Book Reviews

Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit

By Lisa Blee and Jean M. O’Brien

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 272 pp. Paper, $29.95

This one felt like an easy fit. Having been raised in Massachusetts not too far from Plymouth, where my lifelong interest in Native Americans began, a return to my roots seemed natural and interesting. The story of the Pilgrims and their friendship with Massasoit (actually 8[W]sâmeeqan or Yellow Feather), the first Thanksgiving, and interaction with the Wampanoag Tribe was familiar territory, but why the Utah Historical Quarterly was interested in treading this wellworn path was a mystery. The two thousand miles between Plymouth and Salt Lake City and the four hundred years of history seemed too much to bridge. My educational journey was just starting.

When the Improved Order of Red Men (IORM), an organization of Anglos interested in promoting Progressive ideals and a palatable national history with American values, commissioned Cyrus E. Dallin (1861–1944), a sculptor born and raised in Utah but who practiced much of his art in Massachusetts, they hoped to solidify a peaceful narrative of Indian and Pilgrim cooperation. When the IORM installed the bronze statue Massasoit on Cole’s Hill overlooking Plymouth Bay in 1921, commemorating three hundred years since the first event, they reaffirmed the narrative of friendship so often encapsulated in the first Thanksgiving story and the fifty peaceful years thereafter. Dallin apparently achieved his goal. He could not have known that not only would Massasoit be copied a number of times against his wishes, but that it would appear in some of the most unlikely places—a mall in Kansas City, Missouri; an artistic shopping plaza in Dayton, Ohio; and the Utah State Capitol, Springville Art Museum, and Brigham Young University, among others. How this happened and what it has done to the initial narrative is the subject of this book.

Following an introduction that provides contextual information about Dallin’s life and work and a brief history of the statue and its surrounding story, the authors divide the topic into four chapters. The first, “Casting,” tells of his efforts to create a realistic sculpture based not only on the topic but that also incorporated heroic ideals observed with Indians encountered through life experience. Once the statue had been placed in Massachusetts, the large mold came to Utah with the understanding that no other copies would be made; following Dallin’s death, this wish was denied. Copies eventually appeared in different parts of the country due to less than honorable circumstances. The second chapter, “Staging,” examines not only the installation of the Massachusetts statue and how site selection played an important role in furthering the accompanying narrative but also how it was received by the last descendants of Massasoit. When copies of the statue arrived in far-distant cities, mixed messages were often sent, either confusing local history or accepting irrelevancy. This gave rise to the third chapter, “Distancing,” in which a series of “man/woman-on-the-street” interviews á la Jay Leno showed just how mixed or lost the actual intent had become. Those in the IORM would have gasped at the gaps in historical memory. In a number of instances, the desired narrative, has been reversed by deep plows unearthing the dark side of the past. In both this chapter and the final one, the authors discuss how Native Americans have produced a counter-dialogue that sees the arrival of the Pilgrims as an upsurge in a genocide started earlier, how the first Thanksgiving is now a “Day of Mourning,” why the supposed fifty years of initial peace erupted into King Philip’s (Pometacomet’s) War, and how the white narrative has been totally distorted to erase real events.

This is the milieu provided to discuss the broader theme of the role that statuary plays in defining—through memory, narrative, and art form—the past. For those seeking relevance to today’s world, one only has to turn on the television or pick up a news magazine to see what is happening to statues ranging from Christopher Columbus to the Founding Fathers to Confederate generals to any topic that people find controversial or offensive. Whether it is a matter of erasing the past, promoting racism, encouraging self-aggrandizement, or setting the record straight, traditional history has been challenged on many fronts. Even as older people complain about how younger people know little about it—which might be true—history also has a way of engaging and activating response as never before. The link between historical events and current affairs is often short-circuited into soundbites and then acted upon.

For the Utah reader, there is much in this book to recommend. Whether looking at the life and works of one of our own sculptors, the role that Brigham Young University played in an art controversy, how Utahns greeted and understood the statue of Massasoit when mounted both inside and outside of the State Capitol, or in relaying historical messages both past and present, one will find here a well-researched and thought-provoking work.

—Robert S. McPherson (Emeritus) Utah State University, Blanding

Memorials Matter: Emotion, Environment, and Public Memory at American Historical Sites

By Jennifer K. Ladino

Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2019. xxii + 295 pp. Paper, $29.95

For those curious about the intersection of history, memory, and places, Jennifer Ladino’s recent work, Memorials Matter, provides a welcome addition to the assortment of studies by historians, geographers, and anthropologists on the subject. Leaning on her extensive experience as a National Park Service ranger, Ladino grounds her book in the concept of “affect,” what she terms “a slippery, nebulous, downright confusing term” from environmental humanities scholars for “feelings that precede or elude consciousness and discourse . . . and can transcend the individual body” (12). While indeed slippery, in Ladino’s hands, affect becomes an effective tool to describe the often chaotic and diverse array of reactions, thoughts, and emotions that different visitors might experience at the memorials studied in her book. By framing her study in this manner, Ladino adds another foundational piece to public history scholarship on memories and memorials, such as Martha K. Norkunas’s The Politics of Public Memory (1993) and Monuments and Memories (2002); Mike Wallace’s forays into controversies in public history in both Mickey Mouse History (1996) and his essay “Culture War: History Front,” in Tom Engelhardt and Ed Linenthal’s History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (1996); and David Lowenthal’s The Heritage Crusade (1998). Ladino crafts an exploration not just of scholarly history or the current interpretive strategy of her selected memorial sites but of the often more powerful and lasting emotional connections people make with history itself as a result of the landscapes that comprise historical memorials.

