Book Reviews

Riverton: The Story of a Utah Country Town.

By MELVIN L.BASHORE and SCOTT CRUMP (Riverton, Ut.: Riverton Historical Society, 1994 xvi +422 pp $15.00.)

A superbly researched, extensively documented, and well-written community history is rare. Like your neighbor's family movies, prolonged church meetings, or a warm glass of milk, most local annals are anesthetizing. But then few small towns have a champion capable of chronicling their past in a professional, engaging format.

Riverton, a prospering city situated along the banks of theJordan River in southwest Salt Lake Valley, is fortunate to have two such individuals in Melvin Bashore and Scott Crump. The duo, in cooperation with the Riverton Historical Society, have produced an extraordinarily readable local history This accomplishment is especially notable when one realizes that back files of historical Riverton newspapers are not extant.

The book's thirteen chapters escort the reader chronologically from the early 1860s to the present. En route we learn the history of the important irrigation canal companies that toiled to harness the fickle river that gave the town its name Drought, the great post-World War I influenza epidemic, and the 1938 school bus disaster that snuffed out the lives of twenty-three youths were tragedies that also affected the community.

A chapter of special interest, "From Beetdiggers to Miners," provides us with the history of both Jordan and Bingham high schools. Current challenges facing the town of 15,000 are detailed in a final overview chapter

The work is enhanced by 50 highquality photographs, 150 brief biographies, and the intriguing reminiscences of early area settler Joseph E Morgan. The only significant disappointment is the lack of an index.

Local histories by their very nature are reference books They invite inquisitive readers to return again and again in search of detail Without an index the task can be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

I would also like to have seen a treatment of Redwood Road, the main thoroughfare that Riverton has straddled since its founding For years I have pondered the source of that name in a valley that has no such giant trees.

For specialists and general readers alike, a reading of Riverton: The Story of a Utah Country Town will provide a rewarding experience The authors and the Riverton Historical Society are to be applauded for bringing this impressive book to press.

RICHARD S. VAN WAGONER Lehi, Utah

The Weber River Basin: Grass Roots Democracy and Water Development.

By RICHARD W. SADLER and RICHARD C. ROBERTS (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1994. x+ 283 pp. $26.95.)

The Weber River Basin makes a solid, possibly even path-breaking, contribution to Utah and western American water history The authors begin by recounting Utah Mormon perspectives on water use and development in the immediate aftermath of the Latter-day Saints' 1847 arrival in the Great Salt Lake Valley.

"Water and a New Kingdom," the book's beginning chapter, recalls defining aspects of water history in Utah: Brigham Young's leadership in decisions regarding not only water matters but all natural resource issues; the role of church leaders (i.e., bishops) in determining local water rights—in early Utah neither riparian nor prior appropriation viewsseems to have held sway but instead a more egalitarian stance of water allotments based upon need was the rule; and, of course, the communal construction of extensive irrigation canals. This informative base sets The Weber River Basin on solid footing because these same guidelines were basically followed throughout Utah.

The next section of the book breaks down water issues to a more local level in the Weber River Basin bylooking at the counties that were involved. The major players were Weber and Davis counties because they had the larger populations and thus the greater water needs Yet the less populated, more rural counties—Box Elder, Morgan, and Summit—fought hard for their share of the water aswell. But as might be expected the political might was with Weber and Davis counties, thus forcing the neighboring rural counties into the role of the loyal opposition.

Without a doubt the major player in the Weber River Basin project was the federal government, specifically the Bureau of Reclamation As elsewhere in the United States, the 1930s saw the completion of two Utah dams—Echo (Summit County) and Pineview (Weber County)—that would later come to bear heavily upon planning for the Weber Basin projects In fact this marked the first use of reclamation funds in the Weber Basin area.

The Weber Basin project began moving forward in earnest during the 1940s when water control moved from "private and church-sponsored efforts to involvement with the federal Bureau of Reclamation." Following its involvement with the Echo and Pineview dams, the federal government was not about to relinquish itsrole in reclamation in northern Utah.

Although Professors Sadler and Roberts do make a strong case for the local role in forwarding the Weber River Basin project, as implied by the book's subtitle, it should be remembered that it was the federal government that finally brought matters to fruition

The Weber River Basin is an important book Even if somewhat overstating the local role at the expense of the federal, its local case studies shed much light on water issues in the Weber Basin and provide a model for future studies of Utah water history For this alone, Sadler and Roberts are to be commended.

