Book Reviews & Notices

CASS HITE:

The Life of an Old Prospector

BY JAMES KNIPMEYER

Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016. xi + 269 pp.Cloth, $36.95.

As thousands of visitors flock to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area each year, many are unaware of the fascinating history that played out two hundred feet beneath their boats or in the side canyons they pass by. Equally unfamiliar are many of the names that dot the land—Ticaboo, Cass Creek, Hite (Marina), Hoskaninni Mesa, Dandy Crossing, and Copper Canyon—all important places of activity attached to personalities in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Mining and miners gave rise to these names as main actors in exploring and opening for production the resources in this dramatic but barren landscape. Among the most prominent of these men was Cass Hite, whose name has become synonymous with mineral exploration along the Colorado River and its tributaries, the discovery of Natural Bridges National Monument, and the establishment of the town of Hite. He also prospected in many of the mountain ranges of Utah, only to return to where he was most at home: the red rock desert of southeastern Utah. This book is about that man’s life and the contributions he made under trying circumstances.

Born in 1845 on an Illinois farm, Hite engaged in a variety of occupations in his early years, none of which had staying power like that of mining. Once old enough to strike out on his own, he headed west, learning his trade through relatively brief experiences in Montana, Idaho, Arizona, Texas, and other western states before reaching southeastern Utah. Here he became enamored with a rumored silver mine known to Hashkéniinii (often misspelled as Hoskaninni), a local Navajo leader who had avoided going to Fort Sumner during the Long Walk period of his people. The two became friends but the Navajo would not reveal the ore’s exact location. Hite never stopped asking and never stopped looking—earning him the name of Hosteen Pish-la ki (Hastiin Béésh Łigai, or Mister Silver). For over thirty years, excepting a few intermittent forays into the mountains of northern Utah, Hite plied his trade of placer mining along the Colorado River and its tributaries. Not until shortly before he died in 1914 at the age of sixty-nine did he turn loose of his sluice box, rocker, and gold pan.

Jim Knipmeyer has written a highly factual account derived from a variety of sources. Indeed, he sticks to the facts, but if there is conjecture, he takes the reader through his reasoning process. Newspapers, court records, census materials, diaries, correspondence, mining records, and rock inscriptions, as well as secondary sources, come together in a convincing narrative about an important personality. One of the unifying elements that appears throughout the book is an autobiographical poem that Hite composed at age sixty. Many of the stanzas reflect important events in his life. The author has paid a lot of attention to developing his sources and, with one or two exceptions, has exhausted the possibilities.

If the land could talk, it would tell the tale of countless other miners who have tried to wrest their livelihood from this stingy environment, but unfortunately, their stories are lost. While it would be stretching the truth a bit to suggest that Cass Hite was a typical prospector, certainly many of the things he encountered—the backbreaking pick and shovel work done on the sand bars and shore of the Colorado, the boomand-bust nature of the business, the difficulty of obtaining supplies to sustain operations, and the rampant rumors of quick wealth quashed by the reality of mining flour gold—certainly were not unique to his experience. It was the same stream that all of the miners had to swim in, even those who could bring large investment capital to the table, as did Robert B. Stanton, who ended up in similar circumstances as some of the most uncomplicated and least expensive mining efforts. Hite, on the other hand, usually made enough to subsist with comfort in his simple life.

One might ask how Knipmeyer’s book fits in with the recently (2012) published King of the Colorado: The Story of Cass Hite by Tom McCourt. Both authors would agree that they were writing to different audiences. McCourt is a storyteller who has stayed primarily with the facts but has taken literary license to insert dialogue, repeat some of the rumors or apocryphal stories, and paint verbal images of events. In short, he provides an interesting narrative that breathes life into his characters to enhance his tale. Knipmeyer, in contrast, searched twenty-five regional newspapers for any trace of Hite’s activities or whereabouts, photographed extensively the terrain and historical remains of this era, hiked much of the land in search of inscriptions, and therefore has offered a strong historical recreation based in fact. There is room for both types of writing. Hite himself was a great storyteller, like McCourt, who left some unanswered questions for others, such as Knipmeyer, to unravel and place in an interesting factual narrative.

