested an opinion from the governor of New Mexico.

Since Escalante had been investigating these matters, Mendinueta required him to draw up a statement of his findings without delay. 1 ' In his reply, dated October 28, 1775,15 Escalante described the Hopi pueblos and his experiences earlier in the year. In view of the 12 "On the second, after midday, I heard from the room, or coi, where I was, a great noise and disturbance in the street. I hastened out to learn the cause and saw some of the masked men they call entremeseros here, and they are equivalent to the ancient Mexican huehuenches. The frightful and gloomy painting of their masks and the height of indecency with which they ran in view of many people of both sexes were very clear signs of the foul spirit who has their hearts in his power. The only part of their bodies that was covered was the face, and at the end of the member it is not modest to name they wore a small and delicate feather subtly attached. This horrifying spectacle saddened me so that I arranged my departure for the following day." Ibid., p. 132.

3:1 Diario y derrotero que siguio el M. R. P. Fr. Francisco Garces . . . desde octubre de 1775 hasta 17 de septiembre de 1776, al Rio Colorado . . . y a los pueblos del Moqui. . . , Documentos para la historia de Mexico, second series, vol. 1 (Mexico City, 1854), p. 362; Elliott Coues, ed. and trans., On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer: The Diary and Itinerary of Francisco Garces . . . 1775-1776, 2 vols. (New York: F. P. Harper, 1900), 2 : 4 6 9 - 7 1 . " H e r b e r t E. Bolton, Anza's California Expeditions, 5 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), vol. 5., Correspondence, passim; Provincias Internas, vol. 169, exp. 6, AGN. 15 Velez de Escalante to Mendinueta, Zufii, October 28, 1775; Historia, vol. 258, AGN; legajo 10, nos. 28a and 6 1 , B N M ; Audiencia de Guadalajara, legajo 517, Archivo General de Indias, Seville. English translations are in Thomas, Forgotten Frontiers, pp. 150-58.

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fact that all attempts over many years by the Franciscans of New Mexico to persuade the Hopi to return to the fold had failed, he said: "With the army of the expedition now being planned let them be reduced by force to the dominion of their legitimate sovereign. Let them be taken down from the penoles to a flat and convenient site. And let all other steps be taken that may be considered necessary to hold them in due subjection." Escalante advised the establishment of a presidio at Moqui to ensure against further resistance by the Hopi and to hold the Apache to the south and southwest in check, thus reducing the perils of travel to Sonora. It would also facilitate the conversion of the Cosninas and protect them from their enemies, the Jomajabas and Chirumas.

On the basis of information he had gathered about previous campaigns in conversations with various people, including the Zufii Indians, Fray Mariano Rodriguez, a former missionary at the pueblo, and don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, Escalante found it obvious that the projected route from Sonora and Pimeria Alta to New Mexico and Moqui is not very long or difficult of access. If there is success in freeing it from enemy Indians and if it can be used without risk, it will be of great utility to the inhabitants of both regions.

With regard to the discovery of a land route to Monterey, he did not consider the scanty data he had worth repeating. Nevertheless, if, on his return from Monterey, Governor Crespo were thinking of recrossing the Colorado "via the Jalchedunes and going on [to] the Cojninas and Moquis from this point," the information Escalante had obtained from his Cosnina informant indicated that this would be ill advised. The terrain for more than a hundred leagues of the way was so bad as to be impassable with a large train, water and pasturage were scarce, and they would encounter the Chirumas and Jomajabas, "bellicose and bestially inhuman tribes." According to Vibas's maritime chart of 1766, Monterey lies in 37° and minutes of latitude, and the Villa of Santa Fe in 36° 1 1 " according to the very recent m a p by don Nicolas de Lafora, and therefore in my opinion the Yutas Payuchis are in the same latitude as Monterey. O n the basis of this reasoning I wrote to my prelates that the journey to Monterey seemed to me more feasible via the Yutas than via the Cojninas.

He then expressed quite clearly his opinion of the possibility of reaching the coast with a small expedition: "Twenty men well armed and

Dominguez and Velez de Escalante "6

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equipped" would be sufficient to discover the truth of the legend of the white men on the far side of the Colorado, but not to reach Monterey, which according to what I conjecture, is a long distance from the Rio del Tizon, and the character and number of the intervening tribes are unknown. It is more than forty years since the first report about the above mentioned Spaniards was received, and it is in print in the diary of the journey which Father F e r n a n d o Consag m a d e to California in the year [ 17]51.

Obviously these men could not be from Monterey. Possibly at some time shipwrecked Europeans had gone inland and settled down. Later Escalante and Dominguez concluded that the legend was based on earlier glimpses of the bearded Utes they encountered during their expedition.16 On November 9, 1775, Governor Mendinueta sent his report to don Hugo O'Conor. He summarized Fray Silvestre's description of the Hopi, praising him as a "religious of exemplary life and unusual talent," but Mendinueta saw grave objections to any use of force to subdue the renegades. Peace negotiations with the Navajo were in progress, and what they and the Ute would consider unjust war on the peaceable Hopi might result in an alliance of the three tribes which "would very soon finish off this kingdom, and they could keep us as busy as the Apaches Gilenos do now." He suggested sending three or four zealous missionaries to the Hopi, with "goods of small value to present to the chieftains, who (as sons of their own interests) would permit them to teach the mysteries of our religion." 1: When Escalante learned that the governor had deleted part of his letter of October 28 in the copy sent to the viceroy and that "the very reflections I impugn in the aforesaid paper were represented to his Excellency, showing great ignorance of how much our missionary brethren have labored to reduce those rebels," he was furious. On May 21, 1776, Escalante sent another copy of his October 28 report to Provincial Murillo to make sure that his conclusions would not be suppressed and lfi Velez de Escalante to Fray Juan Agustin Morfi, Santa Fe, April 2, 1778; legajo 3, no.

1, B N M ; Historia, vol. 2, A G N ; Archivo General del Ministerio de Hacienda, Madrid; Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid; Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago. These manuscript materials were published in Documentos para la historia de Mexico, third series, vol. 1 (Mexico City, 1856), pp. 113-26; Documentos para servir a la historia del Nuevo Mexico (Coleccion Chimalistac de libros y documentos acerca de la Nueva Espana, vol. 13 [Madrid, 1962]), pp. 305-24. English translations are in Land of Sunshine (March and April 1900), pp.

274, 309; Ralph E. Twitchell, comp. and ed., The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 2 vols.

(Cedar Rapids: Torch Press, 1914), 2 : 267-80.

17

Provincias Internas, vol. 169, exp. 6, AGN.

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that the efforts of the Franciscans to win the Hopi back to the Faith would not be forgotten.18 Meanwhile the prelates of the Province of the Holy Gospel had decided to send a commissary visitor to New Mexico to make a complete investigation and report on spiritual and economic conditions in the Custody of the Conversion of Saint Paul. The high office of canonical visitor, who outranked all other friars in the custody, was given to Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, a native of Mexico City who had taken the habit in the Convento Grande about 1757 at the age of seventeen.19 Few references to his earlier career in the Order have turned up.

The instructions for his visitation bear no date, but Dominguez reached El Paso del Norte on September 4, 1775. There he found everyone "in a state of miserable panic because of the repeated assaults" by the Apache, who had raided the pueblo itself a few days before his arrival. The Comanche, as well as the Apache, were active in the interior, and Custos Fray Juan de Hinojosa had written: "This Custody is on the point of suffering its last agony." The only hope lay in the general campaign against the Apache which began on September 21.

Colonel O'Conor "showed in a thousand ways" his gratitude to Father Dominguez and the Franciscans for their prayers and for sending a chaplain with the force.20 Because of the Indian troubles, the father visitor was unable to leave El Paso until March 1, 1776. Accompanied by Fray Jose Mariano Rosete y Peralta and Fray Jose Palacio, he reached Santa Fe on March 22. The governor treated them "with special attention and courtesy," and "until April 10 we all continued to receive the favor of his table and conversation." One of the topics they discussed was the search for a route to Monterey. Dominguez had also received special instructions, in particular to make every effort to find out whether any news had been received from or about Fray Francisco Garces. Governor Mendinueta deplored the inadequate number of mission friars, and on one occasion when we were speaking of sending friars farther into the interior to discover lands and win souls; he said to me: "If there are not enough fathers for those already conquered, how can there be any for those that may be newly conquered?" An expression of opinion which can chill a spirit ardently burning to win souls.21 18

Adams and Chavez, Missions, pp. 305-7.

Asuntos de Conventos y Colegios, 165, Museo Nacional, Mexico City.

2:1 Adams and Chavez, Missions, pp. 2 7 0 - 7 3 ; Navarro Garcia, Jose de Galvez, pp. 238-41 ; Moorhead, The Presidio, pp. 71-72.

21 Adams and Chavez, Missions, pp. xxi, 277-80.

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Fray Damian Martinez, who was in poor health and disliked Zuni, had left there in the summer of 1775. Although Escalante thought it the best mission in the kingdom of New Mexico, it was thirty leagues from its nearest neighbor and he longed for a companion. With the governor's consent, Dominguez sent Father Rosete to join him late in April."

The commissary visitor began his tour of the mission pueblos on April 10, 1776, and by early June he had made formal inspections.of most of them. His lengthy report is a unique and invaluable source to increase understanding of what day-to-day life must have been like in eighteenth-century New Mexico. Dominguez's letters fill in further details and illuminate his character. He was a keen and impartial observer who recorded what he saw in meticulous detail. Much of what he sawâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; "the progressive decadence [he] found in the missions (and a few of the missionaries) as well as the material and cultural backwardness prevalent among the colonists"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;deeply disturbed him. His comments about deviations from the straight and narrow path are severe. He was quite incapable of compromise when his moral principles were offended, and this trait did not always endear him to his contemporaries.

His conscience never permitted him to spare himself, and busy as he was with the visitation, he "began to gather information and to see with my own eyes what I could, and I have already written this down."

H e wrote to Provincial Murillo that it is necessary that the information acquired from reports of others go too, as your Very Reverend Paternity has commanded me, in legally attested form. This will mean considerable work, for the people here are very light in their speech and there is no rhyme or reason to w h a t they say.

This means that any information I may furnish must first be tested by the fire of close investigation (if possible), reason, and actual proof.

H e had already taken steps to examine the data in the governmental archive at Santa Fe when Fray Juan Agustin Morn* wrote to the governor asking permission for Velez de Escalante to do so. Mendinueta replied to both that it contained "nothing but old fragments." Bucareli too had written to the governor requesting further information about Escalante's reports. He, said the viceroy, promised to discover the route to Monterey with twenty men. "I am expecting him hourly," said Dominguez, "and also hoping to see what comes of this."

In response to his superior's order, Fray Silvestre reached Santa Fe on the night of June 7. Fray Francisco Atanasio "immediately asked 22

Ibid., pp. 277, 302-3; Adams, "Fray Silvestre," p. 98.

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him whether he had any news of a letter which the Reverend Father Garces had written from the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers to the missionaries of this Custody." Escalante had not, but his own strong wishes and the fulfillment of the superior order of your Very Reverend Paternity in your letters patent had led him to decide to make a journey to Monterey and to undertake it during this present summer if I considered it fitting. In my judgment it was so necessary and proper that from that very night we made a pact for the two of us to undertake the journey and to seek out persons who might be useful to us in the enterprise.

They notified the governor, "who not only applauded our plan but also opened his heart and his hands, giving us supplies and everything we might need for the journey."

Their intention to leave on July 4, 1776, was frustrated by various incidents. O n June 20 Dominguez sent Escalante as chaplain wyith the presidials who went in pursuit of a party of Comanche who had raided La Cienega. T h e chase lasted ten days and Fray Silvestre returned exhausted. But three days later he went to Taos on urgent business his superior had no time for. There he came down with another of his excruciating attacks. Dominguez hastened to him and found him out of danger but too weak to travel. H e ordered him to rest for a week before returning to Santa Fe. As it turned out the delay was fortunate. O n July 2 Fray Francisco Garces reached Oraibi, and on the third he sent a letter to the missionary at Zufii by hand of an Acoma Indian, called Lazaro, who had been a fugitive in the Hopi pueblos since the previous winter. Fray Mariano Rosete questioned the Indian at length and forwarded Father Garces's letter with one of his own on July 6. Dominguez and Escalante reviewed their plans and decided that their journey would still be useful since Garces had come to Moqui from the mouth of the Colorado River.

Moreover, they intended to return via Cosnina "to confirm that nation's good decision to become Christian and to divorce it completely (if God favors us) from the Moquis, who are so strongly opposed to their conversion and that of the others." 2:i T h e Dominguez-Velez de Escalante expedition has been treated in detail by Herbert E. Bolton and others, and there is no reason to go into it here. But it should be noted that in a letter to Provincial Murillo, dated July 29, the very day the fathers set out, Velez de Escalante 2

" Adams and Chavez, Missions, pp. 281-86.

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reiterated his doubts about the possibility of reaching Monterey: And although I confess that my letter, with no other preceding it, indicates that my idea envisions the possibility of reaching Monterey with twenty men, I state that this has never seemed attainable to me with so few men. . . . [Nevertheless he did] consider the journey we are beginning today proper and useful, and although I am not without hope of reaching Monterey, all I explained in the above opinion is the t r u t h ; for although I say that it has never seemed possible of attainment with so few men, this was not to say that I may not have conceived some probable hope that God will facilitate our passage as far as befits His honor, glory, and the fulfillment of the will of the All High that all men be saved. T h e shortness of time and the many very necessary occupations of this day permit me to say only this.

Incidentally, in this same letter, he felt it necessary to put clown any pretensions on the part of Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, who, he said, "would be useful . . . not to command the expedition, but to make a map of the terrain explored. And I state that only for this do I consider him useful." "' It should be clear by now that Fathers Dominguez and Velez de Escalante were very similar in outlook, temperament, and unswerving moral rectitude. The difficult expedition would have been a severe test of the compatibility of any two men, but their mutual respect and friendship never faltered then, or later. Although Escalante had commenced work on the problem of the road to Monterey earlier, Dominguez was equally dedicated and diligent. He went along with Fray Silvestre's conclusions on the basis of his own critical evaluation of the data. The belief that Escalante alone was responsible for the diary of the expedition is not in accord with either the internal or external evidence. As the subordinate it was his task to act as amanuensis, but Dominguez was the man in charge and the one ultimately accountable to their superiors; in view of his character, it is incredible that he should have delegated the entire responsibility to his younger colleague. The account reads "we" throughout and both fathers signed it. In later years Velez de Escalante never referred to it except as "our diary," the one he and Dominguez had kept during their journey. Fray Francisco Atanasio was an equally keen, articulate, and interested observer, and there can be no doubt that the report was a true collaboration.

Conditions in New Mexico had not improved when the wanderers returned late in 1776. Commissary Visitor Dominguez despaired of 24

Ibid., pp. 307-8.

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rectifying lapses that scandalized him. He begged to be relieved of his new appointment as custos, quoting Saint Francis: "I do not wish to be my brothers' executioner." He left the interior missions on May 5, 1777, with don Diego Borica, who had been summoned to Chihuahua. After he reached El Paso on May 18, 1777, he proceeded to complete his visitation of the missions there. Before he left interior Newr Mexico he had appointed Escalante vice-custos because, said Father Dominguez, "He is the only person who can carry out my just plans and decisions." 25 As vice-custos Fray Silvestre was stationed at San Ildefonso pueblo, and on August 17, 1777, he addressed an official communication to the New Mexico Franciscans. This was the "scheme of government" for the missions usually issued by a custos when he took office. Since urgent business had prevented Dominguez from drawing it up, he left his order and command that I should do so, granting m e all his authority for this, as well as the necessary instructions lest my few years, less experience, and great lack of the wisdom that comes with experience should cast me either into an inertia harmful to his conscience, or to mine, . . . or into an indiscreet show of authority which, instead of correcting might provoke antipathy against the intent of his pious, charitable fervor and prudent zeal.

Escalante was indeed in an awkward position, forced to make the necessary strictures upon the conduct of his brethren when most of them were his seniors. He undoubtedly received his share of the antipathy that Dominguez's refusal to compromise had aroused in some quarters.26 Fray Silvestre divided his "scheme" into two parts. The first reminded the friars of their obligations under the "Seraphic Institute," or rule of the Franciscan Order: 1) "In regard to the necessary temporalities, let our poverty be adjudged without stain or suspicion of covetousness or attachment." 2) The use of Indian labor in farming and assistance for the convent must not go beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of the friar, and he was to give the workers their food.

3) No friar was to engage in trade or barter of any kind except the exchange of something "which is no longer necessary for something else he may need more, without the intervention of any civil contract." 4) No friar was to provide support or assistance for any Spanish family, especially if "the very slightest labor of the Indians may be involved"; 25

Ibid., pp. 289-95.

Patente, San Ildefonso, August 17, 1777, Archives of the Archdiocese, Santa Fe; Eleanor B. Adams, ed., "Letter to the Missionaries of New Mexico," New Mexico Historical Review 40 (1965) : 319-35 (includes "Writings of Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante," pp.

333-35).

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nor was he to send Indians with messages to those who had once served in the friary. 5) "Let no friar keep in his convent or visit, or receive visits from women suspect either because of their youth or beauty, or, finally, because of their customs and ill fame." 6) This concerns the regulations about the use of the Franciscan habit by laymen and the blessing of shrouds.