M. GUY BISHOP American Fork, Utah

In Search of the Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles, 1829-1848.

By C GREGORY CRAMPTON and STEVEN K MADSEN (Layton, Ut.: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1994 144pp Paper, $24.95.)

We are now celebrating the sesquicentennial of the opening during the 1840s of the great trans-Mississippi overland trails to Oregon and California. It is useful to remember, however, that these trailswere not the first routes to connect the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast One important early trail was the Spanish Trail, a 1,120-mile two-way trade route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles that passed through portions of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. Misnamed "Spanish," this trail experienced its heaviest use from 1829 to 1848, during the period when Mexico governed the American Southwest.

The Spanish Trail is shrouded in mystery While hundreds of contemporary travel narratives exist for the Oregon and California trails, only one travel diary covering the complete Spanish Trail is known Later government topographers and explorers who knew they were traveling along segments of what once was the Spanish Trail are primary information sources, but the available documentation is meager in comparison to other trails This was the challenge faced by Crampton and Madsen when they set out in 1976 to locate and map the complete route. In Search of the Spanish Trail is the result of many years of work that alternated periods of library research with field study.

The book is organized around a series of twelve maps that trace the entire Spanish Trail from east towest "as it was known during the peak time of its use, about 1840." Complementing the maps are a systematic series of some 200 illustrations and an accompanying text that emphasize trail features The illustrations include photographs by the authors and images and map details from nineteenth-century sources Separate book and map bibliographies and an index of names and places complete the book.

The excellent maps highlight natural travel corridors and show the relationship of the trail to today's roads and towns The maps are not detailed enough for field use, but a list of the required USGS maps is provided for the adventurous Intended for "the armchair traveler and the modern explorer," the well-written text will acquaint readers with the primary information sources, key historical events, and main points of interest.

The disappointing packaging does not do justice to the book's achievement nor does it match its subject. The Spanish Trail passed through some of the most colorful scenery on earth, yet none of the illustrations isin color; the reproductions of the images and maps generally do not capture the charm and clarity of the originals; the paper quality and binding are inadequate; and the cover is off-putting Readers must look beyond the book's ragged clothes.

To appreciate the experiences of early travelers in the American West, an understanding of their travel routes is of primary importance, and Crampton and Madsen have now filled a significant void In Search of the Spanish Trail is a welcome addition to the uncrowded literature of the Spanish Trail and to the history of the American Southwest.

PETER H DELAEOSSE Salt Lake City

The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism.

ByGRANT UNDERWOOD (Urbana: Universityof Illinois Press, 1993.viii +213 pp. $24.95.)

Baptist seminary professor Walter Rauschenbusch is alleged to have said that a love of Second Coming theology is in inverse proportion to the square of the mental diameter of the person who does the loving. Grant Underwood's scholarly, insightful, wonderfully written book regarding Latter-day Saint millennialism certainly negates Rauschenbusch's statement. This volume, a shortened version of his 1988 UCLA doctoral dissertation, attempts to "link two fascinating realms of the world of knowledge—the study of Mormonism and the study of Millennialism" (p 1) The undergirding essence of the Latter-day world view, he asserts, was millennialism Mormon eschatology probes their mental universe as well as how they envisioned the millennium and thus is one of the most satisfactory models for understanding the beginnings of Mormonism (p. 2).

Underwood clearly places Mormonism in its millennial historical setting. He explains the differences and similarities of pre-millennialism, postmillennialism, apocalypticism, and millenarian movements Mormonism, he asserts, is pre-millennialist in its basic stance, which means that there would be two comings of Christ, two physical resurrections and two judgments (p 4) Latter-day Saint missionary work, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, the gathering, and other essential doctrines and events had as their telechy the warning of the world that Christ's coming was near.

Like most millennialists, the Mormons' world wasdualistic:the good versus the bad, Heaven versus Hell, the saved versus the damned (p 9).

The book's chapters represent a validation of Underwood's thesis. "The Eschatological Background of Early Mormonism," "Mormons as Millenarians," "Apocalyptic Dualism in Early Mormonism," "The Bible," "The Mormons and Millenarianism," "The Book of Mormon and the Millenarian Mind," and "Modern Millenarians" are chapter titles that make up the essence of this volume. Lest readers conclude that millenarianism was merely an American phenomenon, Underwood devotes one chapter to the millenarian appeal of Mormonism in England, coming to the conclusion that it was LDS millennialism that caused so many British to flock to the church Underwood here, aswell as in other parts of this volume, plows new ground Few, if any, Mormon historians have previously argued that millennialism was the core attraction for the thousands of English converts.

