Book Notices

Pioneer Cemeteries: Sculpture Gardens of the Old West.

By Annette Stott. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. xix + 370 pp. Cloth, $36.95.)

Cemeteries in the Rocky Mountain West contained important visual resources of stone carved sculptures, wooden headboards and other materials and art work which intersect with ordinary people to help explain culture of the American West during the last half of the nineteenth-century. Annette Stott in five chapters examines various cemeteries in Colorado,Wyoming, Idaho, Montana including the Brigham City, Ogden, Provo cemeteries and the Salt Lake City, Mt. Olivet and Mt. Calvary cemeteries.The author’s focus is not who is buried in the cemeteries but who carved or made the sculptures and headboards and how these cultural artifacts convey something about the people buried, and how pioneer communities memorialized the dead.

Magnificent Failure:A Portrait of the Western Homestead Era.

By John Martin Campbell. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. xiv + 183 pp. Cloth, $19.95;paper, $14.95.)

A pictorial essay of seventy black-and-white photographs of failed homesteaders’ houses, farm equipment, barns, and other homesteading artifacts that littered the prairie from the 1880s to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl with four short essays by Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Research Curator at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. Kenneth W. Karsmizki, Executive Director and Curator of History at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center,The Dalles, Oregon, provides the introduction.

John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier.

By Albert L. Hurtado. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. xvii + 412 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

Albert L. Hurtado first published this award-winning, wellbalanced definitive biography of John Sutter, California’s gold-rush entrepreneur in 2006. Hurtado captures this enigmatic character as the American frontier unfolds at mid-nineteenth century. Founder of the historically famous Sutter’s Fort on the banks of the Sacramento River and an empire builder, Sutter’s personality and motives are carefully presented in this lively written biography from his relationships with his brother, his wife, his relationship with his mother-in-law in Switzerland to his wheelings and dealings in Missouri and Santa Fe, to his efforts to build a commercial empire in California while exploiting friends, business associates, and others along a turbulent trail littered with broken promises, indebtedness, and drinking problems.

Placing Memory: A Photographic Exploration of Japanese American Internment.

Photographs by Todd Stewart. Essays by Natasha Egan and Karen J. Leong. (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. 127 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

This handsome volume includes contemporary black- and- white photographs taken by the War Relocation Authority during the 1940s internment of Japanese Americans in ten relocation camps in California, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and Arkansas. The historic photographs record the life and vitality of the camps in contrast with the stark abandonment of the camps, which are captured in color more than sixty years later by Todd Stewart, an assistant professor of photography at the University of Oklahoma. Brief essays and an afterword provide context for the images and the internment experience.

The Fall of a Black Army Officer: Racism and the Myth of Henry O. Flipper.

By Charles M. Robinson III. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.xviii + 197 pp. Cloth, $29.95.)

This book is a revised edition of the author’s earlier book, The Court-Martial of Lieutenant Henry Flipper (Texas Western Press, 1994).The author in this revised edition makes “substantial changes” having discovered additional archival information about the court-martial of Henry O. Flipper, the first African American army officer to have graduated from West Point and served in the U. S. Army. The event was known among some circles as the “Flipper Affair,” as Lt. Flipper was charged in 1881 with embezzlement and conduct unbecoming an officer was acquitted of embezzlement but convicted on the other charge and was honorably discharged. In 1999 President Bill Clinton issued a posthumous pardon. The author in his re-examination of the affair asks whether Lt. Flipper was dismissed from the army based on racism of the time or Lt. Flipper was discharged as a result of his own making.

Pueblos, Spaniards, and the Kingdom of New Mexico. By John L. Kessell.

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. 225 pp. Cloth, $24.95.)

When Spanish settlers arrived in New Mexico in 1598, the population of the eighty or more Pueblo villages was estimated at sixty thousand. Four hundred years later, after the population was reduced to less than ten thousand, the 2000 census counted a Pueblo population of 59,621.

In this volume, John L. Kessell, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of New Mexico, provides a synthesis of the first one hundred years of New Mexican settlement by the Spanish that includes Juan de Onate’s initial venture to establish the Kingdom of New Mexico as a private venture, the shift to a royal colony with governors appointed every three years, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and the re-conquest in 1692. While conflict was part of the experience, Professor Kessell emphasizes the story is more one of coexistence and a “shared reality” in which the Pueblo natives, Spanish settlers, and descendants of both, learned to live together yet apart.