The second part dealt with their obligations as parish priests: 1) They must not leave their missions except for compelling reasons and with permission from the custos. 2) They were to explain "a point of Christian doctrine every Sunday and feast day of obligation . . . with the truth, order, and clarity that their [parishioners'] more or less limited understanding may require; and in the case of the Indians by means of the best interpreters . . . admonishing them that they are to express those words, such as God, Trinity, Person, Blessed Sacrament, which all the languages of these Indians lack, as they sound, and not to try to translate them, because . . . if they try to say it all in their languages, it is unavoidable either that they will say something different or give rise to errors of which it will not be easy to disabuse the people who hear them, since they usually believe that what the interpreter says is on all occasions the same as what the Father teaches." 3) Each minister must "apply the Mass for his parishioners every Sunday and other feast days on which they are obliged to hear it, even though after hearing it, they may work, because the Council of Trent so orders and our Most Holy Father Benedict XIV has so declared and decreed." Father Custos Dominguez was sending them a Spanish translation of the Apostolic Constitution "with some reflections upon it so that no one who holds a cure of souls at present may think himself exempt from this obligation, trusting in the now improbable opinion of various summarists . . . of moral theology who formerly defended and considered the contrary probable." 4) They were forbidden to write to the governor on any topic except for "Christmas and Easter greetings, congratulations, and on days [of his name saint]." Moreover, they were not to reprove local alcaldes mayores or their lieutenants for abuses against the Indians, or attempt to prevent them, "since the most serious discords between the ecclesiastical and secular ministers result from this and nothing can be remedied." Even in the case of flagrant excesses they must "tell your prelate and no one else . . . when they are grave and capable of proof, and when there is no danger that the accuser may come out of the affair as

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the delinquent. Under these circumstances the prelate will take the most appropriate course of action, having recourse to the government in due form, if it be necessary in order to cut off such disorders." 5) The friars were not to discuss "decisions of the prelates or of the government" with laymen, nor even receive them in the friary except for unavoidable reasons. 6) They were forbidden to "issue certifications in favor of or against any lay person, whoever he may be, without permission." Nor were they to give receipts for payment for masses unless the alms had actually been received, "because it is known that some laymen have satisfied other debts with such receipts. . . . " Items 4-6 clearly reflect the problems of friction between the secular and ecclesiastical authorities and resultant scandals that had plagued the New Mexico colony from the beginning. Fathers Dominguez and Velez de Escalante were undoubtedly following policies prescribed by their superiors in Mexico City wiien they attempted to enforce more discreet behavior on the part of their brethren.

Velez de Escalante's letter then continues with "some reflections upon the chastity and poverty which wre promised to observe throughout our life, because I know, not without grave sorrow and vehement fear of falling, that either because of the guile of the common enemy of mankind, or because of our small favor, there are more perils in this country than elsewhere against the first and not a few abuses against the second." This is in many ways the most interesting part of the document for what it reveals about Fray Silvestre's sincere piety, as well as the education he had received in the Convento Grande at Mexico City.

He expounds the compelling reasons for obedience to the enjoinders in the two previous sections citing a wide range of authoritiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Saint Paul and the Gospels, canon law, papal bulls, Juan de Solorzano Pereira's Gubernatione Indiarum, Concilio Limense III, Diego de Avendano's Tesauro Indico, Jose de Acosta's Procuranda Indorum Salute, Fray Pedro Navarro's Exposicion de la Regla de Nuestro Padre San Francisco, etc.27 Fully aware that "as religious we do not cease to be fragile men," he did his best to appeal to the consciences of missionaries living perforce in unusual solitude and liberty in their scattered friaries.

Sometime during the winter of 1777-78, Escalante made a trip to El Paso, probably summoned by Father Dominguez to confer about serious problems encountered in the administration of the custody.

27 Some of these books were available in the library of the custody. See Eleanor B. Adams, "Two Colonial New Mexico Libraries, 1704, 1776," New Mexico Historical Review 19 (1944) ; 135-67; Adams and Chavez, Missions, pp. 219-33.

Dominguez

and Velez de Escalante

57

During his last years in New Mexico, 177/'-79, he devoted what time he could spare from his other duties to reading and summarizing the manuscripts in the governmental archives of Santa Fe for the benefit of Fray Juan Agustin Morfi in drawing up his reports on the frontier.

Escalante's manuscript, known as the Extracto de Noticias, covered the period from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (the earlier documents had been destroyed then) to about 1717. An incomplete and inaccurate copy was first published in 1856 and was a major source for the history of New Mexico until the discovery of much new documentation in this century. 28 The last reference to Escalante in the Newr Mexico records is dated February 15, 1779, when he performed a marriage at the militarychapel of O u r Lady of Light in Santa Fe. The provincial records of that year again assign him to Zufii, but it is unlikely that he returned there. His uncertain health had taken a turn for the worse, and he was only about thirty when he died at Parral in April 1780 on his way back to Mexico City for treatment. Later Father Morfi eulogized him in these words: Father Fray Silvestre Velez Escalante, a friar, despite his youth, among the most meritorious of the Custody because of his talent, his erudition, his hard labors, and above all because of his virtues, which led him to sacrifice his hopes, health, and life for the conversion of those souls.29

Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez outlived his younger companion by nearly a quarter-century, and so far as is known he received little or no appreciation for his virtues and accomplishments. His meticulous report on the missions of New- Mexico was filed with a sarcastic notation and forgotten. He remained in El Paso until 1788. From there he went to the Presidio of Carrizal as chaplain. In 1791 he was residing at San Antonio de la Isleta in the El Paso area and had again been appointed custos of the New Mexico missions. A letter from the bishop of Durango, dated March 22, 1791, first congratulates him, then takes him to task for excessive zeal in a matter concerning which no explanatory documentation has been found as yet. It is obvious, however, that his gadfly conscience had once more compelled him to take an unpopular stand, and write to the bishop to question the decisions "of his Father 28 Adams's annotated edition of the complete Extracto based on the original manuscript in BNM was scheduled for publication in Mexico City some ten years ago. Extraneous legal and financial difficulties forced the publisher to suspend publications indefinitely. An English translation is in preparation. ""Adams, "Fray Silvestre," pp. 115-18.

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Provincial, of a Commandant General, and of a Bishop," who did not wish publicity for certain unfortunate misdeeds.

He was next heard of in 1795 when, on May 1, he wrote to his provincial from the presidio of Janos asking for the "status and exemptions of definitor." He felt that he deserved this for twenty years of service in the missions of New Mexico and as chaplain of presidios in Neuva Vizcaya. No reply has been found. He wras still at Janos in 1800, and he apparently died sometime between 1803 and 1805."" One may hope that he received greater rewards in a better world. ;i " Adams and Chavez, Missions, A G N ; Archives of the Archdiocese.

pp. xviii, 3 0 1 - 2 : Provincias Internas, vol. 161, no. 6,

Drawing of the Dominguez-l'elez de Escalante party's arrival at the Colorado River by Architects/Planners Alliance.

Joseph L. Rawlins.

Joseph L. Rawlins, Father of Utah Statehood

BY J O A N RAY H A R R O W

the many achievements of Joseph L. Rawlins as an educator, lawyer, politician, and statesman were well remembered. He JTIFTY YEARS AGO

Mrs. Harrow based this article on her fuller study, "Joseph L. Rawlins: Father of U t a h Statehood" (M.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1973). Rawlins is Mrs. Harrow's greatgrandfather.

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had taught at the University of Utah and served as a city attorney. As a young man he had organized the Democratic Club of Utah and acted as its first president. In 1892 he was named Utah's delegate to Congress and while there introduced the Enabling Act that provided for Utah's admission into the Union. Four years later he became Utah's first Democratic senator and the first Utah senator to serve a full six-year term. His endeavors won him this tribute from the Salt Lake Tribune on the day after his death on May 24, 1926: Another giant has fallen in the front rank of Utah's Old Guard. I n the legal and political battles of the past no native son wore brighter armor, wielded a keener sword or fought more valiantly than did Joseph L. Rawlins.

H e became a party leader at home and a leader in the highest legislative assembly in the nation. When the motives and good faith of his constituents were assailed and questioned, he stood as their champion.

His place in the esteem and gratitude of the people of U t a h is secure.

However, with the passage of time, Rawlins's efforts on behalf of statehood have been largely forgotten. It is the purpose of this paper to revive interest in a man who wras so much a part of Utah history in the late nineteenth century.

Among those following Brigham Young on the trek to Utah in 1849 were Joseph Sharp Rawlins and Mary Frost Rawlins. They were directed to take up farming and to settle fifteen miles southeast of the small handful of houses that then constituted Salt Lake City at a place near the mountains in Millcreek. It was there in a small adobe house adjoining the larger two-story house of his grandfather that Joseph L. Rawlins was born March 28, 1850.1 Later the family moved to Draper.

Helping on the farm was a part of growing up for most boys in those days, but it was even more so for Rawlins whose father was gone much of the time. When Joseph was only four his father was called to be a counselor for the Elk Mountain Mission, leaving his wife Mary in Salt Lake Valley with three small children. The dislike Rawlins was to have for the Mormon church apparently began at that time. With survival itself at stake on the new frontier, it was not easy to have a father so far away.

Young Joseph was the envy of other boys during mellowr autumn days when he was allowed to stay out of school and help on the farm.

1 Alta Rawlins Jensen, ed., "The Unfavored Few": The Auto-biography of Joseph L. Rawlins (Carmel, Calif.: Author, 1956), pp. 13-14. This work is the principal source of information on the boyhood and education of Rawlins and on his attitudes toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Ironically, he longed to be in school. He recalled with fondness his days in the adobe schoolhouse. While he had little aptitude for spelling and went down early in the matches, he liked arithmetic and envied the bigger boys who could do sums. Extracurricular activity was fun, too; there was a choir and band of fife and drums. Joseph labored hard learning to play the fife. Band members were provided with uniforms and wooden guns and were brought out for review when noted visitors came to Draper. From the beginning, going to school meant more to Joseph than anything else.

All was well in the Rawlins household until his father was sent out on another church assignment. Then the "same lonely, difficult things were to be endured all over again." 2 Longing to be at school, Joseph would have to take over more chores. The older he grew the more he resented his father's absences that left his mother with such heavy farm work. He did not blame his father but the religious system that sent men off to bring more converts to Zion instead of taking care of the ones who were already there. Due to his father's travels the actual time Rawlins attended school between the ages of fourteen and eighteen did not exceed sixteen months. However, those sixteen months were a time of intense intellectual activity.

John R. Park was one of his teachers and Joseph adored him. When Park was named president of the University of Deseret in 1868, Rawlins was determined to follow him. After working to save some money, the young scholar left in March 1869 for the university where he enrolled in history, rhetoric, Latin, mathematics, and physical geography. He excelled in math and was asked by Orson Pratt to teach classes in it during the next school year. Lack of funds prevented his return to the university that fall. Instead he taught school at North Mill Creek and was paid in wheat collected from the families whose children attended. This teaching enabled him to return to the university in the spring of 1870, and at that time he was placed in charge of math classes as Professor Pratt had suggested. Although his salary was small it helped with expenses.3 Despite his success at the University of Deseret, Rawlins longed for the broader educational opportunities available outside the territory. He chose Indiana University, for he had relatives near there and could spend - Ibid., p. 14. " R a l p h V. Chamberlin, The University of Utah: A History of Its First Hundred Years, 1850 to 1950 (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1960), p. 66. Rawlins was paid fifty dollars per month. See also p p . 67, 68, 74.

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vacations with them. In June 1871 he set out for that distant place. The move represented Rawlins's first conscious break with the Mormon church. He felt that church policy required his consulting with church leaders before making this important change in his life, and his failure to do so was intentional. He studied hard at Indiana, although he did allow himself some outside activities. He joined Beta Theta Pi and a debating society of which he later became president. According to Ralph V. Chamberlin, Rawlins's record at Indiana was brilliant. However, he was beset with financial troubles and in 1873 had to return to Utah. 4 In the fall of 1873 he again entered the University of Deseret, having arranged with Dr. Park to teach higher math and Latin each day until noon. The remainder of his time was devoted to studying law in the offices of Williams, Young, and Sheek and to thoughts of reforming Utah. He felt that the eradication of polygamy was of prime importance.

Politicsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially church involvement in politicsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;needed a new orientation. The only parties in Utah w7ere drawn along religious lines; Rawlins hoped to bring about a division along national party lines. He knew obstacles lay in the path of such reforms, but that did not lessen his determination to work toward his goals. His first object, however, was to establish himself as a lawyer.11 From the beginning he seemed suited for the legal profession and was recognized as having marked aptitude for it. "Careful and thorough in preparation, logical in argument and fervid in oratory he won with his maiden speech his first case in court, a speech commended by members of the bar." 6 When Ben Sheeks withdrew from his former firm, he and Rawlins formed a partnership and opened for business July 25, 1875, in a one-story adobe house on the north side of First South east of Main Street. Despite high hopes, business was slow, and when Rawlins learned that a new occupant was being considered for the office of city attorney, he sent a brief note to Brigham Young suggesting himself for the position. He did not expect to receive it because of his changed religious views and was astonished when told of his appointment. He was overjoyed that the additional funds would enable him to marry Julia E. Davis.7 'Jensen, Auto-biography of Joseph L. Rawlins, pp. 79-83; Chamberlin, University of Utah, p. 591.

5 Jensen, Auto-biography of Joseph L. Rawlins, pp. 102-3.

6 Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1892-1904), 4:679.

1 Rawlins's courtship of Miss Davis and his early success as a lawyer is charmingly related in Jensen, Auto-biography of Joseph L. Rawlins, pp. 109-22, 130.

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In his new position Rawlins gained the friendship not only of Brigham Young but of others in city government. He was reappointed in 1878. Although succeeded in 1880 by Aurelius Miner, Rawlins continued to be consulted on city business: the minutes of the city council meeting for September 26, 1882, reveal that the firm of Sheeks and Rawlins was employed to defend the city and its officers in the courts of the territory for a fee of $100 a month. Church leaders also sought his assistance on many occasions during the months and years that followed.

Rawlins liked the Mormon people; his main objection to the church was that it interfered unduly, he believed, in the private lives of its members.

But apparently his views did not hinder his ability to represent the church legally. Between 1882 and 1884 thousands of Mormons in Utah and Idaho were disqualified from voting because they were polygamists.

Rawlins was employed to defend them and to test the constitutionality of the law. And when George Q. Cannon was charged with unlawful cohabitation and had his bond set at $45,000 Rawlins was one of the lawyers he hired to represent him.8 Although Sheeks and Rawlins had gotten along well, Rawlins did a disproportionate amount of the work while the income was divided equally. Early in 1889 he notified Sheeks of his desire to dissolve the firm.

Sheeks moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he became a judge. Rawlins practiced alone from 1889 to 1891 and then entered into a partnership with E.B. Critchlow. Later he formed a partnership with his son Athol and son-in-law William W. Ray.'J Rawlins was a colorful attorney, and his mild manner could turn fiery in the courtroom. On one occasion his integrity was questioned by the opposing attorney. He demanded an apology, and when it was not forthcoming he dealt his accuser a blow on the cheek. The latter hurled a large glass water pitcher at Rawlins, missing his head for which it was intended but cutting him on the neck. "Confusion reigned for several minutes and everyone was excited to the highest pitch." The judge was pained by the incident and fined each lawyer fifty dollars.30 Prominent figures in political life are more often than not lawyers.

The preparation that qualifies a person for the practice of law also pre8 See ibid., p. 143-47, 159-64, for a glimpse of Rawlins's relationship with Cannon and his efforts in behalf of the Mormons despite his personal disaffection from the church. See also Whitney, History of Utah, 4 : 6 7 9 .

8 History of the Bench and Bar of Utah (Salt Lake City: Interstate Press Association, 1913), pp. 186-87, summarizes Rawlins's legal career and lists his various partnerships. The careers of some of his partners are found on pp. 127-28, 153, 186, 187, 211-12, 215-16.

10 Deseret News, April 18, 1892.

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pares one in large measure for an understanding of different political situations and the solution of important public problems. But Rawlins had had an interest in politics long before he became a lawyer. In college he was an active Democrat and was drafted as a speaker in the campaign of 1872 at the age of twenty-two. He also attended Democratic national conventions and heard many of the leading public speakers of the country.

In 1884 Rawlins and others organized the Democratic Club of Utah, the objective of which was to furnish a rallying point for the young men of the territory wrho did not wish to affiliate with either the antiMormon Liberal party or the pro-Mormon People's party. Rawlins was elected club president. Many joined initially, although strong opposition from the church doomed it. The Democratic Club of Utah continued its work during 1885 then dwindled and died; the People's party was still paramount.

T h e issuance of the Manifesto in 1890 greatly affected Utah's party system. Mormon surrender to the demand of the federal government to end polygamy merited a change in attitude from their opponents.

Many withdrew from the Liberal party in protest against its continuing resistance. Leaders in the two opposing political camps came to recognize that local parties stood in the way of the territory's progress towrard statehood. After a final contest in which the People's party returned John T. Caine to Congress in 1890, the party voted itself out of existence the following year. Both the Democratic and Republican parties were organized in Utah in 1891. Rawlins actively campaigned for members of the Democratic cause. 11 Elections for delegate to Congress were held in the fall of 1892.

Frank J. Cannon was the Republican choice, Rawlins the Democratic.