This book is essential for anyone interested in piecing together the LDS puzzle Some historians, church leaders, and a few theologians of late have argued that Mormon beginnings have been plowed, harrowed, leveled, planted, watered, cultivated, and harvested for so long by so many that the soil no longer yields good fruit. Underwood has shown that there still remains some fertile land in the terrain of Mormon beginnings.

While this book is tightly argued, well crafted, and represents meticulous research—even looking at old sources in new ways—some aspects of this volume will disquiet thoughtful readers. First, Underwood declares that a "uniquely Mormon twist on Premillennialism" is the noting that before Christ comes the elect will be gathered However, in discussing the millenarian appeal of Mormonism in England, he does not show clearly just why so many British preferred Mormonism over the various Methodist movements, the Christian Society of Robert Aitken, or the Irvingites. If, as one historian quoted by Underwood asserts, "There was nothing in [Mormonism] that had not been anticipated over the preceding half-century, and if there were scattered and isolated insights embedded in the English environment" (p 137), that gave to Mormonism its "familiar spirit" appeal, then why were thousands of English willing to sacrifice friends, homes, and family ties to become members of this very unpopular new religion? This question begs a more detailed answer than Underwood provides.

To cite another example, Underwood asserts that early Mormon leaders argued that "history [meaning premillennial events] could be averted if Gentiles would speedily turn to the Lord" (p. 27). Today some church officials and theologians declare that the date of Christ's Second Coming is fixed and nothing mortals do can change or alter it. How did Mormon theology evolve from the 1830s and 40s position to that espoused today? I wish Underwood had provided more detail on this transition To use a final example, Underwood clearly shows that early Mormons believed that Christ's Second Coming would be soon. He also asserts that beginning in the 1920s, millennial talk among Latter-day Saints has significantly diminished. Again, I long for more details about this important change in Mormon millennial expectations. One wonders if the wolf cry has been too often given.

In spite of leaving the reader wanting more, this is a very significant volume. Underwood is the first historian to note the importance of Joseph Smith's 1843 poetic version of "The Vision" (D&C 76) and the breaking of Mormonism's apocalyptic dualism. Smith, toward the close of his life, emphasized "a pluralized rather than a polarized picture of Eternity" (p. 56). The poetic version of Doctrine and Covenants, section 76, catalyzed this new position for the Mormon leader Furthermore, Underwood's brief discussion of magic in early Mormonism isbalanced, sensible, and has the ring of truth (pp 106-7) I believe it a better, though much shorter, treatment of the subject than an earlier book devoted to this topic.

Mormons continue to expect that one day Christ will come again and lead them to an actual thousand years of paradisiacal peace and prosperity. The Underwood book provides a sure foundation resting in Mormon beginnings upon which to base their hopes.

KENNETH W GODFREY Logan LDS Institute

A Mormon Rebel: The Life and Travels of Frederick Gardiner.

Edited and introduction by HUGH C. GARNER. (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, 1993 xviii + 164 pp $21.95.)

When the movie Forrest Gump appeared last year its enormous popularity stemmed not only from Tom Hanks's portrayal of a kind, simpleminded Alabamian but also from. Gump's fictive involvement in so many of the tumultuous American events, movements, and upheavals of 1940-90. Hugh C. Garner's presentation of Frederick Gardiner's "synopsis" (memoirs) is a real-life account of a more sophisticated (but equally poor) Mormon's participation in a kaleidoscope of the great events of American and LDS history a hundred years earlier. If Gump rubbed shoulders with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon as well as Gov George Wallace, Gardiner had repeated interviews or employment connections with Presidents Brigham Young and Lorenzo Snow, Gov Alfred Cumming, and Brig Gen Albert Sidney Johnston. If Hanks's character won the Medal of Honor while an infantryman in Vietnam, Garner's man served as a private in both the Nauvoo Legion and the Union Army and was on hand to witness not only the Utah War but also Maj Gen Ben Butler's seizure of New Orleans. If Gump traveled to Asia to play a small role in the reopening of U.S. relations with China, Gardiner crossed the Atlantic (as well as the plains between the Missouri River and Salt Lake City) a remarkable three times and steamed the Mississippi between New Orleans and St Louis at least five times If Forrest Gump was struck down by polio and surrounded by the scourges of narcotics and AIDS, Frederick Gardiner grappled at close quarters with the pervasive plagues of his day: cholera, yellowfever, smallpox, and alcohol.