New Mexico Territory During the Civil War: Wallen and Evans Inspection Reports, 1862-1863.

Edited and introduction by Jerry D. Thompson. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. vii + 304 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

Jerry D. Thompson has compiled inspection reports of inspector general Major Henry Davies Wallen and assistant inspector general Captain Andrew Wallace Evans of the army posts in New Mexico during the two years of the Civil War. The book is divided into several parts: An introduction written by Jerry D. Thompson who provides the historical setting for the series of brief inspection reports; Part II, Major Henry Davies Wallen’s inspection reports for Fort Garland, Colorado, Fort Marcy, Fort Union, Post at Mesilla, Fort Craig, Post at Los Pinos, Post at Albuquerque, Forts Sumner and Union all in the New Mexico Territory, and Post at Franklin, Texas; Part III, is the inspection reports prepared by Captain Evans for Fort McRae, Ojo del Muerto, Post at Franklin, Texas, Fort West, New Mexico, and Fort Stanton, New Mexico. Thompson provides a short history for each army installation inspected by Major Wallen and Captain Evans.

Coal Camps of Eastern Utah.

By SueAnn Martell. (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing,2008. 126 pp. Paper, $19.99.)

The seven chapters in this volume cover each of the seven areas and their twenty-two coal camps that comprise the coal mining region of Carbon and Emery Counties, including those of Scofield, Winter Quarters, Clear Creek, Castle Gate, Spring Canyon, Kenilworth, Gordon Creek, Sunnyside, Hiawatha, Wattis, and Mohrland. Within these geographically organized chapters is a wealth of photographs depicting coal miners, mining activities, and ethnic and community life in the coal camps. This book makes a fine companion volume to Martell’s Rails Around Helper issued by Arcadia Publishing in 2007.

Mormonism Unveiled: The Life and Confession of John D. Lee and the Complete Life of Brigham Young.

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. 421 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

John D. Lee was executed on March 28, 1877, for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre twenty years earlier. After his trial and before his execution, Lee wrote his Life and Confession. W.W. Bishop, Lee’s attorney, copied the manuscript and prepared it for publication. The first printing was done by Bryan, Brand and Co., in St. Louis in 1877, with subsequent publications, including the 1891 edition published by D. M.Vandawalker & Company of St. Louis, Missouri, which is used for the reprint of this 2008 University of New Mexico Press edition.The 1877 edition was an immediate national best seller.The posthumous autobiography remains today an important source on the life of John D. Lee, the early Mormon church, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

A Century of Sanctuary:The Art of Zion National Park.

Edited by Lyman Hafen. (Springdale: Zion Natural History Association, 2008. 131 pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $24.95.)

As part of the centennial commemoration of the designation of Mukuntuweap National Monument on July 31, 1909, which became Zion National Park in 1919, the Zion Natural History Association in collaboration with the St. George Art Museum, the St. George Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Zion National Park, sponsored from August 2008 to January 2009 an exhibition of art depicting the natural beauty of Zion National Park. This handsome volume was published in conjunction with the exhibition and includes more than one hundred fifty illustrations—mostly in color—of paintings and photographs from the 1870s to the present. Essays by Lyman Hafen, Peter H. Hassirck, Leslie Courtright, Roland Lee, and Deborah Reeder, curator of the exhibition, provide a helpful introduction to the history, art, and artists of Zion National Park. Brief biographies of the 112 artists represented in the exhibit conclude the book.

Bingham High School: The First One Hundred Years 1908-2008.

By Scott Crump.(Salt Lake City: Great Mountain West Supply, 2008. 244 pp. Paper, $25.00.)

Established in 1908, Bingham High School has been located in three communities—the historic Bingham mining town 1908 to 1931, Copperton from 1931 to 1975, and South Jordan since 1975. Author Scott Crump has been associated with Bingham High School for more than fifty years—beginning in 1954 when his father, Cal Crump, secured a teaching position at Bingham High School a position he held for thirty-six years. After graduating from Bingham High School in 1970, Scott Crump returned as a student teacher in 1977 and since 1978 has taught history and political science. A published historian, Crump provides a fine narrative of the school’s one hundred year history in this lavishly illustrated book that finds “mixing the valley farmers and the canyon miners was a recipe for success.”

