Book Reviews

Robert Newton Baskin and the making of modern Utah

By John Gary Maxwell Norman

Arthur H. Clark Company, 2013. 408 pp. Cloth, $45.00

In my view, the most significant portions of John Gary Maxwell’s Robert Newton Baskin are his essays on Baskin’s life after Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto and the Mormons began the long process of ending the practice of polygamy. Maxwell tells us how Baskin left the anti-Mormon Liberal Party long before such luminaries as Orlando Powers. He reconciled himself with prominent Mormons such as George Q. Cannon and William H. King, he distinguished himself as mayor of Salt Lake City, he served as chief justice of the Utah State Supreme Court, and he worked to promote tax-supported public elementary school education in the state.

As Maxwell points out, James Allen and I were two of the few who recognized Baskin’s significant role in improving Salt Lake City’s public utilities infrastructure. The city had woefully underfunded its street, sewer, and water systems prior to Baskin’s tenure as mayor. Recognizing this, he successfully promoted such needed improvements.

Maxwell praises much of Baskin’s work in promoting anti-Mormon legislation before these events. Most of the bills he drafted failed to pass. Baskin wrote failed bills introduced by Illinois Senator Shelby Cullom and Iowa Congressman Isaac Struble. Instead, Congress passed two other pieces of legislation that incorporated some of Baskin’s ideas, the Poland Act (1874) and the Edmunds Act (1882).

Baskin also helped to write a bill introduced by Cullom and Struble that would have enacted for the territories something like the Idaho Test Oath, which prohibited believers in polygamy from voting. Maxwell seems to have favored this bill, but it seems to me to have been ill conceived. The Cullom-Struble bill would have permitted the disfranchisement of American citizens for their privately held beliefs rather than for their illegal acts, as the Edmunds Act did, but Congress never passed it.

Personally, I am relieved that the federal government’s prosecution of illegal acts led President Wilford Woodruff to review the practice of polygamy and to receive inspiration to begin the process of abolishing polygamy. Imagine, however, the prosecution of people today under Baskin’s bill who believe in or oppose same-sex marriage or who believe in or oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Perhaps the most controversial section of Maxwell’s excellent biography is the discussion of Baskin’s role in the investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Baskin believed that Brigham Young had ordered the massacre. The available literature on that question is mixed and, given the variety of ways in which historians can weigh evidence, it will most likely remain so. Juanita Brooks (The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 1950), Ronald Walker, Richard Turley, and Glen Leonard (Massacre at Mountain Meadows, 2008), and John Turner (Brigham Young, 2012) have argued that he learned of the massacre only after the horrible deed took place. Sally Denton (American Massacre, 2003) and Will Bagley (Blood of the Prophets, 2002) have written that Young ordered the massacre.

Neither Baskin nor Maxwell seems to have understood that although no courts martial were held on the perpetrators, the federal government could have conducted trials with Young’s assistance as early as 1859. In 2006, I pointed out (Brigham Young, the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Latter-day Saint Investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre) that after trying to conduct an investigation, Young, the church leadership, and some federal officials proposed to arrange for trials at Cedar City. In 1859, the same year that Judge John Cradlebaugh investigated the massacre in Iron County, Young sent George A. Smith and Amasa Lyman to Cedar City. The two of them released the principal perpetrators from their church positions and told them to prepare for trials. At that time, expecting to stand trial, Philip Klingensmith, John D. Lee, and Isaac C. Haight retained defense attorneys. At about the same time, territorial marshal John Kay, a prominent Mormon, offered to assist in arresting the perpetrators. Young also offered to go to Cedar City with Governor Alfred Cumming to help maintain order. Like Baskin, who came to Utah later, the sitting federal judges and the U.S. Marshal believed Young had ordered the massacre. They refused to cooperate with him, with any other Mormons, or with the governor, the U.S. Attorney, and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs who wanted to try the accused at Cedar City as well.

Working on their own, the judges, marshal, and acting U.S. Attorney could not collect enough evidence to bring the guilty to trial in 1859, and no trial of a perpetrator occurred until 1875. At Lee’s first trial Baskin, instead of U.S. Attorney William Carey, played the principal role. Instead of working to convict Lee, however, Baskin tried to elicit testimony implicating Brigham Young and other church leaders. Nine of the twelve jurors voted to acquit Lee, so the trial resulted in a hung jury.