With more than five years of skillful hard work, editor Hugh Garner has brought to life from the Marriott Library's archives not a movie but a view of the Mormon church in midpassage as reflected in the reminiscences of one of its ordinary but highly ambivalent members For readers economically and politically inclined as well as those interested in history and religion, we also have here a view of an unskilled immigrant doggedly toiling at a wide variety of jobs to provide for his family without government safety nets.

The story of Frederick Gardiner's life and travels during the period 1835-1903 is summarized well on the book's dust jacket and in the editor's seven-page introduction, which precedes the ten chapters into which he has divided Gardiner's hand-written manuscript. It is an account of the briefly educated son of an English canalman who converted to Mormonism as a ten-year-old and then migrated as a teenager to New Orleans in 1849 After a two-year pause in Louisiana to wrestle with a succession of unskilled jobs and a decision over the appropriate time to push on to Zion, Gardiner traveled to Salt Lake City in 1851 In 1853 his parents migrated from England to join him; he married and continued on through the mid-1850s in Salt Lake City as a store clerk and self-taught pharmacist During the fall of 1856 he experienced the upheavals of the Reformation aswell as the arrival of the rest of his family with the decimated handcart companies In April 1857 Gardiner was called to a mission to England, but after miles of pushing a handcart he suffered a painful hernia in what is now Wyoming and reluctantly returned to Salt Lake City in June 1857just ahead of the Utah Expedition's move west.

Immediately after his return Brigham Young hired Gardiner to tend his tollgate at the mouth of City Creek Canyon, an arduous job that he quit abruptly in a wage dispute after only a few months In this uncomfortable predicament, Gardiner sat out the Utah War during the winter of 1857-58. In the spring he fled Salt Lake City to General Johnston's bivouac at Fort Bridger to become a civilian quartermaster's employee, a move that triggered his excommunication by Brigham Young Returning to Salt Lake City with the army, Frederick suffered harassment to the point that Governor Cumming arranged a military escort for the Gardiners to the federal garrison at Camp Floyd where Frederick found work as a physician In this role he tended not only to soldiers but to the small children who had survived the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.

In 1859 the Gardiners left Camp Floyd and Utah with these survivors, returned to New Orleans, and spent the Civil War in that city, where Frederick worked as a peddler, pharmacist, physician's assistant, librarian, and bailiff while founding the Union League—an unpopular organization in that locale—and eventually served in the Union Army as a hospital steward After the war, notwithstanding his American citizenship, Gardiner returned to England in vain pursuit of promised employment as a rent collector, a disappointment that prompted him to return to New Orleans and then to Salt Lake City in the spring of 1869 after a hiatus in Omaha digging ditches.

To his surprise, Gardiner was greeted warmly in Salt Lake by not only his parents, siblings, and former friends but by Brigham Young, who immediately called him to a mission to southern Utah's Dixie region. Gardiner declined this service because of his desire to practice medicine in Salt Lake Citywhile avoiding further hardships for his family Hugh Garner surmises that notwithstanding Young's apparent acceptance of this decision it, in effect, completed Frederick Gardiner's break with the LDS church Nonetheless, Gardiner became a moderately prosperous (but unlicensed) physician and practiced medicine in Salt Lake City until his death in 1903 at age sixty-eight.

When Paul Swenson reviewed A Mormon Rebel for the Salt Lake Tribune (February 6, 1994), he took issue with the volume's title and accused Hugh Garner of reaching for a salable but inappropriate title because, as Swenson saw it, "there wasn't a rebellious bone in his [Gardiner's] body." Swenson's point is curious when one considers Frederick Gardiner's repeated jousts with authority and popular opinion: his two costly clashes with Brigham Young—an incredibly powerful man who combined roles as Gardiner's president, prophet, governor, commander-in-chief, and employer; his near court-martial in both the Nauvoo Legion and the Union Army; and his willingness to take an active, high-profile Union stance in wartime New Orleans even before becoming a U.S. citizen. Few men have demonstrated such a penchant for traveling through life swimming upstream.