Cass Hite is recommended reading for those who wish to understand the man and what it took to work in a difficult land before today’s conveniences were even imagined. This book is well researched and well written: a fitting tribute to a person who left names upon the countryside and an interesting history of a time often forgotten but worth remembering.

— ROBERT S. MCPHERSON USU Eastern Blanding Campus

Coyote America:

A Natural and Supernatural History

BY DAN FLORES

New York: Basic Books, 2016. 288 pp. Cloth, $27.99.

The year of 2016 has been a busy one for Dan Flores. In March, the University of Kansas Press published his long-awaited monograph, American Serengeti. In that work, Flores examines the decline of large charismatic mammals on the Great Plains, including pronghorns, bison, grizzly bears, and coyotes. A few months later, Basic Books published Coyote America, the companion to American Serengeti that focuses solely on coyotes. Styled as “a coyote biography,” Coyote America recounts how the relationship between Americans and coyotes has changed over time (19). To Flores, coyotes are many things. They are predators and victims. They are indigenous deities and cartoon characters. They are rural and urban. Most of us already knew these things about coyotes. Something we did not know, something that Flores teaches us, is that coyotes are mirror-images of ourselves.

American perceptions of coyotes have changed over time. Some of the earliest North Americans viewed coyotes as deities. For example, some Aztecs participated in a religious cult devoted to coyotes call Coyoacan. “Their rich mythology,” Flores writes, “produced numerous coyote gods, including Coyolinauatl, ceremonies for whom featured acolytes costumed with tails, sharp snouts, and erect ears” (10). Other indigenous cultures also deified coyotes, such as the pueblo peoples who lived in Chaco City. Coyotes, however, were not perfect deities. Rather, they possessed human flaws such as greed and hubris. Further linking coyotes with humans, several indigenous religious stories contained tales of coyotes taking human form. Indeed, to many Native Americans the coyote was a mirror-image to humanity. Early European and Euro American explorers had different perceptions of coyotes. Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were perplexed when they first observed coyotes. Unsure what to make of these creatures, these explorers classified them as prairie wolves. As naturalists journeyed through the American West, they documented the lifestyle and appearance of these so-called prairie wolves and debated just how to classify them. Meanwhile, travel writers, such as Mark Twain and Isabella Bird, condemned coyotes as deplorable and miserable creatures. By the twentieth century, most Americans designated coyotes as predators worthy of extinction. Sheep raisers were the loudest voices that called for coyote extinction. As a result of their efforts, individual states and the federal government launched coyote extermination programs.

Despite the so-called war on coyotes, the coyote population in the United States has boomed. Their growing numbers are linked to three traits that they share with humans. First, and perhaps most important, coyotes are socially flexible. They can be solitary or social as conditions warrant. This trait, what scientists call fission-fusion, allowed coyotes to thrive where wolves and foxes faltered. Second, similar to how humans can plan their family sizes, coyotes can assess the size of the surrounding coyote population and adjust their litters accordingly. This is accomplished by howling and listening for responses. Finally, coyotes are omnivores. Not tied to solely meat or vegetation for calories, coyotes can adapt to the food sources around them.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter in Coyote America details coyotes living in big cities. Once again, Flores compares coyotes to humans in order to explain this phenomenon. Both humans and coyotes travel to and live in cities in order to find new opportunities. While people congregate in cities because of job opportunities, coyotes have followed after us in pursuit of the rodent population our garbage and infrastructure invites. Offering counsel to pet owners, Flores explains that urban coyotes rarely attack cats and dogs in search of food. “Despite the cat-killer urban legend,” Flores writes, “in city after city the science indicates that pets provide only about 1 to 2 percent of the average coyote’s diet” (197). Instead of killing for calories, urban coyotes attack pets if they deem them to be contesting their territory.