In 1876, Sumner Howard, who had replaced Carey as U.S. Attorney, prosecuted Lee. Unfortunately, Lee, who did not bear the principal responsibility for the massacre, was the only one of the leaders who was convicted. In addition, William H. Dame, Isaac C. Haight, John M. Higbee, George Adair, Jr., Eliot Wilden, Samuel Jukes, Philip Klingensmith, and William C. Stewart were indicted. Lee reportedly said, “Catching is before hanging.” Klingensmith turned state’s evidence, and Dame was also caught but released for lack of evidence. Contrary to Baskin’s views, I believe that Haight bore the principal responsibility for the massacre and that he should have stood trial, but the lawmen never caught him.

Maxwell quotes me correctly as pointing out that “recording history is ‘always perspectival’” (13). This book views Utah’s history from Baskin’s perspective. It is an excellent and well-written biography that deserves careful attention from the general reader and scholarly community alike. We all need to understand the role that Baskin played in the modernization of Utah.

— Thomas G. Alexander Brigham Young University, Emeritus

Miera y Pacheco: A Renaissance Spaniard in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico.

By John L. Kessell

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. xviii + 194 pp. Cloth, $29.95

Those familiar with Utah’s early history know the epic story of the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante expedition, which explored a circuitous 1,500-mile route through the Four Corners region in a failed attempt to link New Mexico and California and to defend northern New Spain against the encroachments of European powers and indigenous peoples. An important member of the Spanish exploring party was the engineer-cartographer Don Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco (1713–1785). Using a compass and an astrolabe packed in his saddlebags, he made astronomical observations along the way and, later, he drew multiple, beautifully adorned maps of the terrain he surveyed, which included much of present Utah.

The author and historian John L. Kessell investigates in depth each phase of Miera’s life and times with one notable gap, where the historical record fails, between his early life in Spain and his marriage in Mexico. New to readers is the unfolding of Miera’s life story, his family history, and his many achievements. However, this is more than a simple biography; it is a captivating look at New Mexico’s culture in the late Spanish colonial period.

Drawing on archival records in Spain, Mexico, Great Britain, and the United States, and collaborating with New Mexico’s state historian Rick Hendricks and other scholars, Kessel brings together numerous facts about colonial New Mexico and gives us an eloquently crafted biography of this “universal” man.

A “peninsular Spaniard” by birth and a member of the lower nobility (hence the title “don”), by 1776 the aging Miera had distinguished himself as a landowner, a municipal magistrate of Pecos and of the Keres district, prolific religious artist, and a mapmaker. The historically significant notations and graphic art on Miera’s maps were carefully consulted by New Mexico’s governors and studied by Spain’s Royal Corps of Engineers. (Maps of Spain’s distant borderlands were an invaluable resource to the crown and to the Catholic Church.) His brilliantly painted and carved wooden and stone altar screens adorned several churches in Santa Fe and the Zuni Pueblo. Not prone to boast, however, Miera left many of his artistic renderings unsigned.

Miera’s array of accomplishments included serving as engineer on several military campaigns, militia captain, dam construction supervisor, merchant, silver miner and metallurgist, presidial soldier, rancher, and debt collector. But he also had blemishes. In January 1755 he served time in jail for nonpayment of a loan. Furthermore, fathers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante complained of his “peevish” attitude when their party, well into the journey, decided to return to Santa Fe rather than continue to Monterey.

Nevertheless, in the closing years of his life, Miera became a trusted advisor to New Mexico’s famed governor, Juan Bautista de Anza. By the time of his death in 1785 Miera “had expressed himself more artistically, more notably, worn more hats, planned more projects, drawn more maps, known more Indians, explored more of the boundless Kingdom and Provinces of New Mexico than any other vecino before or after him,” writes Kessell (9). He possessed “unrivaled knowledge” of the region and its people (164). Considering the impact of Miera on the history of Utah and the Southwest, Kessell asks, shouldn’t his name grace the political or physical geography?

Kessell informs us that thousands of New Mexicans today can trace their ancestry to Miera. Ironically, since he “attained a regular military rank” in Santa Fe during America’s Revolutionary War period, his descendants can apply for induction into the Daughters or Sons of the American Revolution.

A generous grant from the Hispanic Genealogical Research Center of New Mexico enabled the reproduction of eighteen color illustrations in Miera y Pacheco and reduced its publication price. In addition to these color images, sixty-two black-andwhite illustrations beautifully enhance Kessell’s well-researched biography and his masterful narrative.