Perhaps more worthy of consideration isanother Swenson criticism: that Garner errs in the belief that—although interesting as history—"there is little in the remembrances to give us insight into Gardiner, the man." To the contrary, Paul Swenson argues, "seldom has a memoir of the period revealed more vividly the heart and soul of an individual than does Frederick Gardiner's straightforward report of his own life." In focusing on Gardiner's periodic self-criticism over his experiences with alcohol and abortions, Swenson overlooks what Hugh Garner detects: Gardiner's vague, distant treatment of such important figures close to him as his parents, wife, and children. AsHugh Garner points out, Gardiner—like many writers—presented himself as he wished to be seen rather than as he was.

Perhaps an even more telling aspect of Frederick Gardiner's writing style—one missed by both critic and editor—is his vexingly laconic way of explaining his momentous decisions.

For example, in describing his flight from Salt Lake City to Fort Bridger in 1858, Gardiner tells the reader: "I also would like to go [east] in order to learn more in regard to the practice of medicine." Ten years later, having returned to Louisiana from England, he simply tells us, "Business of all descriptions [in New Orleans] is very dull. I therefore determined to again move Zion-ward if possible to do so."

Once back in Utah physician Gardiner clearly agonized over whether or not to perform abortions, yet he remains silent on an 1893 description of him in the Deseret News as "the notorious Frederick Gardiner" as well as on his probably related prosecution the following year for failure to obtain a medical license—details that emerge only in Hugh Garner's carefully crafted footnotes Gardiner obviously wrote his reminiscences from the perspective of a religious man acutely aware of his own mortality, but he never tells his readers whether he retained LDS membership It is an important omission; church records are inconclusive on Gardiner's final status, and his memoirs project an intriguing ambivalence about his adopted religion vaguely like the cross-currents that washed through the final thoughts of John D Lee.

If A Mormon Rebel has a flat spot it is the need to spend fifteen minutes or so adjusting to Gardiner's idiosyncratic spelling, punctuation, and phraseology which Hugh Garner has deliberately preserved. Once over thisinitial hurdle the reader easily falls into the flow of Gardiner's narrative much asone soon adapts to the rhythm of Shakespeare's plays or the cadences of Faulkner's and Conrad's novels.

On balance, Hugh Garner—a retired air force colonel, former trustee of the Utah State Historical Society, and recently retired Salt Lake City attorney—presents in careful, scholarly fashion a fascinating memoir. His work comes close to the standard set by Bennett Stein in editing Andrew Garcia's reminiscences of 1879 Montana, Tough Trip Through Paradise. In view of Frederick Gardiner's adventures, it is a title that could have been used by Garner aswell.

Based on the quality of this study, readers interested in territorial Utah await with anticipation the publication of Hugh Garner's work on John D. Lee's two trials.

WILLIAM P MACKINNON Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Call of the Colorado.

By ROY WEBB (MOSCOW: University of Idaho Press, 1994 xii + 175 pp. Paper, $23.95.)

Once again, river runner and historian Roy Webb has turned his research talents into another remarkable volume concerning the Colorado River of the West and its sister tributary, the Green River, roughly covering the area encompassed by the Colorado Plateau Webb opted to emphasize the historical photographic record of river travel beginning with 1871 wet-plate cameras and culminating in the early 1960s when dams forever changed the character of both rivers.

As should be expected of an archivist, the author made extensive use of primary sources in photo- graphic, oral history, and archival collections, both institutional and private Chosen for their representation of the many river runners "who felt the call of the river," the chronologically arranged photographic images are categorized into five chapters: scientists, surveyors, and dam builders; prospectors; photographers; adventurers; and outfitters Some river runners lend themselves to more than one activity which leads to occasional repetitious narrative.

Using many never-before-published photographs, Webb gives a description of the image and sufficient background information to place the people and the photograph into proper perspective The use of heretofore unseen historic images elevates this work above the mundane, enlivening the topic while giving credence to the use of primary source materials.

To cover most of the river-running history of the Colorado River system is quite an undertaking, a tremendous goal that the author has set for himself As he stated in the introduction, it is impossible to portray all the river runners in so short a work Indeed, it is difficult to cover this great river system in any length, even limiting the discussion to the middle sections of both rivers. Hesitation to write "impossible" is made, as Webb has done a wonderful job of presenting an interesting, informative, and entertaining overview of the subject. The attempt to cover a topic this large ultimately leads to a feeling of disappointment, for much discussion is left for some future discourse.