Wallace Stegner’s West. Edited by Page Stegner.

(Berkeley and Santa Clara: Heyday Books and Santa Clara University, 2008. 296 pp. Paper, $18.95.)

To select fifteen addresses, short stories, articles, letters, and excerpts from Wallace Stegner’s twenty-seven major works for a volume of less than three hundred pages must have been a daunting task. Undoubtedly every Stegner fan would have a long and likely different list of favorites, but who can fault the first selection in this volume:“Literary Accident,” an address given to the Utah Libraries Association Convention in March 1975. Other selections come from Beyond the Hundredth Meridian,The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Angle of Repose, The Sound of Mountain Water, and other writings. Published as part of the California Legacy Book Series, this anthology is a worthy commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of Stegner’s birth in 1909.

A Memoir of Polygamy: In My Father’s House.

Dorothy Allred Solomon (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2009. x + 310 pp. Cloth $21.95.)

Dorothy Allred Solomon’s reprint of her 1984 book is almost as much a eulogy of her beloved father as it is an insider’s view of life in a polygamous family. With a new preface and epilogue, this reprint is also different from its original in a few minor ways: the author is now at liberty to reveal the real names of some of the figures whose identities were previously hidden, she has made corrections to a few errors, and has clarified a few details she felt were unclear in the first edition. The epilogue reflects the author’s changing perspectives of the practice of polygamy since the book’s initial printing, her feelings of responsibility about how the first edition shaped public opinion toward polygamy, for good and ill, and her efforts to help displaced or disillusioned polygamous women find ways to cope with their own experiences.

Salvation through Slavery: Chiricahua Apaches and Priests on the Spanish Colonial Frontier.

H. Henrietta Stockel (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,2008. xii + 179, cloth $27.95.)

This book is a stinging indictment of the “identity theft” imposed on a Native American people in the Southwest by the Spanish colonial missionaries and white settlers, through Christian baptism, name changing, and the creation of a slave trade. Author Henrietta Stockel combines historic evidence and the present day perspective of the Apache descendants to examine the impact of one civilization’s attempt to change the cultural identity of another.

A Remarkable Curiosity: Dispatches from a New York City Journalist’s 1873 Railroad Trip Across the American West.

By Amos J. Cummings, Compiled and Editedby Jerald T. Milanich. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008. x + 371, cloth$26.95.)

As its title suggests, this book is a collection of dispatches from New York Sun journalist Amos Jay Cummings’ journey by rail across the American West. It is an enjoyable book, full of humorous and engaging anecdotes and tales either witnessed by Cummings himself or reported to him by the colorful characters he encountered on his journey. Cummings spent a great deal of time in Utah and wrote several dispatches concerning the Emma Mine controversy in the Little Cottonwood mining district, the “Great Utah Divorce” case between Brigham Young and Eliza Webb Young, and the failed Mormon expedition to establish a colony in Arizona. In line with the title of the book, and no doubt the attitudes of his eastern readers, Cummings treats the Mormons as the kind of “remarkable curiosity” one might encounter at a carnival side-show; however his two interviews with Brigham Young, as well as his awestruck description of the Great Salt Lake are of particular interest. Altogether the book provides an interesting glimpse into eastern perceptions of western lifestyles during the late nineteenth century.

Reflections of Grand Canyon Historians: Ideas, Arguments, and First-Person Accounts.

Edited by Todd R. Berger. (Grand Canyon: Grand Canyon Association, 2008.224 pp. paper $15.00.)

In January 2007 the Grand Canyon Association hosted the Grand Canyon History Symposium, which was attended by three hundred historians, writers, biographers, and other Grand Canyon enthusiasts.This book is a compilation of some of the essays presented at this symposium. A collection of academic works, oral histories, and spirited debates, this book provides a glimpse into the Grand Canyon from many points of view. Among the thirty-two articles are explorations of the life and legacy of John Wesley Powell, the Havasupai Indian population, the cowboys who ran their cattle throughout the Grand Canyon area, and adventurers who claimed death-defying experiences with white water rapids. Included are engaging stories of larger than life characters, archaeological and historical studies, and photographs that add rich visuals to the book.