— Steven K. Madsen Sandy, Utah

Nels Anderson’s World War I Diary

Edited By Allan Kent Powell

Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2013. xxiii + 308 pp. Cloth, $34.95

Nels Anderson lived in and near Utah for only about fifteen years, yet he had a memorable impact on the state then and later when he wrote Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah. Unfortunately, today very few Utahns know of him.

Anderson arrived in Utah as a young hobo, only fifteen years old, trying to get to Panama to help build the canal. Train crews discovered him near Clover, Nevada, just west of the Utah border, riding in hiding as hobos do, and ejected him. It was 1908, and he wandered into the ranches owned by the Terry, Hafen, and Wood families. They fed Anderson, employed him, and then nominally adopted him, discovering that he was bright and a hard worker. Through the influence of these families, Anderson joined the Mormon church.

He attended one year at Brigham Young University, stopped to work, and then attended Dixie College for two years, where he decided to be a lawyer. He returned to BYU with that intention but ran into a sociology professor, John C. Swenson, who changed his direction. After teaching for a year in Arizona, Anderson departed for the army in 1917 at age sixteen.

While in the military for a year and a half, Anderson kept a diary, one of the very few soldiers to do so. The diary details his training in the Engineering Corps and his experiences in England, France, and Germany. He was a private during the whole period, but a most capable one. Commanders continually used him as their assistant, keeping him from most direct combat.

Anderson was always on the lookout for fellow Mormons. Since he had access to records and could roam about, he found other Latter-day Saints, sometimes enough to hold a small meeting. Some he had known in Utah and others he met for the first time in Europe, but they became immediate pals. Anderson himself was a straight arrow, avoiding alcohol, gambling, and sex. It was not hard for him to do so, because he considered himself to be one of the Hafens, Woods, and Terrys, and he stated clearly that he was saving himself for a wife from Utah. Anderson kept up regular mail contacts with several young women (almost every delivery brought letters from Utah girls interested in a relationship with him) and he received a page or two from the Washington County News on occasion.

Yet in his diary Anderson often wrote, “I am very lonesome,” noting that he found few other soldiers with whom he had things such as books, art, and music in common (60). As he roamed through towns, he looked for historic sites and art galleries and almost always visited the local Catholic churches. As he wandered, he was always thinking. On September 5, 1918, he wrote “This war is a great silent creator of men or rather a recreator of men” (97).

The diary also discusses Anderson’s experiences near the front. His group spent time near the St. Mihiel Offensive and, in October 1918, they were transferred to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. There, the soldiers became more involved with direct combat and with bomb-making. At one point, Anderson’s commander appointed him to be a teacher for the illiterate soldiers in his unit. The reading group met daily. The soldiers were less motivated than Anderson, but he kept at it for several weeks until he had another unusual opportunity: studying at a French university, an experience that would help him later during his doctoral work.

Anderson returned to the United States and registered at BYU, where he studied for two years. Under Swenson’s guidance, he studied sociology and soon launched into a major career at the University of Chicago, where he completed a famous master’s thesis about hobos. He then went to New York University and was employed with Harry Hopkins in the service of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He followed Hopkins to Washington, D.C., and had a long career in government.

Kent Powell’s footnotes add a great deal to this work. For instance, in October 1918, Anderson’s platoon endured several hours under fire. In his words, “We had one killed, four hurt and several gassed which is quite a loss for being under cover” (131). The footnote for this entry provides the names and ranks of all these men. In his research, Powell especially looked for Utah fatalities. This book is amazing, mainly because of its subject, Anderson, but also because of Kent Powell’s marvelous footnotes and the foreword written by Charles Peterson, who discovered the diary.

— Douglas D. Alder Dixie State University

Navajo Tradition, Mormon Life: The Autobiography and Teachings of Jim Dandy

By Robert S. McPherson, Jim Dandy, and Sarah E. Burak

Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 2012, xiv + 292 pp. Paper, $27.95

Navajo Tradition, Mormon Life follows the life of one man who has found balance between his traditional Navajo upbringing and his conversion to the Latter-day Saint faith. Jim Dandy, a descendant of traditional healers, a devout Mormon, and public intellectual contributed to his community primarily as an educator and counselor in southeastern Utah, especially among Navajos who live near the Four Corners region.