For the trivial nit-pickers among us, some errors of fact and interpretation do exist: although correctly mentioned at least once, the continued misnaming of the Brown-Stanton survey as the Denver, Colorado Canyon and Pacific Railway Company, instead of Railroad, is particularly disturbing; Dubendorff's name is correctly spelled, but Deubendorff Rapid is not; the jet boats Dock and Kiwi, were on the up-run only, so did not need overhauling at Boulder City after the down-run; the 1949 Marston-Hudson up-run attempt established the limit of navigation at the foot of 217 Mile Rapid, and their subsequent attempts did not get as far; and Ellsworth Kolb did not flip both boats in 1911 trying to run Soap Creek Rapid, only the second one, the Edith. Although Ellsworth Kolb denied successfully navigating this rapid, he was thrown out of the Defiance in the first run, held onto the gunwale, and pulled himself back in to finish the run, arguably making this the first successful run of Soap Creek A few photographs also are mislabeled, most notably "Ellsworth and Emery Kolb on the Defiance, 1911,"when it isactually Emery Kolb and Bert Lauzon, probably on Emery's boat, the Edith.

Call of the Colorado, however, is a highly enjoyable book for any river runner, particularly those who run the Southwest's canyons The serious student or specialist in river-running history will also benefit from it, although they will find themselves hoping for more detailed information. Webb has previously shown that he can write in depth on both biographical and geographical aspects of the Green and Colorado rivers. He is, no doubt, hard at work on his next book in what one hopes is a never-ending continuation of river running history.

RICHARD D. QUARTAROLI Glen Canyon Environmental Studies Flagstaff, Arizona

Chiefs, Agents, and Soldiers: Conflict on the Navajo Frontier, 1868-1882.

By WILLIAM HAAS MOORE (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994 xxiv + 355 pp $45.00.)

"The history of conflict between American Indians and the United States is partially explained and greatly confused by crucial American myths" (p ix) Indeed it is, and William Moore has prepared a comprehensive and objective study of conflicts between the Navajo Indians and various agencies representing the United States in the late nineteenth century that dispels much of the mythology associated with this intriguing relationship.

In 1868 the Navajos, who had suffered through a period of exile at a remote location in eastern New Mexico, agreed to a treaty with the United States that permitted them to return to a reservation encompassing much of the land they had traditionally occupied in northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. The author picks up the story of the ensuing trials and tribulations of the tribe at this point, and his narrative is divided, essentially, into chapters assessing the events that transpired during the tenure of each agent appointed by the Office of Indian Affairs to carry out the provisions of the treaty.

The first three agents were practical men with military experience who were inclined to ignore rigid dictates of governmental policy that did not suit the Navajo lifestyle. Then, in 1871, the first agent appointed under provisions of the so-called Peace Policy of President Grant arrived at the Navajo Agency. The intent of the celebrated Peace Policy was to permit the churches of America to recommend good Christian laymen for service as Indian agents The Presbyterian church accepted this responsibility for the Navajos, and, in the author's opinion, the agents who served in this capacity through the 1870s were less competent than their predecessors and less sympathetic to Navajo concerns. Working with the agents during the period of the Peace Policy were missionaries of their church who hoped to bring the blessings of Christianity and education to the Navajos.

Although the intent of the governmental and ecclesiastical reformers may have been well meaning, the less than gratifying results of their attempts to "do good" to the Indians could be blamed on numerous factors The author skillfully analyzes the tense situations that evolved when the Navajos reacted adversely to attempts by the churchmen to change traditional tribal cultural and religious practices. Compounding these problems for the Indians were disputes with cattlemen, miners, and Mormon settlers who often ignored reservation boundaries as they pursued their own special interests. Crises that evolved from the sale of liquor to the tribe, from tensions created by a cult of tribal witches, and from the enslavement of some Navajos by their nontribal neighbors are also carefully considered.

Somehow the Navajos managed to survive and maintain their tribal identity throughout this transitional period No small factor in attaining this success was the ability of Navajo leaders to find a niche for their people in the larger society without losing what was characteristically theirs. With this conclusion, William Moore completes the weaving of a rich tapestry of events that can only be regarded as an important contribution to the growing body of literature on the Navajo nation in the late nineteenth century The text is enhanced by a judicious selection of maps and illustrations, along with copious notes and an impressive bibliography.

NORMAN J BENDER University of Colorado Colorado Springs