Considering the historical and geographic breadth of her analysis, Ladino’s collection weaves together a remarkably cohesive argument about affect’s role in historical interpretation. Tackling seven case studies of memorials developed over the last century, all in National Park units in the American West, she discusses a full range of interpretive and historical topics, from how well the western grasslands of Colorado evoke memories of spirituality and grief at Sand Creek, to the ownership of place afforded native Hawaiians at the USS Arizona memorial in Honolulu, and whether the sacrifice of Chinese immigrants in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad is lost amid the techno-centric interpretive strategy at Golden Spike National Historic Site. In assessing each site’s affective qualities, Ladino molds an examination of a hypothetical visitor’s background, prior knowledge, and biases, the interpretive mission of each site, the landscape design surrounding memorials in those parks, and the interpretive messages crafted on displays and in ranger-led programming. She further considers the design of the memorials and their location, whether their intended affect is helped or hindered by that design, and whether the institutional intentions are appropriate. Navigating the “nebulous” nature of affect, Ladino artfully sculpts a suggestive critique of each site, and she extends her reach beyond each individual park or memorial to an examination of the state of public history in the United States, its values, and its methods, concluding that there is a great deal of work yet to do.

Ladino’s focus on the American West is refreshing and compelling, and an important read for any practitioner of public history, whether a government historian, a museum curator, a park ranger, or an historic preservationist. Ladino’s work brings the relatively new perspective of the environmental humanities to the established interdisciplinary literature of public history, mixing traditional humanities and public history methods with psychology and landscape architecture. The result is a well-crafted treatise that joins Eric Foner’s Who Owns History? (2003) as an analysis of how people connect with history and how practitioners of history ought to facilitate those connections in a free society.

Memorials Matter reminds the reader of several important things: first, that history in the American West is critical to understanding the nation’s broader narratives about people and environment; second, that how people learn at memorial sites (and arguably at historic sites overall) is as much an emotional process as it is an intellectual one; and third, that these memorials, interpreted and managed by the federal government, have a unique charge to educate in a democratic way without the benefit of being entirely neutral. While acknowledging that the American narrative is not, cannot be, and should not be a cohesive one, crafted solely by authoritative institutions, Ladino politely indicts the habit of memorials dealing with controversial topics to avoid direct confrontation in favor of passive and open-ended approaches. Noting that such passivity often leads to failures in interpretive (or affective) intent, Ladino instead calls for a more active interpretation at these sites that acknowledges the complexity of the human experience but also challenges visitors by using compassion and human connections to foster learning. Ladino’s core message rings forth as a powerful call to action for practitioners at memorial sites to accept controversy as a normal and necessary aspect of public history craft. As Ladino puts it, “understanding how affects work—not just the negative ones but also love, compassion, and wonder—is an essential step on what sometimes seems like a very long, slow walk toward freedom and justice” (268).

—Jim Bertolini Historic Preservation Planner, City of Fort Collins, CO

The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad

Edited by Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, with Hilton Obenzinger and Roland Hsu

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019. xiii + 539 pp. Paper, $30.00

One hundred fifty years ago, on May 10, 1869, the eastbound Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) met the westbound Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) at Promontory Summit, Utah. Although Chinese laborers made up the great majority of the workers, they were conspicuously absent from the well-known photograph taken at the driving of the golden spike that commemorated that historic event. Their immense contributions to American commerce and industry became largely forgotten.

In 2012, scholars at Stanford University initiated the Chinese Railroad in North America Project. They, and the many others who joined their efforts, were determined to recreate the Chinese workers’ experiences, despite a dearth of relevant historical documentation. The Chinese and the Iron Road succeeds admirably in returning these Chinese laborers to their central role in completing the transcontinental railroad.

The book’s five major sections encompass “Global Perspectives” (two essays), “Ties to China” (three essays), “Life on the Line” (eight essays), “Chinese Railroad Workers in Cultural Memory” (three essays), and “Chinese Railroad Workers after Promontory” (five essays). As the section titles indicate, the book covers much more than just the United States and its transcontinental railroad. Discussions of Hong Kong connections, European travel narratives, Chinese laborers in Cuba, Chinese villagers in China, and Chinese contributions to town development in Nevada broaden its scope, impact, and usefulness. In addition, numerous other U.S. railroads employed Chinese workers, as did railways in Canada, especially the Canadian Pacific Railway. Chinese poems and ballads related to migration, portrayals of Chinese railroad workers both in U.S. and Chinese history and literature, and documents in Chinese—including letters, work contracts, and travel loan agreements—all add “human interest” and perspective to the narrative, as does the story of Chin Gee Hee’s rise from laborer to railroad financier, plus the accounts of the interactions that the CPRR’s president, Leland Stanford, and his wife, Jane, had with their various Chinese employees. The Chinese and the Iron Road will appeal to a wide audience of students, scholars, Chinese Americans, and other members of the general public with an interest in history, archaeology, Asian studies, or railroads in general.