Some of the greatest strengths of this book are also its weaknesses. The book stems from the collaboration of three authors and Dandy family interviewees, such as his wife and siblings; primarily, however, two of the authors’ voices are decipherable, those of Robert McPherson and Jim Dandy. The different voices allow the reader to understand Dandy’s life story on various levels. McPherson’s voice narrates and provides transitions, positioning him as an editor who frames the autobiography of Dandy. In the first section, for example, he relates Dandy’s life experiences and teachings to broader dialogues of Mormon Indian history and “religious syncretism.” McPherson amplifies Dandy’s voice, which tells his life story focused on Navajo and Mormon learning experiences and life pathways.

The transitions and narration from the third-person voice (McPherson) sometimes disrupt the flow of the story. Dandy and his family’s words are italicized in most of the book, which distracts the reader, who questions why the central sections are not completely in Dandy’s first-person voice. Bighorse the Warrior (1994) provides an example of a book with effective multiple narrations. Tiana Bighorse collaborated with Noel Bennett to write the story of her father, Gus Bighorse, and chose to narrate in her father’s voice. The authors framed the story with the explanations of their approach and interpretations of Bighorse’s oral histories, but the main narrative of the book flowed nicely because of the consistent first-person voice of Bighorse. Following this model, McPherson, Dandy, and Burak could have unified the main parts of the book under the first-person voice of Dandy. The last section of Navajo Tradition demonstrates this single focus on Dandy.

I also question how McPherson refers to religious syncretism. He could have considered Dandy’s perspective and ways of life as cultural and religious hybridity, which Homi Bhabha (1994) popularized as an analytical concept for understanding such transitions and the interstices between distinct life paths, Mormonism and Dinéjí Na’nitin (Navajo traditional teachings) in this case. McPherson needs to define analytical terms such as religious syncretism and his usage of them.

On the other hand, Navajo Tradition succeeds in preserving a rich primary source from a man who clearly defines how he lives as Navajo and Mormon and who believes in respecting the traditions of his ancestors and times immemorial while following the Mormon path of Christianity. General readers and academics continue to debate whether Native Americans can preserve and perpetuate their distinct identity and peoplehood after adopting ways of life (such as religion) introduced by European Americans. Scholars of decolonization and postcolonial theory could take issue with the book’s brief attention to past Mormon romanticism and the application of Lamanite identity to Native Americans to justify actions such as the development of the Indian Student Placement Program, which encouraged the separation of Navajo children from their families. Dandy’s story provides another valuable perspective. It is a story that does not necessarily deny moments of struggle and conflict between the divergent identities and groupings of Mormons and Indians. It shows, instead, how they are reconciled in the life of a remarkable man and his journey, one that many Navajos of the late twentieth century shared whether or not they embraced Mormonism as Dandy did. Hopefully, this book marks only the beginning of works to come that analyze and discuss the experiences of Navajo and other Native American Mormons in the twentieth century.

— Farina King Arizona State University

Native Performers in Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney

By Linda Scarangella McNenly

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. xviii + 254 pp. Cloth, $34.95

Native Americans, both past and present, find public performance enjoyable and a significant part of heritage preservation. Whether traditional dance and ceremony in religious expression, contemporary powwow activities steeped in cultural pride, or performances for sheer entertainment, these activities express important values. In Native Performers, Linda Scarangella McNenly examines the experiences of Indians who professionally worked in Wild West shows from 1885 to 1930 and three Mohawk families in the early twentieth century; she concludes by looking at contemporary performers in Disneyland, Paris and Buffalo Bill Days in Sheridan, Wyoming. Her purpose is to explore “Native perspectives and experiences . . . through the archival record and oral histories up to the voices of contemporary performers, revealing additional meanings and alternative interpretations of this experience” (ix). McNenly sees her work as “revisionist,” going against the prevailing attitude of many contemporary historians and anthropologists who enjoy barbecuing Native American history in the flames fueled by interpretations of colonialism of indigenous people. Wild West shows represent just one aspect of this view of imperialism, which chooses to see Indians only as a downtrodden, controlled minority without self-expression or agency.

McNenly feels differently. She argues that Native American performers chose (and choose) this profession because it allowed them freedom to express their Indianness; it provided them with opportunities to work and travel with their families, hone valued traditional skills, wear and design clothing that spoke of their heritage, and earn much-needed money in a career that held promise. While the effects of colonialism were present, these performers could still adapt, survive, and thrive. Those pursuing this type of career today feel valued and respected—almost as ambassadors representing all of Native America.