It was a spirited campaign, and when it was over Rawlins had won by a plurality of some twenty-eight hundred votes.12 He assumed his duties March 4, 1893. His first speech in Congress, delivered August 12, dealt 11 For details of the organization of the Democratic party in Utah see, for example, Charles C. Richards, A Brief Sketch of the Organization and Growth of the Democratic Parly in the Territory of Utah, 1847-1896 (Salt Lake City: Sagebrush Democratic Club, 1942); Platform of Principles Adopted by the Democratic Club of Utah, a circular by Rawlins and John H. Barton, reprinted in Harrow, "Joseph L. Rawlins," p. 5 1 ; Whitney, History of Utah, 3 : 2 6 3 - 6 5 , 4 : 6 7 9 - 8 0 ; Gustive O. Larson, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1971), pp. 235-38; Jensen, Auto-biography of Joseph L. Rawlins, pp. 153-59, 168-69; Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City, 1886), pp. 854-60; Jean Bickmore White, " U t a h State Elections, 1895-1899" (Ph.D. diss.', University of Utah, 1968), pp. 13-16; S.A. Kenner, Utah As It Is (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1904), pp. 135-47; "A Political Symposium," Contributor 12 ( 1 8 9 1 ) : 362-71.

12 For a fuller account of Rawlins's campaign and election, see Harrow "Joseph L. Rawlins," pp. 5 9 - 7 1 .

Rawlins, Father of Statehood

65

with the silver question, an important issue of the day. It was of special interest to his constituents since Utah, a silver-producing territory, inclined toward the restoration of that metal to its function as standard money along with gold.

Rawlins introduced a number of bills in the fall of 1893. One bill granted the University of Utah sixty acres of the Fort Douglas military reservation. One related to the opening of the Uintah and Uncompaghrc Indian reservations. Another provided for the return to the Mormon church of its personal property seized under the Edmunds-Tucker Act during 1888-90. This personal property, unlike the real estate of the church, had not been confiscated by the government, there being no warrant in law for such a proceeding, but had been taken possession of by the federal receiver. The Supreme Court had decided in May 1891 that all church property then in the hands of the receiver should remain there pending further action by the Utah courts. The Utah Supreme Court had in November 1892 ruled that the Mormon people were entitled to the return of the property. However, the territorial court was helpless; it did not have the power to return the property in opposition to an act of Congress. The only move open was for Congress to repeal that section of the Edmunds-Tucker Act, thus restoring the property to the church.13 Accordingly, Rawlins introduced on September 9, 1893, the following resolution: Resolved, That the personal property and money now in the hands of the Receiver be, and the same is hereby, restored to the said Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to be applied under the direction and control of the First Presidency of said Church to the charitable uses and purposes thereof. And the said receiver, after deducting the expenses of his receivership, under the direction of the said Supreme Court of the Territory of Utah, is hereby required to deliver the said property and money to the persons now constituting the Presidency of the Church to be held and applied generally to the charitable uses and purposes of the Church.14

The measure passed the House on October 5 and the Senate on October 20 with an amendment detailing the "charitable uses." The House accepted the Senate's amendments, and on October 25 the bill was signed by President Cleveland. Personal property valued at more than four hundred thirty-eight thousand dollars was turned over to the First Presidency in January 1894. Rawlins had engineered the bill's M 11

Ibid., chap. 5, treats Rawlins's activities as delegate to Congress.

Deseret News, October 27, 1893.

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passage from beginning to end and was praised in the Deseret News: " T h e energy and skill of Delegate Rawlins in securing the passage of his resolution is to be highly commended. . . . It is an act of justiceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;tardy though it may beâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and the triumph should give genuine pleasure to every true patriot and every honest person everywhere." 15 But the most important piece of legislation Rawlins introduced was the Enabling Act that provided for Utah's admission into the Union.

This bill, known as House Resolution 352, was introduced on September 6, 1893. T h e Enabling Act contained twenty sections setting forth the conditions under which Utah might be admitted to the Union and allowing the people of that territory to draw up a constitution and to form a state government. The bill was reported back with an amendment from the Committee on Territories on November 2 and was made the special order of business for December 8.16 In the meantime, Rawlins returned to Salt Lake for a short stay in mid-November when the special session of Congress adjourned. "Rawlins has done splendid work for the territory," he was pleased to read in the Salt Lake Herald. " H e has fulfilled the highest expectations of his friends and has been successful in promoting the interests of the people he was chosen to represent." 17 T h e statehood bill was called up as scheduled in December, but owing to the filibustering tactics of the Republicans its consideration was delayed for four days. Evidently some would rather have had Utah remain out of the Union than to go in under Democratic auspices. But Rawlins forced the bill's consideration, and discussion began December 12 with a reading of the bill that took twenty minutes. Rep. Constantine B. Kilgore of Texas, of the Committee on Territories, took the floor in behalf of the bill, setting forth the material, financial, and industrial resources of Utah. H e also discussed polygamy and the fact that it had been abandoned by the Manifesto. Following Kilgore's hour-long speech, Elijah Adams Morse of Massachusetts began a tirade against Mormonism. H e reiterated the old charges of polygamy and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, denouncing the people of Utah as murderers, polyg15

ibid.

In early 1892 Rawlins was one of several who testified before the Committee on Territories of both the House and Senate. As a self-confessed ex-Mormon, Rawlins argued persuasively and may be supposed to have had an influence that others closely tied to the church could not hope to achieve. His activity thus placed him at the very center of the final push toward statehood a full year before he took his seat as delegate to Congress. U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Territories, Arguments . . . on Bill (H.R. 524) "For the Local Government of Utah Territory. . . ," 52d Cong., 1st sess., 1891-92, pp. 2 2 - 2 5 ; U.S., Congress, Senate Committee on Territories, Home Rule for Utah, 52d Cong., 1st sess., 1891-92, pp. 80-94.

17 November 15, 1893. iS

Rawlins, Father of Statehood

67

amists, and thieves. His remarks were so bitter and virulent that several Republicans around him chafed until he took his seat a half-hour later.

Rawlins was the next to speak. In the course of his speech he made his noted reply to Congressman Morse. After reminding him that conditions had changed in Utah and that the present generation could not justly be held responsible for the acts of some of their ancestors, he said: W h o was responsible for the education of the men who established polygamy in U t a h ? I tell you M r . C h a i r m a n , the men who are responsible for it originally were born, bred and educated under the system and civilization of New England. (Applause) I tell the gentleman now that the moral sentiment which led to its adoption in U t a h was the outgrowth of that Puritanical sentiment which in some of its excrescences burned witches, persecuted Quakers, drove out Roger Williams, and later produced the gentleman from Massachusetts. ( L a u g h t e r and applause) . . . T h e r e is less polygamy, as shown by the records of the last ten years in U t a h , m a d e known and which has come to light, in proportion to population than there has been in the same time in the State of Massachusetts. (Great laughter and applause) When an entire people is arraigned by any gentlem a n he certainly ought to be prepared with some evidence to justify what he says. And when a gentleman rises upon this floor, as the gentleman from Massachusetts did, and makes the assertion with respect to the people of U t a h , that they are murderers, polygamists, thieves, and is not able to produce one syllable of evidence to justify his statements he ought to hang his head in shame. H e is not worthy to represent a civilized people (applause) . l s

Having thus dispensed with Morse, he continued with reasons why Utah should be admitted. He said the people of the East were misinformed as to the character, education, and intelligence of the people of Utah.

"By the admission of the Territory of Utah I believe her peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; 240,000 in number today, and probably in three or four years with statehood, 500,000â&#x20AC;&#x201D;will send to these halls men who will not only do credit to the people they represent, but who will be of service in the affairs of the Nation." He concluded saying: We have beautiful towns and cities; we have we have cultivated school teachers. If there is U t a h should longer be kept out of the Union, I I ask the vote of this House that U t a h may be applause) l9

schools, school buildings, any reason on earth why am unable to conceive it. speedily admitted. (Loud

The following day the House resumed consideration of the Utah bill. One of the main points at issue was whether the Enabling Act 18 3!l

As reported in the Deseret News, December 19, 1893.

Ibid.

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should contain a proviso imposing penalties for polygamous marriage, the contention on the one hand being that the state should come in on an equal footing with other states, unhandicapped by such a provision, and on the other that as polygamy had been stamped out by federal statutes and as the admission of the territory would repeal that statute, Congress should make it part of the act. Several spoke for the bill. Francis G. Newlands of Nevada advocated its passage as did Jerry Simpson of Kansas wrho accused the opposition of being in collusion with the monometalists to keep down western representation in Congress in order to maintain the gold standard. Joseph E. Washington of Tennessee eulogized Utahns for their intelligence and progressive spirit and the territory for its wealth of mineral resources. The House galleries were well filled during the debate, demonstrating the public's interest in the Utah question.

In the late afternoon of December 13 the vote was taken. Only tw^o negative votes were cast, one from each side. Morse, the Republican, voted no as did Michael D. Harter, a Democrat from Ohio. Harter felt there were too many small western states and that no more should be admitted for years. This objection was expected to be potent in the Senate.

Rawlins was ardently praised. T h e Deseret News said too much praise could not be given Rawlins for his able, manly, and discreet management of the bill from the start. His speech overhauling Morse brought dowrn the House. The Herald carried these headlines: "House Passes Statehood Billâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Untiring Work of Delegate from Utah Rewarded â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Proudest Moment in the History of the Territory." T h e article claimed that the record made by Rawlins was unprecedented: "Never before has the bill for the admission of a state been passed wdth such unanimity and to go through without a roll call beats the record." 20 The Tribune also praised Rawlins: Delegate Rawlins covered himself with glory in his magnificant speech.

H e caught the attention of the House in his opening sentences and before he h a d been speaking ten minutes the lobbies and cloak room were deserted and a large audience was gathered around the speaker. H e conducted his debate so as to win many friends on both sides of the Chamber.

His speech was brilliant, impassioned, candid, argumentative and delivered with telling effect. 21 ^December 14, 1893.

21 December 13, 1893.

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The University Chronicle began mentioning him for senator. The eastern press devoted considerable attention to his speech. The New York Times suggested him for senator in case of the admission of the territory. Even the Patriot of Jackson, Michigan, spoke of him, saying his speech had elicited wide commendation and mentioning that his name was being suggested for senator.

The next hurdle was to obtain Senate approval of the Enabling Act. Rawlins spent a good deal of time conferring with leading senators in hopes of getting action before the Christmas recess. He was not successful.

Despite this temporary setback, Rawlins continued to make frequent visits to the Senate. He watched for a favorable opportunity to have the bill called up and finally suggested to Charles J. Faulkner of West Virginia, a personal friend and chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, that he ask for immediate consideration of the bill. Faulkner complied. Instantly, Sen. Orville H. Piatt, a Connecticut Republican and one of the chief opponents of the bill, rose to object. But after a whispered interview with Sen. Henry Clay Hansborough, a Republican from North Dakota, he resumed his seat and no objection was made.

Rawlins learned later that Mormon leaders had conveyed assurances to Senator Hansborough that if Utah were admitted into the Union, she would line up as a Republican state. This message was relayed to Piatt. The persistent lobbying efforts of Republican Isaac Trumbo for Utah statehood and the growing Republicanism of church leaders such as Joseph F. Smith probably served as a basis for Hansborough's political assessment of the forces at work in Utah.22 On May 17, 1894, the Senate Committee on Territories reported the bill favorably. One of the few amendments provided that delegates to the constitutional convention should be chosen at the regular election to be held in November 1894, the convention to meet in March 1895.

On July 10 the bill was passed by the Senate without division. The next day it was returned to the House for concurrence in Senate amendments. On July 13 the House concurred in the amendments, and the bill was sent to the president for his approval. On July 16, 1894, Cleveland signed the Enabling Act providing for Utah's admission. For the occasion Rawlins had purchased a special pen. At first it was to have 22 See especially Edward Leo Lyman, "Isaac Trumbo and the Politics of Utah Statehood," Utah Historical Quarterly 41 (1973) : 128-49; Larson, "Americanization" of Utah, pp. 284-86.

Rawlins's own account of the debate on and final approval of the Enabling Act reveals his inside view of the personalities involved as well as his honest reservations about the temporal power of the LDS church. Jensen, Auto-biography of Joseph L. Rawlins, pp. 174-87.

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been solid gold, but since Utah was a bimetallic state, silver was allowed to share the honors. Rawlins purchased a gold pen with a silver holder that was carved and engraved. The president's private secretary received it with the understanding that Cleveland would use it. But either the secretary forgot that the Utah bill was among a batch of bills the president was signing or he forgot his promise, for Cleveland signed the Utah bill, as he did the others, with a small steel stub pen blunted with use.

The only remedy was to give the pen actually used to Rawlins as a souvenir. The gold pen was removed from the silver holder and the steel pen was put there instead. The pen, in a plush case, was presented to Rawlins and is now at the Utah State Historical Society.

Utahns were jubilant at the final approval. All the Utah papers carried headlines, but the Herald was perhaps most exuberant. Headlines read: "Utah Day Has Dawnedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Thanks to 'Joe' Rawlins Patienceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Cinderella of the Territory Will Outstrip Her Sister States." 23 In Provo a forty-five gun salute was fired, and in the evening citizens staged a torchlight parade that included a shotgun brigade and a drum corps.

Not to be overlooked as cause for celebration were the liberal appropriations of public lands secured for Utah, the largest ever made for state purposes. Four sections out of each township were set aside as public lands to be devoted to hospitals, asylums, and public schools. Prior to that time no new state had been granted more than two sections out of each township.

Cleveland's signing of the act did not make Utah a state but merely set in motion the process by which she became one. The Enabling Act provided that the territorial government issue a proclamation August 1 calling for an election of delegates to a Constitutional Convention.

Accordingly, two nominating conventions were held in September. The Republicans met September 11 in Provo and nominated Frank J. Cannon as candidate for delegate to Congress. On September 15 the Democrats held their territorial convention at the Salt Lake Theatre and Rawlins was nominated unanimously. The Herald reported that his renomination was a source of satisfaction in Washington. Both Democrats and Republicans seemed to realize the difficulty a new person encounters when trying to gain recognition on the floor of the House.

"A delegate having no vote must bring some superior personal influence to obtain anything at all," the Herald commented.24 23 24

July 18, 1894.

September 23, 1894.

Rawlins, Father of

Statehood

T h e campaign was hotly contested. T h e Democrats claimed that a bold attempt to steal the election from Rawlins had been discovered just in time, while the Republicans accused the Democrats of fraud in registration. Rawlins lost by some nineteen hundred votes, and a Republican majority was elected to the Constitutional Convention to be held in March 1895. Although his fellow Democrats stood loyally by him, circumstances had conspired against Rawlins's reelection as delegate. It was a Republican year. T h e panic of 1893 was effectively used against the party in power, the Democrats. Another very important factor was the dissolution of the old Liberal party.

Many had anticipated that ex-members of that party would divide themselves about equally between the two national parties. H a d that been done, it would have ensured a Democratic victory. Instead, most joined with the Republicans. Rawlins accepted his defeat gracefully, and if he had any regrets he kept them to himself.

Rawlins's term expired in March 1895, and he returned to Salt Lake. However, within six months he was involved in another campaign. The Democratic state convention was held in September

iemocratic Ticket.

GEflEBflL ELECT!.

••

•

WEBER COUNTY, November 6th, 1894.

TERRITORIAL OFFICERS. For Delegate to Fifty-fourth Congress,

J O S E P H L. R A W L I N S .

For Commissioners to Locate University Lands THOMAS G R I F F I N , Cache County, I S R A E L E V A N S , Utah CoHnty, P E T E R G R E A V E S , Sr., Sanpete County.

COUNTY OFFICERS. For Recorder, J O H N G. T Y L E E .

For Assessor, MORONI F . BROWN. For Treasurer.

J O H N A. BOYLE. For Sheriff HEBER WRIGHT. F o r Collector.

H. C GILBERT. For Clerk, J O S E P H P. L E D W I D G E .

For Attorney, A. J . WEBER, For Surveyor, WASHINGTON J E N I Q N S .

For Coroner, JOSEPH H A i L .

For Selectmen, N A T H A N I E L MONTGOMERY, A. M. ¥ A D D I S , J. M. F E R R I N .

PRECINCT OFFICERS. Rawlins failed to win reelection as delegate to Congress in 1894 despite his vigorous activity on behalf of the Enabling Act. It was a Republican year.

OGDES CXTT, SECOND PRECINCT.

For Justice of the Peace, D A V I D W. E V A N S .

For Constable, THOMAS S M U R T H W A I T E .

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Utah Historical Quarterly

1895, and a resolution was passed that in the event there was a Democratic majority in the legislature Rawlins and Moses Thatcher wrould be elected to the Senate. The Republican choices for senators were Frank Cannon and Arthur Brown. The Republicans won control of the state legislature and the privilege of naming Cannon and Brown as the newstate's first United States senators.

Rawlins was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago July 6-10, 1896. He also raised funds for the national campaign and at his own expense went east to take part in the campaign for William Jennings Bryan in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. The Rawlinses entertained the Bryans lavishly in Utah. Rawlins's daughter, Alta Jensen, recalled playing with Bryan's children and thinking they w^ere very brave because they rode their bicycles along a narrow wall at the Rawlins home.

By the end of July 1896 Rawlins was again under consideration for election as senator by the next legislature. While November 4, 1896, saw a Republican landslide nationally, Utah went Democratic. The election of a Democratic legislature meant the election of a Democratic senator to represent Utah for the next six years. Rawlins was one of the three strong contenders for the Senate position, the others being Apostle Moses Thatcher and Judge Henry Henderson. It was a strange race. In the April 1896 conference of the Mormon church a policy statement was issued that no officer of the church, especially one in a high position, should accept another job without consulting with the leaders. Thatcher refused to agree and was thus dropped from the roll of apostles. The race became more than just one of Republicans versus Democrats or Democrats versus Democrats. And it was a long race; it took the legislature fifty-three ballots before it decided on someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Rawlins.