Coyote America is not a traditional history. Rather, it is a mixture of history, folklore, science, and Flores’s sage observations. Oddly, this book does not have footnotes, endnotes, or other forms of citation except for a small bibliography. Rural Utahns will be most interested in the chapters detailing the war against coyotes. Meanwhile, urban Utahns will find the chapter on city coyotes the most enlightening. However, not everyone will enjoy this book. As Flores notes, “coyotes have joined religion, the Iraq War, Obamacare, and climate change as one more thing the culture warriors in American have to disagree about” (16). Left-leaning culture warriors tend to sympathize with coyotes and appreciate them as a form of wildlife. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to regard coyotes as pests. Because Flores clearly champions and loves coyotes, liberal readers are more likely to enjoy this book than their rightwing counterparts. Overall, Coyote America is a fascinating read that might prove too quirky or quarrelsome for some readers.

— CURTIS FOXLEY University of Oklahoma

TRUE VALOR

Barney Clark and the Utah Artificial Heart

BY DON B. OLSEN

Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. 432 pp. Cloth,$44.95.

On December 2, 1982, Barney Clark, a retired dentist from Washington, was on the edge of death with a heart so damaged by disease that the doctors were afraid that he would not last the night. The operation scheduled later that day was moved forward and the doctors at the University of Utah operated in the middle of the night to implant a mechanical Jarvik-7 artificial heart in the dentist. Clark had volunteered for this operation, knowing that he was part of an experiment, the first person to deliberately have his heart removed and replaced by an artificial heart. He was not the first person to receive an artificial heart, but the few previous efforts had been desperate emergencies to use experimental artificial hearts to sustain life until a heart transplant could be found. All had failed.

The Clark operation received enormous press attention from dozens of reporters. One consequence of the media attention was a focus on Robert Jarvik, whose name was on the heart he designed. It seemed obvious that he was the inventor of the miracle, and Jarvik became a household name. This irritated many of the other members of the large team who had worked for years on the heart—which had multiple designers—and who saw glory that should have been shared was instead directed toward one person. This single-minded focus is common in the stories of inventions because it fits into a comfortable stereotype of genius. Members of the press were complicit in this error because they wanted to tell powerful stories, which are usually based on individuals who are named and identifiable. Jarvik encouraged such a focus.

Such an impressive event demanded a major book, and so a publisher hired a husband and wife pair of professional writers to conduct interviews with all the involved parties and write such a book. The publisher later cancelled the project, but the voluminous material was saved and eventually the book was written by one of the participants. Don B. Olsen wanted to set the record straight and honor the memory of Barney Clark, whom he saw as a man with “true valor.” Trained as a veterinarian, Olsen had been a key leader of the artificial heart project for years; he later became head of the Institute for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah and helped found the Utah Artificial Heart Institute. The narrative is well written and, while medical terms are used so that a doctor can follow the details of what is happening, the writing is also accessible to the educated person.

The story of the Utah artificial heart began during World War II in Nazi-occupied Holland. Frustrated by patients who died of failed livers, a young doctor, Willem J. (Pim) Kolff, invented a kidney dialysis machine to filter the urea out of their blood. Most patients were so sick by the time that Kolff resorted to using the machine that they died. Persistence led to success by the end of the war, with patients living longer and some patients even being able to stop using the machine when their liver naturally recovered. Kolff was not the first to try dialysis, but his machine was one of the more successful efforts and it established his reputation. Kolff became interested in building other inventions to mechanically replace organs within the body and he moved to the United States to work at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Kolff later moved to the University of Utah, continued his efforts by founding the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, and became known as the father of artificial organs. The institute put much of its effort into artificial hearts, besides working on other organs, including kidneys. A series of hearts were developed, and Kolff named the hearts after team members who worked on the designs. The artificial hearts were placed in sheep or calves in order to develop better materials and designs, as well as the medical procedures necessary to keep patients alive. Kolff hired Olsen as a veterinarian to take care of this side of the effort. After hundreds of animal experiments, the Utah scientists were ready for a human patient.

