Book Notices

The Force of a Feather:The Search for a Lost Story of Slavery and Freedom

By DeEtta Demaratus (Salt Lake City:The University of Utah Press,2002.xiv + 235 pp. $27.95.)

Biddy Mason and her three children and Hannah and her four children came to Utah from Mississippi in 1848 as slaves of Robert Mays Smith and Rebecca Smith who had become Mormons in 1844.They remained in Utah from October 1848 until March 1851 when they journeyed to California as part of the San Bernardino mission.

After a promising beginning,Smith lost his beloved ranch through an unfortunate set of circumstances and decided to move to Texas.As the family prepared for the move,the right of Smith to take his slaves with him was challenged under California law (the provisions of the Compromise of 1850 had provided for the creation of California as a free state and,under the doctrine of popular sovereignty,had allowed the Utah territory to decide whether or not to allow slavery).The ensuing trial and decision by southern-born judge Benjamin Hayes,more than a year before the Dred Scott decision by the United States Supreme Court in a similar case,make for interesting and surprising reading.In an even larger context, the threads of family,religion,race,slavery,loyalty,duty,and destiny weave a tapestry of history that stretches across the country and across much of the nineteenth century.

In paralleling chapters,the author recounts her search for the story in archives in the South,California,the LDS Church Family History Center in Salt Lake City,and through descendants of her subjects.In a talk at a Smith family reunion in Texas about her research,the author describes the conflicting relationships inherent in the practice of slavery and her search for historical truth.“I believe that Robert Mays Smith believed that these women of color and their children were part of his family,that it was a bond,rather than bondage,between them. But the women and children may have felt another way.There is a white truth and a black truth and a greater truth that encompasses us all.Only now,after all these years,it may be possible to seek the greater truth”(204).

The Forgotten Founders:Rethinking the History of the Old West

By Stewart L. Udall (Washington:Island Press/Shearwater Books,2002.xxvii + 237 pp.$25.00.)

Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart L.Udall debunks the highly popularized “Wild West”theme as portrayed in movies and pulp novels and writes that the West was settled by unheralded ordinary people.Udall draws upon his own heritage and his extensive knowledge of the American West to state his case.Of particular interest to Utah readers is chapter two “European Settlers” where he discusses his Mormon ancestors and “One of the most abhorrent episodes in the annals of western history”(63),the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The common ordinary families and their values from numerous backgrounds and religious faiths settled and developed the west along with Native peoples,Udall concludes.Their lot was “amity,not conquest;stability,not strife;conservation,not waste;restraint,not aggression”(xvii).