Rawlins took his seat in the upper house of Congress on March 4, 1897. Keenly interested in foreign policy, he called for Cuban independence and introduced the first joint resolution making war on Spain.

He was also active in the debate over whether to retain the Philippines and made an important speech on the Nicaragua Canal bill.

From 1899 to 1901 Rawlins was Utah's sole senator, for the legislature failed to agree on a candidate and adjourned without making a choice. Rawlins ran for reelection in 1903, but when the election was held Republicans swept the state as they did the nation. The Utah legislature consisted of fifty-three Republicans and ten Democrats. Raw-

Rawlins, Father of Statehood

73

lins's fate was sealed and he was succeeded by Mormon Apostle Reed Smoot.25 Rawlins was content. Partly because of his efforts the people of Utah were no longer subservient to the dictates of the church hierarchy, polygamy was officially dead, independent political parties had been set up, and statehood had been won. With these things accomplished Rawlins was not unhappy to retire from public life.

For the remaining twenty-three years of his life, Joseph Rawlins maintained his interest in politics, his legal practice, civic affairs, and affairs at the University of Utah. In 1904 he was one of six delegates to the Democratic National Convention held in Saint Louis where Alton Parker was nominated for president. He practiced law alone from 1903 to 1907, then invited his son and son-in-law to join him in the partnership of Rawlins, Ray, and Rawlins. A Department of Law-, organized under the School of Arts and Sciences, was announced in 1907 at the University of Utah, and Rawlins was listed as special lecturer.

At the forty-first annual commencement of the University of Utah, June 8, 1910, Rawlins was honored with the degree of doctor of laws, the first of its kind ever conferred by the school. Joseph T. Kingsbury, university president, spoke highly of Rawlins as a statesman and scholar: As professor in the University, as delegate to Congress, as United States Senator, and as an attorney before the bar of Utah, Mr. Rawlins has distinguished himself as a man of genuine character and unusual ability.

In these various positions of life he has always been a warm friend of education and has rendered eminent services to the State and especially the University. To him is due this magnificent site, upon which is now situated this University. Through his far-sightedness, the State School of Mines has been made a part of the University of Utah, and large tracts of land have been appropriated by Congress for the elementary schools, the Agricultural College and the University.26

Rawlins made a short acknowledgment in which he said that the degree meant more to him than any office he had held. Of the honor the Deseret News said the decision of the regents was eminently proper.

The university honored him again in June 1919, selecting him to deliver a commencement address. His theme provides a key to much of his life's work: Where there is ignorance there may also be superstition, and where there is superstition there is always intolerance. . . . In the progress of " 5 For a detailed account of Rawlins as senator, see Harrow, "Joseph L. Rawlins," chap. 6.

20 Deseret News, June 9, 1910.

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education as the truths of science are brought into view necessarily preconceived opinion and notions resulting from ignorance are eradicated.

Minds may take a new, more tolerant and broader view of things. Such changes were the natural result of the work of education. . . .-7

Rawlins, the public figure, was also a very private person who enjoyed solitary pursuits. A quiet man, he read prodigiously, especially Greek philosophy and other weighty matters. In an era when many lawyers and judges did not work in the summers, Rawlins and his family spent their long holiday in Brighton where he would tramp the hills all day long prospecting for gold and silver. The private man did not enjoy entertaining and had few close friends, although he was generous with the ones he had. On a social level Rawlins met with his peers at the Alta Club once a week, played cards and golf, and liked all outdoor recreation. One of his daughters, Alta Jensen, remembered her father as very easy to get along with, "except when his meals were lateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;then his teeth would grit." A sincere man, Rawlins had the ability to convince others, a quality that proved immensely useful in Utah's struggle for statehood.

During his years in politics Joseph Rawlins was often criticized in the newspapers, but when he died on May 24, 1926, the local papers assessed his contributions to the state in glowing terms, The Deseret News said: A career which has greatly influenced public life in Utah and the nation is closed with the death of Senator Rawlins. He is the author of many measures of distinct national importance which passed through Congress while he was seated there. As a foremost advocate of statehood, Utah owes much to him for his untiring work and his constructive measures in building up the state and its government. In legal circles he was recognized as one of the leading minds of the state. He was recognized as a diligent student all his life. He delved deeply into classical learning as well as mathematics and law. He was the first to receive an honorary doctor of law from the University, and he was the oldest member of Beta Theta Pi in Utah, being instrumental in securing a charter for the local organization.28

Editorially the News praised him for maintaining the principles for which he stood and characterized him as a fair-minded man who won the esteem of his opponents as well as those who fought by his side.

The Tribune editors went even further, calling him the "father of Utah": 27

University of U t a h , Addresses Delivered at the Fiftieth Annual Commencement of the University, June 6 to 10, 1919 (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1919), p. 11.

88 May 25, 1926.

Rawlins, lower left, and his wife, Julia E. Davis, upper right, with their family.

Faultless in honor, fearless in conduct and stainless in reputation characterizes a career closed yesterday afternoon when Joseph L. Rawlins, known as the "father of U t a h " died. Senator Rawlins, one of the foremost members of the bar, one of the Democratic leaders of U t a h , instrumental in obtaining statehood for Utah, and serving as senator from 1897-1904 has left his impress on the state and nation. . . . His passing comes as a distinct loss.29

While many individuals worked for statehood, few labored as diligently and long as Rawlins to reorient Utah politics, ease church-federal tensions, and shepherd the statehood bill through Congress. As Utah's delegate he was motivated less by political ambition than by compassion for his fellow Utahns and a desire to see them freed from both federal and church domination. In the struggle for statehood Rawlins was the people's advocate and a true father to them.

29

May 25, 1926.

The Americanism of Utah

BY RICHARD D. POLL

Tillie Houtz is believed to have been the Fourth of July queen at Springville the year Utah achieved statehoodâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;1896. Photograph by George Edward Anderson, courtesy of Rell G. Francis.

The Americanism of Utah

77

H I G H T Y YEARS AGO tomorrow

morning the superintendent of the Western Union office rushed out into East Temple Street with a shotgun and fired two resounding blasts into the crisp winter air. So the people in downtown Salt Lake City first learned of the union which tonight we commemorate. President Grover Cleveland, according to the telegraph message, had just proclaimed the linking of the State of Utah and the United States.1 The negotiations had been long and tempestuous, the people of the prospective state at times ardent and at times obstreperous and the national populace often indifferent or downright hostile. But now at last the obstacles had been removed and the friends of both partners rejoiced together. As the editor of the Deseret News expressed it: "God bless and prosper Utah as an inseparable part of the American union now and forever!" ~ We celebrate tonight because that union has been a good one. There have been sad times and hard times, but no regrets. Nowr, as the United States approaches her 200th anniversary, those of us who are citizens of both state and nation have much to be thankful for, much to anticipate, and much to remember. This Bicentennial Statehood Day observance gives us opportunity for a little of each.

We meet in a very appropriate place. Here, on January 6, 1896, the public ceremonies of statehood took place, beneath a similar flag and heralded by a similar youthful chorus. And surely this tabernacle must rank with Faneuil Hall, Constitution Hall, and Independence Hall as a shrine in which the special heritage and destiny of the United States have been repeatedly extolled. What a fitting platform on which to renew the ties that bind this forty-fifth state to the nation, and to draw from 200 years of history those lessons which may be most profitable for the century ahead.

What a distinguished company! I am reminded that Dr. John A. Widtsoe once said that whoever would tell the story of Utah's heritage must combine the attributes of a prophet, a historian, and a poet.3 If he were here tonight, would be accept two politicians as the equivalent of one poet?

Dr. Poll, professor of history at Western Illinois University, delivered the annual Statehood Day address, of which this is an expanded version, as part of the Bicentennial Statehood Day observance in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on January 3, 1976.

1 Richard D. Poll, "A State is Born," Utah Historical Quarterly 32 (1964) : 9-10.

2 " U t a h a S t a t e ! " January 4, 1896.

3 S. George Ellsworth, " U t a h History: Retrospect and Prospect," Utah Historical Quarterly 40 (1972) : 367.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

My theme is "The Americanism of Utah." My plan is to highlight two centuries of our history, seeking the threads wrhich are most common to the total American experience. As for the centrifugal elements wrhich seemed at times to push Utah away from the national mainstream, I will be less concerned with their nature than with why they did not prevail. I will argue that even when Utah was most different, she was in most respects not so very different. I will suggest that any disposition to emphasize differences has long since given way to a desire to be the most American of all.

To begin, I invite you to go back with me 100 years. Let us browse through the files of the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News for early July 1876 to see how our country's Centennial birthday was observed in some of the thirty-eight states and in the territory of Utah—a territory which had already waited twenty-six years and would have to wait another twenty to see her star appear on the American flag.4 The purpose of this journey into the past is twrofold. First, the nostalgia buff in all of us—even young people with short histories—enjoys looking at the quaint and sometimes comic ways that things were done in the good old days. But more than this, a look at the local scene on July 4, 1876, can help us understand that special relationship between Utah and the United States of which this flag in this tabernacle is peculiarly symbolic.

The focal point of the national celebration was, of course, Philadelphia, where the Centennial Exposition drew more than fifty thousand visitors daily. A parade of five thousand Grand Army of the Republic veterans launched the festivities on July 3, and the Congress, which had recently addressed itself to the reconstruction of the Union, held a brief commemorative session in Independence Hall on the morning of the fourth. Crowds jammed Independence Square as the public ceremonies began at 10 A.M. The four thousand invited guests on the elevated platform included Governor and presidential-candidate Rutherford B. Hayes; Generals Joseph Hooker, Philip Sheridan, and William T. Sherman; and the emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II. 5 Vice-President Thomas W. Ferry presided and Sen. William M. Evarts eulogized the Founding Fathers. (Three years later, as secretary of state, he would invite the governments of Europe to deny to Mormons the right to emigrate to 4 Descriptions of the Centennial activities are from the Deseret News, July 3 and 5, 1876, and the Salt Lake Tribune, July 4 and 6, 1876.

5 The Brazilian emperor had visited Salt Lake City in April 1876. David L. Wood, "Emperor Dom Pedro's Visit to Salt Lake City," Utah Historical Quarterly 37(1969) : 337-52.

The Americanism of Utah

79

this land of liberty.) A namesake descendant of Richard Henry Lee read the Declaration of Independence as the original document was displayed on the podium. Patriotic toasts and declamations rounded out the program; mammoth fireworks and the ringing of the new Liberty Bell rounded out the day.

Parades, fireworks, and oratory also marked the event from Boston to San Francisco. Southern communities were at particular pains to proclaim their loyalty to the ideals of 1776 and 1789â&#x20AC;&#x201D;even as Southern governments and Northern courts were shelving the Fourteenth Amendment and leaving an unfinished legacy of the Civil War for Bicentennial Louisville and Boston. The Tribune gave front page space to a Centennial greeting from Prussia's Emperor William I to his "great and good friend," the United States of America. Another headline story had first reports of General Custer's disaster on the Little Big Hornâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an oblique reminder that Jefferson's "unalienable rights" are still not equitably enjoyed by the original Americans.

But what of Utah on that 1876 Fourth of July? The biggest celebration occurred in Ogden, sponsored by citizens of the community with some support and encouragement from elsewhere in the territory.

William N. Fife w^as the marshal of the day. The Utah Central Railroad carried an eleven-car special from Salt Lake City, full of celebrants.

Both the Tribune and the News described the colorful parade which marched from Tabernacle Square to the Utah Northern Station. Behind the Fourth Infantry Band from Fort Bridger came a procession of floats, costumed riders, bands, choirs, and carriages with distinguished citizenry.

Tableaux representing the landing of Columbus, the Pilgrims, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, all the states and territories, "Little Old Folks," and the various trades and industries of Utah testified to the preparatory efforts of many people. The "Red, White and Blue" was represented by three young ladies in colored riding habits, "mounted on finely caparisoned horses," and the "Goddess of Liberty" was surrounded by thirteen other attractive young women. (Pretty girls made pretty parades, even when their knees and navels were covered.)

At Kay's Grove, a half-mile by train or foot from the UNRR station, the crowd gathered at noon for a local version of the Philadelphia commemorative exercises. The invocation, in the sardonic view of the Tribune reporter, was "long enough to satisfy the average of humanity for the next hundred years." The two-and-a-half hour gathering must have been long enough for most of the people who sat or stood under a

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mid-ninety-degree July sun. The Centennial oration was given by lawyer Charles W. Bennett. The Declaration was read, a historical sketch of Weber County was presented, and Territorial Gov. George W. Emery gave a response to the Centennial toast which was "eloquent and forcible" to the Tribune scribe and "very appropriate to the occasion" in the eyes of the Deseret News correspondent.

Following the patriotic meeting, a band concert, dancing, and other activities regaled the crowds. A baseball game between the Willard City Longstrikes and the Salt Lake City Deserets was "hotly contested" for three hours, the Deserets winning the pitchers' duel by a score of 31 to 13. Bottled spirits produced hilarity and a touch of mayhem among the spectators when the game was over.

Although there were activities in Provo and other smaller Utah towns, the territorial capital had no official celebration. Salt Lakers who did not make the trip to Ogden had several holiday options. The Odd Fellows, the Red Men, and the Knights of Pythias sponsored a short parade to Fuller's Hill and a short program. Frederick Auerbach conducted the service and J. C. Hemingray gave the customary eulogy, "celebrating in fitting terms the heroic sacrifices made by our forefathers." The hundreds of vacationers who went to Lake Point found the food less abundant than the sunshine and "paid as high as fifty cents for a common sandwich and twenty-five cents for a drink of whiskey," according to the Tribune. "The Royal Illusionists," a magic show performing matinee and evening at the Salt Lake Theatre, was another entertainment possibility. Also available wrere a "Ladies Centennial" exhibition in the Constitution Building and diversion at places with names like Glendale Gardens, Lindsay Gardens, and Spring Lake Pleasure Grounds. In the judgment of the Tribune correspondent, those Utahns who went up into the canyons on family picnics had "the best time of any of the celebrators in Zion."

It seems clear that July 4, 1876, saw many Utahns sharing the same Centennial sentiments and enjoying the same Centennial pastimes as their contemporaries in Philadelphia and throughout the land. And well they might. For as Dr. S. George Ellsworth reminds us in the textbook used by many of today's young people: "The history of Utah and the history of the United States have always run side by side. Utah history cannot properly be considered separately. . . ." 5 To test this judgment, let us go back to the recorded beginnings. " S. George Ellsworth, Utah's

Heritage

(Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1972),

The Americanism

of Utah

81

Last fall we read accounts about jeep-mounted scholars retracing the Escalante trail—or as my friend Ted Warner correctly insists—the Dominguez-Velez de Escalante trail. 7 They remind us that Utah's documented story is just as old as the United States. But for accidental delays, the two Franciscan priests and their eight companions would have left Santa Fe on the very day that our Founding Fathers were pledging to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. The little band of missionary explorers entered Utah as General Washington, defeated on Long Island, was turning New York City over to Lord Howe's redcoats.

The prospects for American independence were not bright when Dominguez and Velez de Escalante bade farewell to a band of Indians in Utah Valley on September 25, 1776, promising to return within a year. H a d they done so, State Street might nowr be El Camino Real, and Utah's history might be merged in the American chronicle with New Mexico or California.

Spain's failure to plant mission and presidio in the valleys of Utah meant that the region knew only occasional, transient contact with white men until the fur trappers arrived a half-century later. From the British Northwest, Mexican Santa Fe, and American Missouri the Jim Bridgers, Jed Smiths, Etienne Provosts, and Peter Skene Ogdens converged in the mid-1820s on what journalist Samuel Bowles would later describe as "a region whose uses are unimaginable, unless to hold the rest of the globe together, or to teach patience to travelers. . . ." 8 For twenty years the mountain men harvested beaver and geographic lore, putting the name of the Ute Indians on part of the land but leaving few monuments. T h e trappers' rendezvous in Cache Valley and at Bear Lake wrere socially and economically indistinguishable from those held within the presentday boundaries of Utah's neighbors; the patterns of trade were similar in each, and liquor was available both by the bottle and the drink.

The people of Utah's first seven decades—from the Spanish trailblazers to Fremont, Miles Goodyear, and the Donner party—were in many wrays distinctive, but they clearly belong to the main lines of the historical development of the United States.

What shall we say of the people of the next half-century—the pioneer settlers and state builders? Howr American were they? p. 329. Most of the factual information not otherwise annotated is found in this book; written for public school students, it merits reading by their parents.

7 Ted J. Warner, "The Significance of the Dominguez-Velez de Escalante Expedition," in Thomas G. Alexander, ed., Essays on the American West, Charles Redd Monographs in Western History, No. 5 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1975), pp. 63-80.