Scientific ethics scandals in the 1960s and early 1970s led to the federal government to require institutional review boards (IRBs) to approve any scientific experiments that involved human subjects. Implanting the artificial heart into a human subject required an extensive review process at the University of Utah, especially because the experiment had not been done before and the subject would most likely die. The review led to permission.

Six days after his operation, Clark had a series of severe seizures that damaged him neurologically; he never regained his old personality. Clark passed away 112 days after his operation, after his artificial heart had beat almost thirteen million times. For reasons that were not even clear to the participants, another person was not implanted with an artificial heart at the University of Utah, even though there were plans to do so. The effort moved to other universities, though the Utah team continued its animal research and created a Utah Heart that is widely used today. In 1995, several other patients in Utah received artificial hearts at area hospitals, not the university hospital.

A truism of the history of technology is that rarely is any invention the result of a single person’s genius; rather, most inventions are merely the latest innovation building on a long line of innovations. Inventions are not just things but are objects embedded within a larger context. The artificial heart required decades of research, hundreds of animal experiments, and painstaking gains in materials, drugs, and surgical techniques. Kolff’s dream of artificial organs has not been realized in a partially bionic person, but as of today over a thousand patients world-wide have received artificial hearts, most of them directly descended from the Jarvik-7 design or other Utah efforts. In 2011, an Italian man received a heart transplant after living for 1,374 days on his artificial heart, setting a new record.

—ERIC SWEDIN Weber State University

Varmints and Victims:

Predator Control in the American West

BY FRANK VAN NUYS

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. xiv + 338 pp.Cloth, $29.95.

In this collection of essays, Frank Van Nuys traces the evolution of predator management in the West from the early focus on extermination of predators and preservation of game animals to the conflict-laden shift toward conservationism still underway today. Van Nuys draws on a rich pool of primary source material that includes game and fish warden reports, livestock association records, government reports, newspapers, and other sources. Various perspectives on predators, many at odds with one another, are discussed within; these include the destructive us versus them mentality of early settlers and Native American practices of coexistence and reverence. With its broad scope and attention to detail, Varmints and Victims is a thorough account of the evolution of American attitudes toward predators from early hostility to the conservation of today.

Twenty-Five Years among the Indians and Buffalo:

A Frontier Memoir

BY WILLIAM D. STREET

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015. xxi + 525 pp.Cloth, $29.95.

This literary memoir, written by William D. Street and edited by his grandson, describes Street’s experiences growing from a boy to a man on the frontier plains of western Kansas. Offering a first-person perspective, Street’s memoir is notable for its focus on everyday people and activities on the frontier; however, those described are primarily the “heroic white men”—so often the focus of attention in accounts from that time period. The overarching message of Street’s memoir is a familiar one: that the frontier was a meeting place of civilization and savagery, a place of opportunity and danger, and a place as dangerous as it was beautiful. The ever-changing careers of Street, from soldier to cowboy to cavalryman, reflect the ever-changing nature of the frontier during the transitory period in which this memoir takes place.

Island Adventures:

The Hawaiian Mission of Francis A. Hammond, 1851–1865

BY JOHN J. HAMMOND

Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2016. 520 pp. Cloth, $39.95.

Island Adventures is an account of Francis Hammond’s work establishing the LDS church in Hawaii from 1851–1865 as a missionary and, eventually, as a mission president. From his conversion in 1847, Hammond was fiercely devoted to the Mormon religion and the expansion of the LDS church. Though less academically inclined than his missionary partner and future Utah territorial delegate George Q. Cannon, Hammond proved indispensable in the church’s early work in Hawaii due to his practical knowledge and ability to keep a level head during crisis. Island Adventures draws on the journals of Hammond and his wife, as well as previous scholarship on Hammond, the LDS church in Hawaii, and early Mormon missionary work.