More than thirty pages of notes provide extensive documentation in support of the book’s thesis, which is supported by a scholarly tone accessible to the layperson. My only criticism is of the author’s stated purpose to use oral history and the Native voice to provide an insider’s perspective. Only two chapters truly attempt this and, even in those chapters, there is no real, intense Indian view. Given her goal, McNenly misses a number of easily accessible opportunities. In the case of early Wild West shows, such as Buffalo Bill’s, plenty of Indian performers—Black Elk, Luther Standing Bear, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and many lesser-knowns—went on record to share their experience, yet the book never substantially cites these autobiographical accounts. Even in those chapters looking at the contemporary experience of seventeen interviewees, the reader obtains only a cursory understanding of the interviewees’ perspectives. McNenly proves her point, but she loses a good opportunity to let Native Americans provide the voice.

One might ask, “Does this ‘voice’ still exist? Is it important for Indians today to express cultural pride?” The answer is a resounding “yes.” While Wild West shows constitute only a small but important part of the answer, one finds the same motivations from the past in public performance now. Take, for instance, the powwow circuits that extend not only across the United States but also into Europe. These gatherings are much more than people wearing traditional dress and competing for prizes. They are events invested with cultural pride, heritage, family values, traditional skills, sociability, and religious aspects that speak to the American Indian experience. McNenly’s work is significant for that reason. She has identified values important to Native Americans and shown that, far from being the trampled remnants of a “colonial period,” they are still charting their future and finding meaning in a long-standing, ever-changing heritage.

— Robert S. Mcpherson Utah State University, Eastern Blanding

Lewis and Clark Among the Nez Perce: Strangers in the Land of the Nimiipuu

By Allen V. Parkham and Steven R. Evans

North Dakota: Dakota Institute Press, 2013. xx + 299 pp. Cloth, $29.95

A generation ago, the historian James P. Ronda reversed the trend of looking at Native peoples through the eyes of whites in his groundbreaking work, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (1984). Allen Parkham and Steven Evans have drawn that focus even more sharply with their new study, Lewis and Clark among the Nez Perce, which carefully examines the Lewis and Clark journals and oral interviews from Nez Perce tribal members.

The early chapters of Lewis and Clark detail many Nez Perce (or Nimiipuu) legends. From this oral tradition, obtained from tribal elders, the authors advance the case that the Nez Perce lived in their ancestral homeland for tens of thousands of years, dating back to the time of prehistoric animals. Having made this argument early in the book, without subtlety or apology, Parkham and Evans proceed thereafter as though it is an unquestioned fact. While this case sets the stage for the tragic loss of the Nez Perce homeland three generations later, the authors support it only tepidly in the concluding chapters.

This book uses oral histories to outline the experience and culture of the Nez Perce. The narrative jumps from story to story, event to event, at times without any logical flow, consistent chronology, or transition; even the telling of Lewis and Clark’s arrival suffers. Likewise, the account provided about the era between the tribe’s acquisition of horses and the coming of the desperate Corps of Discovery is rather thin, considering the tremendous significance of that time. Notwithstanding, the authors provide a wealth of information on the Nez Perce, their homeland, and the time the expedition members spent among them.

The Nez Perce initially had planned to kill Lewis and Clark and their men. This would have made them the strongest and best-armed tribe in all the Northwest. However, after an admonishment by an elderly woman, Watkuweis, to leave the explorers alone, the tribe befriended them and became their allies in hopes of military and armament support.

Between its stays with the Nez Perce on the way to the west coast and back, the Corps of Discovery spent more time with the Nez Perce than any other tribe it encountered. And considering the condition of the expedition’s members as they staggered into the villages of the Nez Perce, that tribe made perhaps the most significant contributions toward the success of the venture. The Nez Perce provided essential support to the Corps of Discovery at a crucial time. They fed the explorers when they were at their weakest, nursed them to health, adopted them as nonblood relatives, guided them, drew maps of the region, cared for their horses, taught them how to build dug-out canoes, and forgave them for many breeches of courtesy.

The authors provide further insight and evidence into the persistent story that Clark’s liaison with a Nez Perce woman produced a child. In the last chapters, they briefly outline the loss of ancestral Nez Perce homelands through encroachment and military action in 1877.

While this reviewer found the writing style of the authors lacking in transition, flow, and logical organization in several places, Lewis and Clark is still noteworthy. It provides a significant look at the junction of time and people, with the meeting of the Corps of Discovery and the Nez Perce in the early nineteenth century.

— John D. Barton Utah State University, Uintah Basin