8 As quoted in Ralph H. Brown, Historical Geography of the United States (New York, 1948), p. 483.

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We must not forget the thousands who came to Utah in the territorial period to build railroads, man military posts, found business houses, dig mines, operate the stage lines, explore the rivers, and fill the appointive offices of government. They w^ere as American as the melting pot, the gold rush, the business cycle and the political machine. They were as American as ambition and greed, scientific curiosity and pragmatism, Hanukkah and Lent. These Gentile Utahns never numbered more than 20 percent of the territorial population, but they provided many of the closest connections between Utah and the Union.9 Nor should we overlook the Utes, Paiutes, Gosiutes, Shoshonis, and Navajos who were already here in 1847. Under the influence of the policy that it is better to feed the Indians than to fight them, they were exposed to such well-meant experiments as Indian farms, Indian missions, and the adoption of women and children. But in the end they were pushed onto reservations under conditions hardly different from their tribal kinsmen elsewhere in the West. Both the Black Hawk War and the Battle of Bear River show that the "good Indian-dead Indian" syndrome was present in Utah Territory. This is sad, but in the nineteenth century it was not un-American.

Turn with me now to the territory's Latter-day Saintsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from 1847 to 1896 the most numerous and stubborn human facts in the Utah story.

Had they been permitted to express their convictions and capabilities in isolation, they might have produced a unique and autonomous theocratic society. But this was not to be. Even as Brigham Young led the Mormon vanguard to the Salt Lake Valley, Gen. Winfield Scott was advancing on Mexico City. Whatever may have been the hopes or expectations of the LDS leaders when they picked the Great Basin for a haven, the American victory in the Mexican War subjected them to the vicissitudes of national and sectional politics. Under territorial government they were tied to the United States in a subordinate status. In this context, what should be said of their Americanism?

Let us first dismiss the grotesque stereotypes of anti-Mormonism and the unworldly images of Sunday School folklore. We are dealing with peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;men and women seeking happiness for themselves and their children in Spartan circumstances. Their religion profoundly influenced their lives, but it did not lift them out of their surroundings, their century, or their fundamental humanness. Whether they had been gathered 9 Ellsworth, Utah's Heritage, pp. 2 2 5 - 7 1 ; Robert Joseph Dwyer, The Gentile Utah (2d ed. rev.; Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1971), passim.

Comes

to

The Americanism of Utah

83

from Europe and the East or born in the mountain Zion, they reflected and they related to the wrorld outside Utah in many ways.

Potatoes were planted by the Great Basin pioneers as they were planted elsewhere. Adobes were made, horses were shod, hams were smoked, candles were dipped, flour was milled, pottery wras fired, wine was pressed, and cloth was woven according to the techniques of the time. There were Mormon substitutes for tea but no uniquely Mormon ways for making soap. (I may hear from a DUP spokeswoman with a correction on this.) Even irrigation was not original to Utah, though substantial additions to its technology wrere developed here.

Pneumonia, Indians, smallpox, and childbed fever were hazards to health as they were throughout the West. The pioneers of Utah called in the elders when they were sick, but they also called in herb doctors like Willard Richards and Philadelphia-educated physicians like Romania Pratt and Ellis Shipp. Midwives performed many medical tasks according to nineteenth-century understanding; some were up on the importance of sanitation and others wrere not. A diphtheria epidemic took 749 lives in Salt Lake City in 1880, Mormons and Gentiles alike.111 Women were as busy in Utah as in other parts of America and doing mostly the same things. They produced impressive quantities of poetry, quilts, articles on woman suffrage, silk pillow covers, corn puddings, burial clothes, and babies. They were frequently breadwinners as well as homemakers. Their interest in secular culture was sometimes criticized by conservative community leaders, but the minutes of the Polysophical Society and the files of the Woman's Exponent show the scope and quality of their strivings.11 How plural marriage affected the 10 or 15 percent of Mormon women who entered the practice needs more study than it has received; spokeswomen like Emmeline B. Wells and Belinda Pratt contended vigorously that they were not oppressed.

Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, who served in Utah's first state senate, maintained that a plural wife was not as tied down as a single wife: "If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month." 12 It is not improbable that such imported ideas as romantic love and female emancipation contributed to the waning interest in polygamyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even as today they make the concept of a shared spouse 10

Ellsworth, Utah's Heritage, pp. 204, 302-3.

Maureen Ursenbach, "Three Women and the Life of the Mind," Utah Historical Quarterly 4 3 ( 1 9 7 5 ) : 26-40.

12 Jean Bickmore White, "Gentle Persuaders: Utah's First Women Legislators," Utah Historical Quarterly 38 ( 1 9 7 0 ) : 45. This issue of the Quarterly is devoted to "Women in Utah."

11

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as uncomfortable to granddaughters of plural marriage as to their nonMormon counterparts in soap opera audiences and ERA demonstrations.

In so many ways the Latter-day Saints of Utah Territory were involved with the business of America. They manned the Pony Express stations and helped build the transcontinental railroad. Few of them fought in the battles of the Civil War, but the same Lot Smith who harassed government operations in the Utah War commanded a cavalry unit which patrolled the overland telegraph in 1862, and when Lincoln died the people of Utah mourned. Their cities may have reflected Joseph Smith's plan for the City of Zion, but the buildings which replaced the first dugouts and cabins showed such contemporary styles as Federal and Gothic Revival. Even the houses of worship wrere derivative in design, as such lovely structures as the Pine Valley chapel and the Brigham City and St. George tabernacles attest. The Salt Lake Theatre was Greek Revival in architecture and American eclectic in programmingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a very important bridge to the world beyond the Wasatch.13 If the boys of Orderville preferred store-bought pants and the daughters of Brigham Young favored eastern fashions, it proves no more than that they were aware of their era. If men of the priesthood bought and read the Tribune and their wives shopped in stores owned by Gentile Jews, they were merely responsive to crosscurrents that were blowing in Utah. (Despite the editorial antagonism, 80 percent of the content of the Deseret News and the Tribune was interchangeable.) A stranger watching the Centennial activities in Ogden in 1876 would have found it very difficult to tell which of the participating Americans were Latter-day Saints and which were not.

Yet, one looking at the record of those activities from the perspective of a century is struck with a difference which invites attention. Where in the News and Tribune are the fulsome Centennial editorials so characteristic of the national press of the time? Where in the accounts of the ceremonial gatherings are the names of Brigham Young and the other top-echelon LDS authoritiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the real leaders of the people of Utah? 14 The News offered neither editorial nor explanation, though it reported what happened more concisely and precisely than its rival. The 13 Peter L. Goss, " T h e Architectural History of U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly 43 (1975) : 2 0 8 - 9 . This issue is entitled "Toward an Architectural Tradition."

14 None of the news stories mention or account for these absences. At Ogden Franklin S. Richards responded to the toast, "Heroes of the next Centennial"; Charles W. Penrose was scheduled for a response on " T h e Pen is Mightier than the Sword," but the Deseret News, July 5, 1876, reports that he was "indisposed."

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Tribune had only a brief patriotic comment on the Fourth, and its next issue noted that "the celebration of Independence Day in this Centennial Year . . . was in this city characterized by no very enthusiastic display." 13 Was there substance or foundation for the jaundiced editorial charge that "our city fathers, who hold all fleshly government in contempt, . . . can see but little to rejoice over in the power and progress of our country?" 1G From the days in Nauvoo when Joseph Smith first taught the concept of the political kingdom of God and called the secret Council of Fifty to assist in its planning, the Mormon attitude toward the government of the United States had been ambivalent. On the one hand, both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants affirmed that America was a "choice land," its divinely inspired Constitution deserving of the full allegiance of devout Latter-day Saints. On the other hand, the government was expected to give way before the millennium to a theodemocracy manned by priesthood holders and like-minded non-Mormons.17 For a generation the church leaders in Utah conducted their relations with the government in Washington on the premise that they were dealing with a transitory institution. During the Utah Reformation, when the church was only tw^enty-six years old, Brigham Young anticipated the coming of the political kingdom in these words: In the days of Joseph it was considered a great privilege to be permitted to speak to a member of Congress, but twenty-six years will not pass away before the Elders of this Church will be as m u c h thought of as the kings on their throne. 1 8

President Young and his successor, John Taylor, preserved the shadowstructure of the State of Deseret and periodically restaffed the Council of Fifty because, as Young put it in a message to the ghost legislature in the midst of the American Civil War: O u r government is going to pieces and it will be like water that is spilt upon the ground that cannot be gathered. . . . I do not care whether you sit one day or not. But I do not want you to lose any part of this government which you have organized. For the time will come when we will give laws to the nations of the earth. . . . 19 15

"A Centenary Article," July 6, 1876. " Ibid.

17 Gustive O. Larson, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1971), 1-36; Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967), passim. " A u g u s t 31, 1856. Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, 1854-86), 4 : 4 0 .

JJ ' January 19, 1863. As quoted in Hansen, Quest for Empire, 168.

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Given this telescoped time frame, together with the frequently perverse behavior of federal officials, it should not be surprising that Utah's early leaders were as outspoken in commenting on the nation's misfortunes as they were in celebrating its founders and its constitutional principles.

There is a danger, however, that the kingdom doctrine may be called up to explain too much of Utah history. In the first place, enthusiasm for the doctrine does not appear to have been uniformly high or consistently maintained among the church leaders. Long before the polygamy manifesto of 1890 and the political manifesto of 1896 many of them had begun to adjust their millennial expectations to an extended timetable."0 In the second place, it is not clear that the doctrine and the associated activities of the Council of Fifty were widely enough known to determine the political attitudes and deportment of the Mormon rank and file. They followed their leaders, but their leaders were as likely to be pragmatic in politics as to be doctrinaire.

Many of the problems which beset Mormon Utah on the long road to statehood are explicable in thoroughly American terms. Howard Lamar has described the Mormon predicament in these terms: . . . building on themes and premises in the American tradition they have taken a different but essentially American path. . . . From the beginning they demonstrated that, like the Federal Union with its theory of divided sovereignty, the so-called American tradition was ambivalent, contradictory, and subject to many interpretations. . . . Certainly it is clear that in trying to establish cultural and institutional pluralism in the United States in the nineteenth century the Mormons came up against deepset conformist beliefs, in defense of which anti-Mormon Americans proved to be willing to suspend civil rights, use force, and violate traditional constitutional limitations on the powers of government. 2 1

In espousing plural marriage and church control of the economy and polity of Utah Territory, the Latter-day Saints found themselves under increasing attack from a national government and public which branded these practices as immoral and un-American. Until their leaders moved to suspend the practices for the sake of statehood and self-government, loyal and devout Mormons were as expedient as circumstances 2 'Larson, "Americanization," pp. 207-64; Brigham H. Roberts. A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 4 : 3 3 0 - 3 6 , discusses the political manifesto. Hansen, Quest for Empire, p. 181, quotes a 1903 statement by Benjamin F. Johnson, one of the original members of the Council of Fifty: ". . . we were over seventy years ago taught by our leaders to believe that the coming of Christ and the millennial reign was much nearer than we believe it to be now." "'Howard R. Lamar, "Statehood for U t a h : A Different Path," Utah Historical Quarterly 3 9 ( 1 9 7 1 ) : 309, 325.

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and conscience required. They were neither the first nor last Americans to appeal to a "higher law." " When Lot Smith, about to put the torch to a government supply train during the guerrilla warfare phase of the Utah War, met the plea, "For God's sake, don't burn the trains," he coolly replied, "It is for his sake that I am going to burn them." 23 Comparable convictions sent John Brown to Harper's Ferry three years later.

When some unknown Utahns flew the American flag at half-mast over some of the public buildings of Salt Lake City on July 4, 1885, their symbolic protest against unpopular laws stemmed from motives not unlike those which many years later produced black armbands and inverted flags as protests against an unpopular war.24 When John Taylor called for civil disobedience after the passage of the Edmunds Act in 1882, he was in the same American lineage as Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King, Jr. The Deseret Telegraph girls who used their technological marvel to warn polygamists that the United States marshals were coming were in tune with the antislavery conductors of the underground railroad. As George Q. Cannon donned his prison stripes for a publicity photo at the Utah Territorial Penitentiary, he might have quoted Thoreau: "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison." 25 When many patriotic citizens of Utah used every stratagem to evade laws which violated their convictions, they were also quite American. As John Henry Smith, later president of Utah's Constitutional Convention, confided to a friend: "Everyone of us may have to go to the pen. I feel perfectly willing to do so if needs be, but I had much rather stay out." 26 He acknowledged using his Gentile connections to do 22 The rationale for their position was stated by Brigham Young as soon as the troubles with the territorial government began. On February 18, 1855, he said: "This then is our position towards the Government of the United States, and towards the world, to put down iniquity, and exalt virtue; to declare the word of God which He revealed unto us, and build up His Kingdom upon the earth. And, Know all men, Governments, Nations, Kindreds, Tongues, and People, that this is our calling, intention, and design. We aim to live our religion, and have communion with our God. We aim to clear our skirts of the blood of this generation, by our faithfulness in preaching the truth of heaven in all plainness and simplicity; and I have often said, and repeat it now, that all other considerations of whatever name or nature, sink into insignificancy in comparison with this. To serve God, and keep His commandments, are first and foremost with me. If this is higher law, so be it." Journal of Discourses, 2:176.

2:1 Roberts, Comprehensive History, 4:282.

24 Ibid., 160-61.

23 "Civil Disobedience" (1846), in Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., An American Primer (New York, 1968), p. 346.

26 Jean Bickmore White, "The Making of the Convention President: The Political Education of John Henry Smith," Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (1971) : 357.

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so. Others went to Mexico and Canada and into the Mormon underground—actions matched by nonconforming Americans before and since.

T h e nature of Utah's participation in the 1876 Centennial should be interpreted in this context. Railroads, mines, and commerce were undercutting the socio-economic order of the pioneers, and it was becoming clear that neither cooperatives nor united orders would reverse the trend. As for the political order, the battle to end church control of the instruments of representative government was already joined, and a zealous judge had only a year before subjected Brigham Young to the humiliation of a night in jail and three weeks of house arrest in a case which was subsequently dismissed. With George Reynolds convicted of polygamy and John D. Lee about to be retried for something which happened at Mountain Meadow eighteen years ago, what was there for the devout, conservative Mormon to celebrate? 27 That Utah's biggest commemoration of America's centenary took place in Ogden—the Mormon city where the old and new orders wrere in most intimate contact—is symbolic.

T h e next twenty years changed matters radically. Petitions, politicking, and civil disobedience only strengthened the national resolve to make the Mormons of Utah conform to conventional American norms for church-state relations and marriage. Presidents, Congress, the Supreme Court, the press, ministers of many faiths, and reformers of many kinds supported the cause. Legislation disfranchised at least twelve thousand voters and stripped the church of its property. The courts stamped more than thirteen hundred Utah polygamists as criminals. Both the stigma of adverse publicity and the lure of widening contacts with the world beyond Utah took their toll on the popular will to resist.28 This is not the time to detail the political probings and soul searchings which preceded the compromises required for statehood. They began 27 Roberts, Comprehensive History, 5: 442-52, 467-74, 504-7. Brigham Young was at home on July 4 ; Wilford Woodruff went fishing. Frederick Kesler, then in the twentieth year of his forty-three-year service as bishop of Salt Lake's Sixteenth Ward, wrote in his journal: "I tarried at home. I did not feel to go anywhere or in any way to take any part in the National Jubilee or the Centenial or the 100th Birth Day of our Nation. But on the contrary I felt solm.

I felt that our nation was on the eve of going to pieces & that there was more need of mourning than of rejoicing. I felt as though we would verry soon hear of Calamities that would make the stoutest hearts to quake sutch as our Nation had never experienced before. Yea I felt as though a speedy decay awaited our onste [once] happy Country. My heart sickens at the thought of sutch great Calamities as awaits the world & espetialy the United States as well as all cristendom. Still I can but say the Lords will be done, let thy work O Lord be hastened that Zion may be FreeV July 4, 1876, Journal Book No. 4, 1874-77, Frederick Kesler Papers, Western Americana, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

28 Richard D. Poll, "The Political Reconstruction of Utah Territory. 1866-1890," Pacific Historical Review 27 (1958) : 111-26.

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even before President Taylor died in hiding in 1887. When tacit indications of a new position on plural marriage and energetic lobbying in Washington did not reverse the national tide, President Wilford Woodruff took the decisive public step. Acting, as he said, "for the temporal salvation of the Church," he announced in September 1890 that the church would no longer perform plural marriages. By the voice of the people this policy was sustained at the following October conference. The abandonment of the kingdom-of-God-related policies of political solidarity and economic self-sufficiency quickly followed.29 Though some clung to the old priorities, it was for most Utahns as if a great load had been lifted. Since the millennial fulfillment of what Thomas O'Dea has called "the theocratic and separatist aspects" of Mormonism was apparently to be postponed, the burdensome conflict of political loyalties could now be resolved in favor of the "democratic and patriotic motives which were equally genuine and equally well grounded in Mormon doctrine." 30 A few years were still required to pass the political and procedural hurdles to statehood. Politics came first, because once Utahns began to be thought of as Americans, presidents and congressmen naturally wanted to know how they would vote. This intermingling of the statehood decision with national political considerations was regrettable but thoroughly in the American tradition, and the lobbying activities of Utah's behind-the-scenes negotiators show that they, too, knew how the game is played.*1 An enabling act was finally pushed through Congress in 1894, and a constitutional convention was held the following spring.

Utahns overwhelmingly approved the proposed constitution, with its female suffrage and its prohibitions on polygamy and the mingling of church and state. They chose a slate of Republicans to man the new government; the governor-elect was Heber M. Wells, a son of that Daniel H. Wells who commanded the Nauvoo Legion when the forces of the 29 Larson, "Americanization," p. 2 0 7 - 6 4 ; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 380-412; Henry J. Wolfinger, "A Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History," Utah Historical Quarterly 3 9 ( 1 9 7 1 ) : 328-49. ^ The Mormons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 171. O'Dea notes in another context: "The manifesto of Wilford Woodruff reincorporated Mormonism into the United States." Ibid., p. 117. Within a few years Count Leo Tolstoi assured the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Andrew Dickson White, that "The Mormon people teach the American Religion."

Quoted in Hansen, Quest for Empire, pp. 24-25.

31 Two papers submitted at the Western History Association meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on October 10, 1975, throw new light on this subject; they are E. Leo Lyman, "National Politics and the Admission of U t a h to the Union, 1886-1896," and James B. Allen, "Completion of the Union: An Interpretation of the Statemaking Process, 1791-1959."

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United States were forbidden to enter Utah Territory almost forty years before.

Meanwhile Presidents Harrison and Cleveland were persuaded to grant amnesty and pardon to all who had previously been guilty of violating the antipolygamy statutes but were now in compliance with less stringent court interpretations. The attendant restoration of civil and political rights was gratefully accepted.82 After all, Brigham Young had accepted a presidential amnesty for his people back in 1858, and a whole generation of more-or-less repentant Confederates had done so after the Civil War. So everyone could come to the statehood celebration in 1896, and unlike the Centennial affair of two decades before, everyone wanted to be there. President Wilford Woodruff's invocation was read by George Q. Cannon, who had pursued the goal of statehood as a delegate to Congress, a temporary resident of the territorial "pen" and a first counselor in the LDS First Presidency. It included this petition and pledge: T h o u knowest all hearts and art our witness that in the misunderstandings and differences that have occurred the people of these mountain vales have been loyal upholders of the Constitution of our country and those republican institutions which thou didst inspire the fathers of the nation to institute and establish. We desire, our Father, to maintain them inviolate. And now that we have acquired, through thy blessing, the power to aid in their preservation, we pray thee to bless us so to do and to secure that liberty to others which we prize for ourselves. 33

In reviewing the long struggle for statehood, Governor Wells congratulated both the state and the nation: T h e State, because of the great benefaction of Constitutional government bestowed by a wise and generous Congress; the Nation, because of the addition of a new commonwealth, pledged to the. perpetuity of the Union, and possessed of infinite treasures which the State, upon her admission, lays at the feet of the Nation. 3 4

For purposes of this Bicentennial synthesis, the eighty years of Utah history which have followed that happy day can be handled briefly.

They span a generation in which the distinctive elements of the territorial period were eliminated or papered over as rapidly as possible, and two 3: si 3i

Larson, "Americanization," pp. 292-93.

Salt Lake Tribune, January 7, 1896.

Ibid.

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of Utah

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more generations in which the state and nation have become so interlocked that one might ask what meaningful distinctiveness remains.

Of the transitional years between 1896 and the end of the First World War, Charles Peterson recently wrote: Most Utahns, particularly its Mormon society, wanted statehood and the symbol of belonging to the larger society of America that it implied, with a fervor that is difficult for us to grasp. . . . Once they had achieved this membership, they went about the business of proving that they merited it with enthusiastic and sometimes uncritical energy." 35

All thoughts of self-sufficiency were abandoned as Utah's land, water, and minerals became the basis of an economy whose prosperity depended on markets elsewhere. Strawberry Reservoir water began to flow to the orchards and celery and sugar beet fields in Utah Valley.

Hydro-electric power, in whose development Utahns pioneered, began to flow to the cities on the Wasatch Front and the mines and smelters of the Oquirrh Mountains. Immigrants flowed in increasing numbers into the mines and mills of Carbon County and the Salt Lake Valley, exciting fears of trade unionism and other "alien ideologies," and a Utah firing squad gave Joe Hill to the folklore of the labor movement. Seven billion dollars worth of copper began to flow from what Leonard Arrington has aptly called "the richest hole on earth." A level of prosperity was achieved which Utah did not enjoy again until the Second World War.36 If statehood did not immediately erect a "wall of separation" between church and state, the political problems of B. H. Roberts and Reed Smoot reinforced the resolve of most Utahns that elections and government should be conducted within the conventional framewrork of American politics. The pendulum swings which still characterize Utah elections appeared early; from William Jennings Bryan to William Howard Taft and back to Woodrow Wilson was quite an oscillation in twenty years. Public differences of opinion between LDS General Authorities on such issues as the Eighteenth Amendment and the League of Nations further emphasized that the day of authoritative Mormon positions on political questions was past. Full-fledged support of the national effort in the Spanish-American War, the Pershing expedition into Mexico, and the First World War set the direction which Utah would 35

" T h e 'Americanization' of U t a h ' s Agriculture," Utah Historical

Quarterly

42 ( 1 9 7 4 ) :

122.

38 Leonard J. Arrington and T h o m a s G. Alexander, A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah's Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression, Charles R e d d Monographs in Western History, No. 4, (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1974), passim; see also the " I m m i g r a n t s and Mines" issue of Utah Historical Quarterly 43 (Spring 1975).

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follow in more recent conflicts. There is a touch of symbolism in the fact that one of Utah's first West Point-trained professional soldiers was a grandson of Brigham Young, Col. Richard W. Young. i: There is, Dr. Ellsworth's text reminds us, "little uniqueness to Utah's history after 1920." 8 The nation's depressions were our depressions, only they were a little more severe because of the dependent nature of the state economy. Utah's agriculture never recovered from the postwar collapse of 1920-21 until another world conflict brought a world market, and her mining reached 1918 production levels only briefly in the late twenties before being hit by the Great Depression. For the 35 percent of the working force who were unemployed in 1932, even potatoes at a half-cent per pound and hamburger at two pounds for nineteen cents were hard to get. In 1938 Utah had 32 percent more workers on WPA projects and 45 percent more young men in the CCC than the national average. The 1930s were the third consecutive decade in which more people moved out of Utah than moved in.

Economic conditions made Utah so solidly Democratic that she voted four times for Franklin Roosevelt and gave a former governor, George H. Dern, to his cabinet. They also kept the governor's office in Democratic hands for six consecutive terms—a record, so far. Hard times may also have produced the thirst which made this the deciding state in ratifying the repeal of the "noble experiment" of Prohibition.

The failure of Utah's voters to heed the strictures of LDS President Heber J. Grant against both repeal and Roosevelt are evidence, if any more is needed, that church control of politics was a thing of the past.

The much-heralded welfare program incorporated the new and continuing church approach to secular affairs—helping the Latter-day Saints out in the world rather than gathering them in out of the world.

I shall not speak tonight of what has happened in Utah since the Second World War—of Fort Douglas or Hill Field, of Canyonlands or Snowbird, of Geneva Steel or Thiokol, of the Utah Symphony or Ballet West, of the Brigham City Indian School or the NAACP, of urban sprawl or energy shortages, of soaring divorce rates or whether Johnny can read. They are all parts of Utah today, and they collectively testify— both activities and problems—that the integration of Utah and the United States is complete.

J1 iS

Ellsworth, Utah's Heritage, pp. 347-60.

Ibid., p. 397. The last half-century of Utah's story is surveyed in ibid., 397-503.

A crowd jams Main Street fur 1896 statehood parade in the snow. Note bunting and flags decorating storefronts. Photograph courtesy of the Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

What, then, has the 80-year-old State of Utah to say to the 200year-old nation of which she is a part? From the many lessons which may be found in her history, I suggest these: This desert was made to blossom and these mountains were made to yield up their treasures by people w4io were wdlling to work.

This state exists because the diverse and stubborn peoples who came here were finally willing to compromise.

The temples, cathedrals, chapels, and synagogues which dot this commonwealth testify that Utah was built by people of faith.

This chorus of young people reminds us that Utah has sent out legions of musicians, teachers, soldiers, missionaries, scientists, businessmen, travelers, and public servantsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;creating a worldwide impression which contrasts sharply with the images of a century ago.

This flag and this service in this place certifiy, as did those inauguration exercises in 1896, that any ambivalence which Utah's founders may have felt toward the United States has been transformed into commitment in their heirs, I hope that I speak forâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and toâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all Utahns when I propose this challenge: We believe that we live in a choice land, founded by men and women of vision and valor. We believe that our nation's past and future success are related to the character and dedication of her people. If we do not celebrate and teach these things, we cannot expect the people of our sister states to do so. Properly presented and applied in our civic and personal lives, they can be our birthday present to America.

Butch

Cassidy,

My Brother.

By L U L A PARKER B E T E N S O N as told to DORA FLACK.

(Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1975. Xiv + 265 p p . $7.95.)

For well over a half-century? western historians have argued and discussed the numerous reported episodes of Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy. Probably the most debated questions relating to that well-known U t a h outlaw have been the time, place, and manner of his death. Those questions, along with others, are discussed in an interesting, immediate family account of the outlaw's life. T h e long-awaited book is called Butch Cassidy, My Brother by Lula Parker Betenson as told to Dora Flack. T h e book itself contains 279 pages which include a n ample index, bibliography, appendix, and a foreword by the actor Robert Redford.

T h e sixteen chapters also have some fifty or so photographs related to Butch and his family. Moreover, there are several pages of official records, wanted posters, legal documents a n d criminal complaints, letters, and maps of the territory in which the Wild Bunch ran.

If the reader is looking for a hardriding account of the Cassidy gang, including such names as Harry Longbaugh, Harvey Logan, and others, h e will be somewhat disappointed. Although there are a few accounts, the writer's purpose is to present truths about the famous figure and his family, and the reader will appreciate the book more if he keeps that in mind. Probably the most significant chapter (15) deals with the return of Butch to Circleville in the fall of 1925 to visit his family after forty-one years a prodigal. T h e then reformed b a d m a n spent approxi-

mately two weeks with his father, brothers, and sisters before leaving, never to return to Circle Valley or the Parker ranch again. According to Mrs. Betenson, w h o was a n infant when her brother left home, Butch died of pneumonia in 1937 a n d was buried somewhere in the Northwest. Of course such statements cio not completely end the controversy. A number of researchers may still argue that Butch died in 1909; others feel that he was alive even as late as the intervention of the United States in World W a r I I .

From time to time the author speculates on, but never condones or justifies, why her brother "hit the outlaw trail."

O n the contrary 3 she points out the shame a n d heartache the actions of Butch brought to the Parker family. I n regard to motives, Mrs. Betenson mentions Butch's resentment toward the "righteous saint" w h o took land from their family; his sympathies with small homesteaders a n d their struggle with large property owners; a need for easier or quicker money; and his mobile and freedom-loving lifestyle. Some feel that Butch was a libertarian. T o a large degree he was, yet it was this kind of life, that of living outside the law along with his free spirit, that ironically limited his cherished freedom.

Over all, the book by Mrs. Betenson is good. I t is well written with numerous interesting footnotes. Even though she never really associated with or personally knew Butch, other than a few days in 1925, the author has done extensive

Book Reviews and Notices research and kept close account of the outlaw's reported exploits for the twenty or so years of his career. T h e writer does point out that being his sister makes it almost impossible to be "totally objective" in recording her brother's life. Yet, she has given the reader the unique insight into the life of Robert LeRoy Parker that only a member of the family could. H e r attempt to disprove Butch Cassidy's being killed in

95 San Vicente is a success. Furthermore, the author's ideas about why Robert LeRoy chose the life of a bandit are intriguing. Finally, the book must be recognized as an important contribution to the law-and-order facet of our historical I n t e n n o u n t a i n West.

J E R R Y SPRINGER

Heber City

"A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A History and Commentary.

By ROBERT J. M A T T H E W S . (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1975. Xxxii + 468 pp. $12.95.)

W h o is qualified to translate or revise the Bible? Dr. Robert J. Matthews, associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, says, "Such an undertaking would have to be by the c o m m a n d and direction of the Lord, and not by the volition and instigation of m a n . " This declaration seems to invalidate the work of the fifty-four King James scholars and the host of exegetists who followed, and leaves the franchise solely with Joseph Smith whose Holy Scriptures first appeared in 1867. This exclusiveness places an awesome responsibility on the M o r m o n prophet and opens the door for a thousand questions on competence and methodology.

These problems are waived as Dr. Matthews assures the reader that under divine guidance the prophet has rendered a "Plainer T r a n s lation" quite free of the errors common to uninspired translators, not a perfect version beyond all possibility of improvement but close enough to perfection to tower above other redactions.

In truth many of Smith's emendations may be considered improvements: T h e Lord no longer "repents" of his deeds (Gen. 6:6, Ex. 3 2 : 1 2 , 14, and a score of others) ; A d a m and Eve do not hear "the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden" (Gen. 3 : 8 ) ; Jesus does not ride the ass and the colt at the

same time (Matt. 2 1 : 7 ) ; the corpses no longer arise early in the morning (2 Kings 19:35) ; the Lord does not dispatch an evil spirit to trouble Saul (1 Sam. 16:14) nor does he harden Pharaoh's heart (Ex. 7:3) ; Noah does not beget Shem, H a m , and J a p h e t h all in his five-hundredth year (Gen. 5 : 3 2 ) .

T h e author of the commentary does not always specify such improvements as above; the reader must go directly to the new scriptures (variously termed the Inspired Version and the New Translation) for enlightenment, but he does insist that (1) Joseph Smith was serious and deliberate in making the New Translation; (2) its contents are of significant value; and (3) time will vindicate the work. T h e author is not disturbed by Smith's use of the word "translation" although admittedly the prophet had no ancient or foreign text to challenge him. It is postulated that the mental effort of correcting and improving the King James text was in itself a "translation."

Although Joseph Smith changed some three thousand verses in the Bible he left the Old Testament 95 percent untouched. H e rejected the Song of Solomon as being uninspired and passed over such questionably accurate books as Joshua, Daniel, and Hosea. H e added more t h a n twelve thousand words to

96 Genesis, including a prophecy of his own for the latter days. This insertion is the most r e d u n d a n t of all his interpolations and the most difficult to justify either stylistically or historically.

T h e phrase "the fruit of his loins" occurs a dozen times a n d appears to be borrowed from the same prophecy in 2 Nephi, Book of Mormon.

Matthews is not offering a critique; his book is a technical discourse on the preparation, history, and surprising differences in the several editions of Smith's work (352 verses v a r y ) . His analysis is often polemical a n d defensive. T h e 468-page treatise would be more valuable to Bible scholars if instead of special pleading he had offered more reasonable criteria in justification of Smith's exegesis. T h e r e is a need to

Utah Historical Quarterly make comprehensible the intriguing information on Adam's baptism and foreknowledge of Christianity, as well as the use of the words Only Begotten, Jesus Christ, and Holy Ghost in the Old Testament. T h e profusion of added words in Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Matthew, Luke, etc., that are construed as making the meanings "plainer" seem too often to be merely repetitious and verbose. Finally, the author needs to explore more fully the reasons for the nonacceptance of this volume by U t a h Mormons as opposed to the official endorsement given it by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with headquarters at Independence, Missouri.

LAMAR

The Letters of Bernard DeVoto.

Edited by WALLACE STEGNER. Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1975. Xiv4- 393 pp. $10.00.)

As a young m a n Bernard DeVoto left his native U t a h , denouncing the state â&#x20AC;&#x201D;â&#x20AC;˘ a performance he repeated in print â&#x20AC;&#x201D; for w h a t he considered a sterility of culture and intellect, a condition that he felt permeated most of the West. H e journeyed eastward, seeking his "intellectual Mecca" and finding it eventually in New England, where he spent most of his remaining life. At Cambridge and elsewhere he established himself as an outstanding literary critic, a mediocre novelist, a staunch defender of civil liberties, a writer of fictional thrillers (often under the n a m e of J o h n August), and an editor of or contributor to many of the eastern literary journals. H e was given to a m a t e u r psychology, bouts of severe depression, occasional paranoia, strong drink, strong convictions, strong friendships, and bitter animosities. H e was a m a n who would not suffer fools gladly and who said so often and in print. H e considered himself impervious to criticism yet was easily h u r t and quick to defend himself. Although he

PETERSEN

Salt Lake

City

(Garden City:

had fled the West, he retained the western mantle, a n d much of his work came to center on the American West.

H e became an important figure in its preservation through his writings and activities in the field of conservation and his histories of early westward movement, the most famous of which, Across the Wide Missouri, won for him both the Bancroft and Pulitzer prizes.

It is DeVoto's diverse and complex personality that Wallace Stegner attempts to illuminate in Letters of Bernard DeVoto, a collection of 148 items of correspondence that "lets him speak for himself." Stegner's long association with DeVoto, their common U t a h heritage and their similar literary and historical interests, coupled with Stegner's own literary sensitivity, has assured a good representative sampling from among the thousands of letters DeVoto wrote.

Stegner has chosen a particularly effective m a n n e r to present these letters.

By arranging them topically, a n d with-

Book Reviews and Notices in that framework chronologically, he affords the reader a clearer look at the development of DeVoto's ideas and philosophy over time.

Introductory notes at the beginning of each selection a n d a liberal use of footnotes furnish pertinent biographical and historical information.

For those interested strictly in a western focus, the work is bound to be something of a disappointment. D e V o t o discourses on the West, on geographical determinism a n d westward movement, a n d on U t a h and the M o r m o n s in a n u m b e r of letters throughout the book, b u t these represent only one aspect of a broadly developed portrait. Indeed, some of the most interesting letters concern DeVoto's thoughts on pressing matters of more general public concern â&#x20AC;&#x201D; censorship, civil rights, political morality. T h o u g h m a n y of the letters date back over a q u a r t e r of a century, they remain today as poignant as they were then.

Stegner's collection has two major weaknesses. First, with the exception of the insights afforded by a very few letters, almost exclusively in the section titled "Self-Scrutiny," DeVoto's inner conflicts, his doubts, the dark side of his personality remain elusive. Perhaps the

97 letters do not lend themselves to introspection because he wrote at people rather than to them. O n e has the feeling that his letters, m o r e lectures than exchanges of confidences^ exuding as they do an almost overpowering sense of his own self-confidence, sense of right, a n d occasionally righteous indignation, conceal a m a n who was filled with self-doubt. T h a t such speculation is necessary is a shortcoming of this work. T h e addition of more introspective letters or a n extended critical explanation of their absence is needed.

Second, Stegner draws too heavily on materials used in preparing his biography of Bernard DeVoto, The Uneasy Chair, which appeared shortly before the publication of this work. Fortunately he is far too good a writer to make the Letters of . . . merely a n appendix to his earlier work. T h e book stands by itself (and stands well), but while letting D e V o t o "speak for himself" gives forceful expression to his thoughts and provides entertaining and delightful reading, it does not appreciably a d d to the portrait of the m a n in the uneasy chair.

JAMES H.

David Eccles: Pioneer Western Industrialist.

By LEONARD J. ARRINGTON. U t a h State University Press, 1975. X v i + 294 p p . $7.95.)

David Eccles: Pioneer Western Industrialist by Leonard J. Arrington is a biographical portrayal of David Eccles (1849-1912) as the preeminent businessman of the I n t e r m o u n t a i n area near the close of the nineteenth century.

T h e facets of Eccles's life considered are: his early childhood of poverty in Scotland, family gathering with the Saints in Zion, early working experiences as a young m a n in U t a h , struggles as a lumberman, prominence as a m a n a g e r of a growing business empire, and crowning success as a pioneer

LEVITT

State University of New York College - Potsdam (Logan

western industrialist. T h e book also discusses David Eccles's personal life as a loyal L D S supporter, civic leader in Ogden, a n d husband-father of two families during M o r m o n polygamy times. T h e book concludes with an analysis of Eccles's business successes a n d a chapter devoted to his death and burial. T w o very helpful appendices are included. T h e first lists chronologically the various companies founded by Eccles a n d his associates. T h e second gives a brief history of the business enterprises with which he was associated

98

Utah Historical Quarterly

such as lumber, railroads, banking, construction, livestock, sugar refineries, and food processing.

T h e book achieves its purpose of depicting Eccles as a highly successful M o r m o n capitalist around 1900. It is evident there has been a significant amount of research in public documents and private collections and by private interviews. T h e book adds historical knowledge about a significant western industrialist not adequately treated heretofore. Arrington makes a significant contribution to regional, industrial, and M o r m o n history in a period of time needing still more research.

Typical of Arrington's style is his clear, lucid prose. Generally this book reflects this skill. Because of the scholarly nature of the book ? this reviewer suspects t h e content will have greater appeal for the student and scholar of the West than for the general public.

T h e book is laudatory and considers Eccles primarily in a favorable light.

Some questionable areas of Eccles's activities that are only lightly touched could have had a larger treatment. Examples of such light treatment are (1) Eccles made most of his money in lumber, the basis of his empire, by taking advantage of loopholes in the timber laws of the United States and (2) the $250,000 settlement against Eccles of a paternity suit involving a deceased friend's widow (Eccles's third wife?) for support of his (?) son. These two Fort Bridger:

Island

in the Wilderness.

incidents are barely discussed in the book, yet great effort is spent to elaborate the laws regarding polygamous estate settlements and the intimate details of Eccles's death and burial.

More careful editing would have eliminated repetitious phrasing in successive chapters and corrected errors of fact. For instance, that Marriner S. Eccles, David Eccles's son by his second wife, was chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System during 1934-51 is erroneous.

Marriner S. Eccles was a member of the Board of Governors during 1934-36 and 1948-51. H e was the chairman of the board during 1936-48. Another inaccuracy is a reference t o David Eccles's loyality to his "adopted faith." Eccles's parents were converts and David was born into the L D S church.

Also there are several long quotes and significant conclusions made by the author that are not footnoted. Presumably there was adequate documentation that should have been cited prior to publication.

Although the book does not measure u p to Arrington's brilliant achievement in Great Basin Kingdom, it does add to our understanding of the early industrializing period of the West and presents a favorable biographical treatise of David Eccles as a pioneer western industrialist.

A R C H EGBERT

Salt Lake

City

By FRED R. G O W A N S and E U G E N E E. C A M P -

BELL. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1975. X + 185 p p . Cloth, $7.95; paper, $4.95.)

This new book is a n attractive item that partially fills a long-standing need for a readily available history of this crossroads of Rocky Mountain history.

Doctors Gowans a n d Campbell both have substantial backgrounds in regional history, and their research skill is evident in most areas of this book.

T h e authors open the book with a brief but well done background on J i m Bridger's fur trade years. T h e n they outline the establishment of Bridger's trading post (really a sequence of posts) and detail its growing and continuing importance to the immigrants traveling to California a n d to Utah.

Book Reviews and Notices

99

About 40 percent of the text is devoted to the occupation of Fort Bridger by the M o r m o n s ; the development of their settlements, trading posts, a n d fortifications in the area; a n d the Mormons' subsequent expulsion by Albert Sidney Johnston's army in 1857-58. It is this portion of the book that is of greatest value to the serious student, for it u n tangles with particularly careful documentation the transactions that remained a matter of public controversy for over a half-century afterward. They clearly set forth what only a modest number of scholars have known before, the fact that Bridger did sell his holdings there to the M o r m o n representatives, and he a n d his partner Louis Vasquez did indeed collect their payments from the church.

I n later chapters the authors thinly outline the military period of the post's history. This section of the book fails to display the same depth of research that characterizes the rest of their effort.

Apparently they were less interested in this phase of the story. T h e National

Manchester

Mormons:

The Journal

Archives a n d Records Service has a massive file of original Fort Bridger documents. Copies of m u c h of this material exist on film a t the Wyoming Archives a n d Historical Department, a n d there is no evidence that the authors referred to even the most elemental of documents, the post returns, for example.

Aside from this gap, research in local and regional record materials was quite thorough, a n d many documentary items from the L D S church files a d d greatly to readily available knowledge about the history of southwestern Wyoming.

This is a valuable book, one which Wyoming a n d U t a h historians will w a n t to have. T h e reviewer would hope, however, that the authors would eventually consider a revised a n d expanded version that might include intensive research in the military papers as well as in the extensive collection of William A. Carter papers in the Bancroft Library.

R O B E R T A. M U R R A Y

Sheridan,

of William

Clayton,

Wyoming

1840 to 1842. Edited by

J A M E S B. A L L E N a n d T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER. T h e Classic M o r m o n Diary Series,

vol. 1. (Santa Barbara a n d Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, Inc. 1974. 248 p p . $8.95.)

This volume is the first in a projected series of twelve diaries to be published as the Peregrine Smith Classic M o r m o n Diary Series, under the general editorship of Davis Bitton. T h e editors of this volume are both professors of history at Brigham Young University.

This diary will be of considerable interest to students of early M o r m o n history. William Clayton was one of the first M o r m o n converts in England, having been baptized shortly after the first M o r m o n missionaries arrived in 1837.

T h e following year he was appointed

second counselor in the British Mission.

Shortly thereafter he left his job as a bookkeeper in a factory in Penwortham to give all his time to the ministry, leaving his wife and two daughters with his mother-in-law while h e did missionary work in Manchester, a major industrial city of one hundred seventy thousand people. Clayton labored in Manchester until September 1840 when he became one of the second group of English Mormons to emigrate to the United States. After a brief a n d disappointing residence in Iowa, he settled in Nauvoo

100 where he is reported to have transcribed Smith's revelation on celestial marriage.

He is best known for having written, "Come, Come, Ye Saints," and for his journal of the trek to Utah in 1847.

This journal, which Clayton began on January 1, 18403 wrhile laboring in Manchester, ends on February 18, 1842, in Nauvoo. Most of it was written during the Manchester period. While it sheds little light on the larger socioeconomic issues facing England in 1840, it does give considerable insight into the internal problems of the infant church in England. It is also useful as a firsthand account of an early transAtlantic crossing of Mormon converts.

The editors have provided a fifty-two page introduction that is valuable for understanding the early development of the British Mission. They have also included an appendix with brief biographical information on over one hundred identifiable persons mentioned in the diary.

The editors have a high regard for William Claytonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he "was no 'common' man in his abilities" (p.3) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; although the journal and the background information they supply does not necessarily establish Clayton as a man of extraordinary ability, aside from the fact that he held several important church positions at various times.

Although the editors are practicing Mormons, they do not try to hide or explain away conduct by Clayton that does not square with Mormon practices. They draw attention to diary references to Clayton's consumption of beer, wine, and brandy. They point out that the diary reflects the fact that it was then common for elders, in administering to the sick, to anoint the afflicted parts of the body directly or to take the oil internally. Several places in the diary Clayton mentions anointing legs, breasts, etc. The editors also acknowledge that the diarist was "subject to the

Utah Historical

Quarterly

temptations of the flesh" (p. 32). It is obvious from the diary that Clayton, away from home doing missionary work, was strongly attracted to Sarah Crooks.

But the editors put the best face on his extensive relationship with Sarah and decline to speculate on the fact that at several places in the diary where Sarah is discussed, material has been crossed out.

While the editors do not hide the fact that many early converts left the church, they do not explain why approximately half of the British Saints in 1840 who did not emigrate were eventually excommunicated (p. 22).

The editors state matter-of-factly that Joseph Smith "discovered the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated" (p. 190), even though many historians doubt whether Smith discovered such plates and contend the Book of Mormon is not a translation.

The evangelical preaching that so appealed to many of the working class in that day is described by the editors as "fundamentalist," though that term is only properly used to describe the twentieth-century reaction to biblical criticism.

In the diary Clayton often asserts that he has performed well in his verbal encounters with nonbelievers.

He "proved" to a Unitarian that Christ was a divine being" (p. 117) ; he answered a Socialist "till he was almost speechless" (p. 119); and a three-hour conversation left an ex-Mormon "fully confounded" (p. 164).

While much of this diary deals with mundane daily activities, there is enough of interest to hold the attention of persons concerned with early Mormon history.

WILLIAM D.

RUSSELL

Graceland College Lamoni, Iowa

Book Reviews and Notices Sharlot Hall on the Arizona in

101

Strip: A Diary of a Journey

through

Northern

1911. By S H A R L O T M . H A L L . Edited by C. GREGORY C R A M P T O N .

Arizona (Flagstaff,

Ariz.: Northland Press, 1975. Viii + 97 pp. $7.50.)

It has always been my opinion that a person asked to review a book by another author should have as little personal knowledge of the author as possible, a n d if this criterion I have established for myself means anything, I a m the last person in the world who should have been asked to review Sharlot Hall's book o n the Arizona Strip.

I remember Sharlot Hall well a n d I remember visiting h e r in t h e museum she established in Prescott, Arizona. One of my vivid memories of this woman is arguing with h e r as to why she could not give m e the telegraph instrument my Uncle Morris bought a n d installed at his own expense in Phoenix to become that city's first telegrapher. I never won that argument.

Then, t h e trip she took into the Arizona Strip country was one that I repeated almost mile for mile eighteen years later in 1929 after the completion of Navajo Bridge across t h e Colorado River near Lee's Ferry. Since that time I have completed several exploratory trips of the Strip that, in total, covered far more country than she covered, so I am left in sort of a quandary.

Very few writers who have traveled the inaccessible parts of Arizona have been as gifted as Sharlot in the ability to express beauty in simple and understandable terms. Many has been the morning I have peeked o u t from my bedroll and wondered why words were not at my grasp to tell the beauties that I saw. Yet, this delightful woman, has described the sunrise, the movement of the grass, every bobbing u p a n d down of the prairie dog, and the indescribable beauty of the distant a n d approaching thunderstorm with an eloquent simplicity that puts her in the forefront of Arizona writers.

Sharlot Hall's description of old Fredonia, for example, is endearing to me because it is one of my favorite spots in Arizona. Interestingly, the fact that she spent her first night with the Jensens is parallel to my first night in that town when I was given a n abode by the same family. Another incident she relatesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;â&#x20AC;˘ of the equipment being carried to Lee's Ferry by a large wagon train to augment the construction of a small steamboatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;parallels part of my o w n experiences. A partner of mine, William Wilson, once helped to carry into O r m e Canyon pieces of that boat to assemble for the purpose of hauling machinery u p the river to mine minerals. Only after the first trip downstream did he discover that it would require all the coal which the boat carried just to get the vessel back upstream without any cargo. Unless the ravages of the river have destroyed it, the old boiler from the boat can still be seen on the northern bank of t h e river above Lee's Ferry.

Miss Hall has given to the reader a book that cannot be p u t down. I t is not a long one but it covers the history of a n important p a r t of Arizona a n d an important part of its time. Today the trip is so routine, and, with its beauty so ignored by the average tourist, I would suggest the immediate acquisition of a road m a p so that one might know exactly the places she was describing in h e r fine and direct prose. I have found it to be a most interesting, charming, a n d enlightening book. I speak as one who knew the area as she knew it before the rapid advances in transportation a n d communications came in a n d changed that country.

Also, Dr. Crampton's excellent editing and introductory remarks are a fitting complement to this fine book.

102 I a m privileged to have known Sharlot Hall when I was a young man. I am more than privileged now to include

Utah Historical Quarterly her book, written in her inimitable way, in my library of Arizona.

BARRY M.

GOLDWATER

Phoenix Walker River Paiutes: A Tribal History. By EDWARD C. J O H N S O N . (Schurz, Nev.: Walker River Paiute Tribe, 1975. 201 pp. $8.00.)

Studies of Native American history

by Native Americans are rare. Including those from centuries past, I would hazard a guess that there are less than fifty. I n recent years, the American West Center at the University of U t a h has attempted to alter this situation by lending encouragement and technical assistance to tribes interested in writing their own histories. T h e present volume is the result of one such cooperative agreement with the Walker River Paiute Tribe of Nevada.

T h e author of the volume is Edward C. Johnson ? a m a t u r e young scholar and a member of that tribe. Mr. Johnson was assisted in the work by Melvin Thorn (editorial advisor), Stannard Frank (interviewer), and by many tribal members who contributed memoirs, valuable photographs, time, and advice.

T h e book is organized chronologically and topically into thirteen chapters. It begins cjuite properly at the beginningâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with the origin of the N u m a , or Northern Paiute of Walker River (hereafter referred to as the People, a rough translation of their native name for themselves). T h e first three chapters present in sequence a brief but well rounded overview of the lifeway of the People prior to the advent of EuroAmericans, an account of initial nonIndian intrusions into their homeland, and a discussion of the establishment of the Walker River Reservation as a land-base compromise between the People and the ever-increasing settlers. T h e historical period covered is roughly 1820 to 1865. T h e chapters include, in addition to the standard citations, new

documents gleaned through Mr. Johnson's archival research and personal interviews. Beyond merely presenting the data, he attempts to assess the character of interethnic attitudes for the period. His brief but well chosen quotes seem appropriate and to the point.

Chapters 4 to 6, while keeping the chronological thread, treat special topics of historical significance from 1860 to 1900. Included are sketches of the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dances and their prophets (Wodziwob and W o v o k a ) , and accounts of the beginnings of agriculture on the reservation and the building of the Carson and Colorado Railroad.

Again, the author provides new and useful documentation, particularly from early newspapers.

Chapters 7 through 9 plow new ground. While anthropologists as ethnohistorians have traditionally concerned themselves with early contacts and accommodations between peoples, Mr. Johnson's work continues the review into critical periods of later adjustments beyond the turn of the century. Again, early newspapers and personal accounts reveal adjustments on the p a r t of a people living on a reservation and yet attempting to make a living, go to school, and handle . local . problems within the larger context of counties, a state, and the nation. During this critical period, the reservation was severely reduced in size by legislation favoring nonIndian interests and by the federal Allotment Act. T h e final .three chapters treat the period since the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. They describe the present

103

Book Reviews and Notices a n d past concerns of the Tribal Council, court cases, a n d i m p o r t a n t personalities.

O n e persistent personality, t h e Walker L a k e sea serpent, is the subject of the concluding chapter.

I n all, this small book provides a very useful summary of western G r e a t Basin history in addition to t h a t of the Walker River T r i b e specifically. Some aspects could a n d should be subjects for additional a n d m o r e lengthy treatments.

Scholars will find significant new references some alternative interpretations of older sources, and a sound framework of presentation. T h e a p p e n d e d

year-by-year chronology of events will be particularly helpful. General readers will enjoy the book's brevity, general clarity, and challenge. M r . J o h n s o n has had to weigh m a n y conflicting and often biased accounts of the People in the early literature; yet biases favoring the People in this book are far less evident t h a n those in the original sources.

O n e can only hope that future histories of the area by non-Indians will b e as fair.

C A T H E R I N E S.

University

FOWLER

of Nevada,

Reno

Passage through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest.

By J O H N LOGAN A L L E N . ( U r b a n a : University of Illinois Press ? 1975.

Xxviii + 4 1 2 p p . $18.50.)

Lewis and Clark: Historic Places Associated with Their Transcontinental Exploration (1804-6).

By R O Y E. A P P L E M A N . National Survey of Historic Sites a n d Buildings Series, vol. 13. (Washington, D . C . : National Park Service, 1975. Ix + 429 p p ! $8.35.)

Passage through the Garden is a u n i q u e interpretation of the Lewis a n d Clark expedition by a geographer w h o discusses the relationship between geographical images a n d the realities of exploration. A major key to the expedition is found in President Jefferson's instructions, which hoped for discovery of a "means of water c o m m u n i c a t i o n across the continent." T h e concept of the passage to I n d i a h a d usually been included in the geographical lore since the discovery of the continent, a n d it e n d u r e d until the corps of discovery m a d e their way to the Northwest coast.

T h e a u t h o r traces t h e buildup of the lore from the contributions of the Spanish, French, and English and assesses the impact of this lore u p o n the expedition.

Such preconditioning added to the difficulties of the journey, and the c a p tains were forced to make numerous reappraisals.

T h e lore of the area west of F o r t M a n d a n wras a blend of "fact a n d fiction, near-comprehension a n d m a m m o t h misunderstanding" (p. 2 4 9 ) . T h e c a p tains were u n a w a r e of t h e size of the area, completely misunderstood the u n navigable n a t u r e of the rivers, a n d conceptualized the Rocky M o u n t a i n s in terms of the Virginia Blue Ridge. T h e y h a d no knowledge of the Columbian Plain, nor did they know t h a t a n o t h e r m o u n t a i n chain lay between the Rockies a n d the Pacific Ocean. By the time the corps reached the Nez Perce c a m p the hoped-for short a n d convenient portage h a d turned into a trying four-hundredmile, month-a nd-a -ha lf trek over a most difficult terrain. T h e vision of a passage to I n d i a was fading.

But the stuff dreams are m a d e of does not die easily, nor is it banished without leaving a residue. Indeed, Clark's 1814 m a p a d d e d to the lore by including the M u l t n o m a h River.

104 South of the Columbian Plain lay a vast area which had to be drained. T h e Multnomah, which distorted images for three more decades, was, therefore, a river of necessity. Although the easy passage myth was eliminated, the myth of the garden was enhanced. For many Americans, the expedition opened visions of a vast land of inexhaustible wealth and opportunity.

T h e author and the press have produced a fine volume. Of special value is the inclusion of twenty-five preexpeditionary maps beginning with Marquette's 1673 m a p of the Mississippi and twenty-one maps relating to the expedition. These are reproduced with clarity and enhance the value of the volume.

T h e index is adequate, a good bibliography is included, and the notes are where they belong—at the bottom of the page. A few minor historical errors such as Captain Gray's claiming of the Columbia River for the United States (p. 36) occur but do not detract from the excellence of the study.

Reading and reviewing Passage through the Garden has been a delightful experience. T h e study is an excellent interpretation and is a must for students of the American West or anyone seriously interested in the exploration of N o r t h America.

Lewis and Clark is one of t h e best in the National Park series. Part 1 of the two-part volume carries the expedition from its inception to its conclusion and discusses the significant contributions of the journey. A series of maps trace the paths followed, a n d key areas are shown in detail. M a n y paintings by Karl Bodmer and George Catlin are reproduced, and the volume is replete with photographs.

T h e expedition was essentially a military one, and the methods used to mold the discipline necessary for such an undertaking, especially the application of corporal punishment—which most

Utah Historical Quarterly studies discreetly avoid—are related with clarity. Drunkenness "while guarding the whiskey barrel" was rewarded with 100 lashes as was sleeping on guard duty (p. 8 9 ) . Desertions were unforgivable. A group sent to apprehend a deserter was armed with authority to kill the offender if resistance were shown.

T h e deserter was forced to run the gauntlet four times and then was dismissed from the expedition (pp. 9 2 - 9 3 ) .

T h e Indians viewed this type of punishment, as well as whipping, as barbarous and disgraceful.

Especially interesting is the epilogue to Part 1, which treats the postexpeditionary lives of the members. Included are some of the problems they faced in publishing their journals, the events surrounding the tragic death of Lewis, and the eventful, storybook life of Sacajawea's son, J e a n Baptiste.

Part 2 discusses the historical significance of forty-three major sites along the trail. Each discussion is accompanied by a photograph of the site. Place names that dot the West are included. T h e grievous omission of Lewis and Clark State College at Lewiston, Idaho, is unforgivable to an I d a h o a n (pp. 265— 66).

T h e volume is readable, the format pleasing, the index adequate, but the notes, unfortunately ? are at the end of the study. T h e reviewer wonders if an inflexible bureaucratic rule exists that requires ending a paragraph with an abbreviation such as "Danner Oreg." (p. 253).

Although Lewis and Clark is directed to the general public, the study should prove to be a valuable tool for public school teachers and should be acquired by most libraries. H o w can one lose for $8.35?

BERT W.

Idaho State

MARLEY

University Pocatello

Polygamist's

Wife.

By M E L I S S A

MER-

RILL. (Salt L a k e City: Olympus Publishing C o m p a n y , 1975. 167 p p . $7.95.)

As a young m a r r i e d w o m a n , Melissa Merrill a n d her husband, F r a n k (both p s e u d o n y m s ) , were converted to the C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a n d later to one of the polygamous, fundamentalist groups that exist o n the fringe of M o r m o n society.

T h r o u g h the trials of excommunication, constant r e l o c a t i o n (thirty-eight "homes") a n d childbearing (twelve living offspring), a n d d r u d g i n g work to support her family, M r s . Merrill grows from an i m m a t u r e , almost total, psychological dependence o n h e r husb a n d to a w o m a n w h o c a n see without bitterness, t h a t it is she w h o has been shouldering t h e tremendous burdens of poverty a n d rejection by society.

Mrs. Merrill is a w o m a n of remarkable strengths a n d weaknesses. H e r story gives readers a singularly frank view of polygamy as it is practiced by thousands in U t a h today. T h e book is written with taste a n d published in a most attractive format.

The

City In-Between:

terville,

Utah.

SMOOT

and

By

History MARY

MARILYN

Claude and Evelyn: An Anecdotal Account of the Lives of Claude Cornwall and Evelyn Thurston. By C L A U D E C. C O R N W A L L .

(Ithaca, N Y . :

Au-

thor, 1975. Viii + 9 0 p p . ) A collection of 110 vignettes of life in U t a h a n d elsewhere, some of them, such as "Bishop's C o u r t , " insightful a n d dramatic.

Cowboy Life: Reconstructing an American Myth.

Edited by W I L L I A M W .

SAVAGE, J R . ( N o r m a n : University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1975. X i v 4- 208 p p . $9.95.)

Looks at the historical a n d legendary dimensions of t h e cowboy from the 1860s to 1900 on the southern G r e a t Plains.

Fabulous

Gold. By W A L L A C E BRAZZEAL

a n d M A R K T . BALLSTAEDT. E d i t e d by

D O N L U D . T H A Y E R . (Salt L a k e City: Publishers House, 1975. 192 p p .

Paper, $6.95.)

This attractive, indexed guide will tell most readers everything they w a n t to know a b o u t gold: history, lore, law, market, a n d h o w a n d w h e r e to find it.

of CenELLEN

Genealogical

SHERIFF.

LAUREEN

(Centerville: Authors, 1975. X v i 4384 p p . $15.00.)

This compilation of biographies of Centerville settlers prior to 1900 a n d other historical d a t a will b e useful as a reference work.

Records R.

of

J A U S S I and

Utah.

GLORIA

By D.

C H A S T O N . (Salt L a k e City: Deseret Book C o m p a n y , 1975. Xxxi + 312 pp. $4.95.)

A revision a n d enlargement of c h a p ters 13 a n d 19 of t h e first edition of Fundamentals of Genealogical Research,

Utah Historical

106 this book includes genealogical information from b o t h civil a n d church records of U t a h .

A History of Colonia Dublan, Mexico.

By W A Y N E STOUT. (Salt L a k e City: Author, 1975. V i + 74 p p . $6.00.)

History of Patty Bartlett Sessions, Mother of Mormon Midwifery. By LEROY

W.

BROWN.

(Northglenn,

Colo.: Author, n.d. V i 4- 151 p p . ) A multilithed production, t h e book consists of transcriptions from Patty Sessions's journals (1846-66) in the Historical D e p a r t m e n t of t h e C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plus some material from other sources.

This famous midwife is certainly o n e of the great figures of nineteenth-century U t a h history a n d deserves billing well a h e a d of any n u m b e r of pioneer m e n about w h o m so m u c h has been written.

T h e Patty Sessions story should be issued in a h a r d b o u n d edition for an audience larger t h a n h e r descendants.

Not

of the World:

of the United

A Living

Order.

J u n i o r League of Salt L a k e Inc., 1975. 284 p p . $5.50.)

City,

Recipes tested by J u n i o r League a n d Heritage F o u n d a t i o n members.

Navajo Textile Arts. By H . P. M E R A .

(Santa Barbara a n d Salt L a k e City: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1975. 1x4- 122 pp. $9.95.)

T h e republication of this classic work makes available t h e last major out-ofprint work o n Navajo w r eaving. Roger a n d J e a n Moss have a d d e d new photographs a n d material o n changes in t h e art since M e r a ' s work first appeared.

Buyers will appreciate t h e useful chart t h a t identifies t h e yarns a n d weaving techniques of N a v a j o textiles a n d t h e m a n y imitations n o w on t h e market.

Account

By L U C Y PARR.

(Bountiful, U t . : Horizon Publishers, 1975. 2 3 1 p p . $5.95.)

A defense of t h e U n i t e d O r d e r in a format closer to a novel than a historical monograph. T h e book proceeds from the traditional secondary sources which a r e cited in footnotes, b u t t h e a u t h o r has created conversation, lightly sugar-coated, as t h e m e d i u m for carrying the story.

Pueblo

Animals

and Myths.

By H A M -

ILTON A. T Y L E R . ( N o r m a n : Univer-

sity of O k l a h o m a Press, 1975. Xiii 4274 p p . $8.95.)

Remarkable Latter-day

Stories from the Lives of Saint Women.

Compiled

by L E O N R. H A R T S H O R N . (Salt L a k e

City: Deseret Book Company^ 1975.

Xii 4-286 p p . $5.95.)

Shadow

of a Continent:

The Prize

Lay to the Westâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;1776.

Heritage Cookbook. By J U N I O R L E A G U E OF SALT L A K E C I T Y . (Salt L a k e City:

Quarterly

that

By LARRY L.

M E Y E R . (Palo Alto, Calif.: American West Publishing Company, 1975.)

T h e colonial history of t h e United States is p u t into perspective by presenting w h a t was known about t h e West in 1776, including t h e DominguezEscalante expedition.

The

Story

of Provo,

CLIFTON MOFFITT.

Utah.

By J O H N

( P r o v o : Author,

1975. Vi 4-301 pp.)

A readable narrative history of Provo, this book includes information o n contemporary as well as past events.

They

Saddled

the West.

By L E E M .

R I C E a n d G L E N N R. V E R N A .

(Cam-

bridge, M d . : Correll Maritime Press, Inc., 1975. X i 4- 190 p p . $10.00.)

Includes early U t a h saddlemakers.

HISTORICAL M E T H O D Cook, J. Frank. " 'Private Papers' of Public Officials," The American Archivist 38 (July 1975) : 299-324.

Hays, Samuel P. "History and Genealogy: Patterns of Change and Prospects for Cooperation," Prologue, The Journal of the National Archives 7 (Fall 1975): 189-92.

Taylor, Graham D. "Anthropologists, Reformers, and the Indian New Deal," Prologue, The Journal of the National Archives 7 (Fall 1975) : 151-62.

LITERATURE AND SOCIETY Clark, LaVerne Harrell. "The Indian Writings of Mari Sandoz: 'A Lone One Left from the Old Times,' " American Indian Quarterly 1 (Winter 1974â&#x20AC;&#x201D;75) : 269-80.

Galbreath, Carol J. "Small Town Preservationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;A Systemic View," Historic Preservation 27 (April-June 1975) : 12-19.

Meyer, Larry L. "The Farthest with the Fewest," The American West 12 (July 1975) : 4-9. French in the West.

Noel, Thomas J. "The Multifunctional Frontier Saloon: Denver, 1858-1876," Colorado Magazine 52 (Spring 1975) : 114-36.

Peterson, Audrey C. "Narrative Voice in Stegner's Angle of Repose," Western American Literature 10 (August 1975) : 125-34.

Walker, Don D. "The Western Explorer as a Literary Hero: Jedediah Smith and Ludwig Leichhardt," Western Humanities Review 29 (Summer 1975) : 243-59.

MINING AND MILITARY Jones5 Archer. "The United States in the Little Big Horn Campaign," North Dakota History 42 (Spring 1975) : 22-26. Compares Custer's defeat with other historic military failures, using maps.

Malone, Michael P., and Richard B. Roeder. "1876 in the Gulches: Mining," Montana, The Magazine of Western History 25 (Spring 1975) : 20-27. Mentions Utah personalities.

Nichols, Roger L. "The Army and Early Perceptions of the Plains," Nebraska History 56 (Spring 1975) : 121-35.

Smith, Duane A. "The San Juaner: A Computerized Portrait," Colorado Magazine 52 (Spring 1975) : 137-52. Miners.

108

Utah Historical Quarterly

Webb, George Ernest, ed. " T h e Mines in Northwestern Arizona in 1864: A Report

by Benjamin Silliman, Jr.," Arizona and the West 16 (Autumn 1974) : 247-70.

NATURAL

HISTORY

Holm, Ed. "Science Reveals a New Portrait of the American Landscape," American West 14 (March 1975) : 14-23. E R T S - 1 mosaic map.

McLellan, Jack.

"Kaiparowits: Southern U t a h at the Crossroads," Sierra

The Club

Bulletin 60 (August-September 1975) : 6-8.

Post, Frederick J. "Life in the Great Salt Lake," Utah Science

36 (June 1975) :

43-47.

Raskin, Marga. "Smog Alert for our Southwestern National Parks," National Parks and Conservation Magazine 49 (July 1975) : 9-15. Southern U t a h power plants. " T h e Wilderness System: A Report Covering Every Existing or Proposed Wilderness," The Living Wilderness 38 (Winter 1974-75) : 38-47.

POLITICS Kaplan, Michael. " ' T h e Joker in the Republican Deck': T h e Political Career of O t t o Mears, 1881-1889," Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly 7 (July 1975) : 281-302. Pioneer toll road builder ? town planner, and politician of Colorado.

Lovin, H u g h T. "Moses Alexander and the Idaho L u m b e r Strike of 1917: T h e Wartime Ordeal of a Progressive," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 66 (July 1975) : 115-22.

Niblo, Stephen R. " T h e United States-Mexican Claims Commission of 1868," New Mexico Historical Review 50 (April 1975) : 101-21.

Price, Charles M. " T h e Initiative: A Comparative State Analysis and Reassessment of a Western Phenomenon," The Western Political Quarterly 28 (June 1975) : 243-62.

T R A N S P O R T A T I O N AND RANCHING Gibson, Arrell Morgan, ed. "Ranching in the West," Journal of the West 14 (July 1975). Thirteen articles by various authors on stock raising, technical innovation, cooperation and conflict, and environment.

K a p l a n , Michael D . " T h e Toll Road Building Career of O t t o Mears," Colorado Magazine 52 (Spring 1975) : 153-70. " T h e Pony Express Revisited," Nevada Historical Review 2 (Winter 1974-75) : 102-37.

Rainey, Buck, ed. " T h e Cowboys," Red River Valley Historical Review 2 (Spring 1975). Special issue containing eight articles on the cowboy as a cultural phenomenon. T h e University of Oklahoma Press will publish this as a hardback book in 1976.

Schnell, J. Christopher. "William Gilpin and the Cosmopolitan R o a d , " The Magazine of Western History 25 (Winter 1975) : 32-41.

White, William R. "Illegal Fencing on the Colorado Range," Colorado 52 (Spring 1 9 7 5 ) : 93-113.

Montana, Magazine

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY D e p a r t m e n t of D e v e l o p m e n t S e r v i c e s D i v i s i o n of S t a t e H i s t o r y BOARD O F STATE

HISTORY

M I L T O N C. A B R A M S , Smithfield, 1977

President D E L L O G. D A Y T O N , O g d e n , 1979

Vice President M E L V I N T . S M I T H , Salt Lake City Secretary M R S . J U A N I T A B R O O K S , St. George, 1977 T H E R O N L U K E , Provo, 1979

C L Y D E L. M I L L E R , Secretary of State

Ex officio M R S . ELIZABETH M O N T A G U E , Salt Lake City, 1979 M R S . H E L E N Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1977 H O W A R D C. P R I C E , J R . , Price, 1979 MRS.

E L I Z A B E T H S K A N C H Y , M i d v a l e , 1977

R I C H A R D O . U L I B A R R I , Roy, 1977

M R S . NAOMI W O O L L E Y , Salt Lake City, 1976

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH,

Director

STANFORD J. L A Y T O N , Publications Coordinator JAY M . H A Y M O N D , Librarian DAVID B. M A D S E N , Antiquities Director

T h e U t a h State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited U t a h n s to collect, preserve, and publish U t a h and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials; locating, documenting, and preserving historic a n d prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live u p to its responsibility of preserving the record of U t a h ' s past.

MEMBERSHIP Membership in the U t a h State Historical Society is open to all individuals and institutions interested in U t a h history.

Membership applications and change of address notices should be sent to the membership secretary.

Annual dues a r e : Institutions, $7.00; individuals, $5.00; students, $3.00. Life memberships, $100.00.

Tax-deductible donations for special projects of the Society may be m a d e on the following membership basis: sustaining, $250.00; patron, $500.00; benefactor, $1,000.00. Your interest and support are most welcome.