The notes, glossary, and bibliography add to the scholarly significance of this book. The Chinese and the Iron Road complements, and expands on, other recent publications, such as “The Archaeology of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America,” edited by Barbara L. Voss in Historical Archaeology 49, no. 1 (2015), and Finding Hidden Voices of the Chinese Railroad Workers: An Archaeological and Historical Journey, by Mary L. Maniery, Rebecca Allen, and Sarah Christine Heffner (2016). Curiously, some of the notes for chapter 17 were truncated for length. Although the explanation referred the reader to a “Bibliographic Essay for ‘The Chinese as Railroad Workers after Promontory,’” on the website of Stanford’s Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, the URL for that site, as given in the Works Cited section, was incorrect. The correct URL is web.stanford.edu/group/ chineserailroad/cgi-bin/website/bibliographic-essay-for-the-chinese-as-railroad-workers-after-promontory/ (accessed June 17, 2019).

If sales warrant reprinting, a few suggestions can be made for its improvement. For example, as coeditor, with Sue Fawn Chung, of Chinese American Death Rituals: Respecting the Ancestors, this reviewer was stunned to be identified as “Patricia” (470) in an index entry that also omits the subtitle; the reference is correct elsewhere, however (e.g., 409, 481). Although the index is lengthy, at twenty-two pages, the reader will still want to have pencil in hand to add topics of interest that were not included. For example, according to the introduction, “few Chinese females were among the railroad workers in North America” (21). Because this statement implies that there were some women who were railroad workers, the index should have included page references to them, or at least to this statement, even if the topic was not discussed directly (538). Colporteur (a peddler of religious books; a word lacking in this reviewer’s vocabulary) is not defined where it appears, nor is it indexed (163, 165). More illustrations would have enlivened the text, and poems numbered 2 through 7 in the chapter 3 appendix should have been provided in the text where the English translations appear. These caveats definitely do not detract from the significance of The Chinese and the Iron Road, which is highly recommended.

—Priscilla Wegars University of Idaho

The Journey West: The Mormon Pioneer Journals of Horace K. Whitney with Insights by Helen Mar Kimball Whitney

Edited by Richard E. Bennett

Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, in cooperation with Deseret Book, 2018. xlv + 442 pp. Cloth, $34.99

Richard E. Bennett, professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, has produced another significant volume on the Mormon overland journey of 1846–1847. As the author of two previous volumes on the subject, Mormons at the Missouri, 1846–1852: “And Should We Die . . .” (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), and We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846–1848 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997), Bennett has distinguished himself as one of the leading authorities of the inaugural Mormon migration from the Midwest to the Rocky Mountains.

The present book’s main feature are the journal entries of Horace K. Whitney’s overland record taken from six leather-bound journals housed in the LDS Church History Library. The volumes total 631 pages (some 200,000 words), although a part of Journal 3 includes entries from Whitney’s missionary travels through the eastern states in 1843 and are excluded in Bennett’s compilation. An additional significant contribution of the book is the inclusion of extracts from the autobiographical reminiscences of Horace’s wife, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. From 1880 to 1886, Helen composed her memoirs, subsequently published in serial form between 1883 and 1886 in the Woman’s Exponent (and more recently, in 1997, in Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel’s A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History). While writing the narrative about her journey to the West, Helen referred to her husband’s journal record, thereby creating an additional firsthand dual account. Recognizing the significance of Helen’s composition, Bennett astutely included selected passages from Helen’s narrative that corresponded with those of Horace’s journal entries, providing the reader with additional descriptive information and details. Helen’s entries appear in italicized text to distinguish them from her husband’s.

To underscore the importance and significance of Whitney’s record, Bennett notes who he considers to be the foremost diarists of the 1846–1847 trek, namely, Thomas Bullock, Wilford Woodruff, Hosea Stout, Orson Pratt, William Clayton, Norton Jacob, Howard Egan, and Horace K. Whitney. Of these, only Clayton, Jacob, Egan, and Whitney’s narratives cover all five phases of the trail (xxvi–xxxviii). Clayton’s journal has been the primary source most often cited by historians in connection with the 1846–1847 overland journey and understandably so, due to his role as the official secretary to Brigham Young and as the company clerk for the vanguard company. But Whitney’s record is equally impressive, and in many instances he provides more details and better descriptions than Clayton. Over the course of twenty months, from the time he began his overland record, Whitney rarely missed making a daily entry. With the publication of this volume, perhaps Whitney’s journal will get more acknowledgment and recognition from the historical community.

Bennett divides the 1846–1847 Mormon exodus from Illinois into five phases: first, the crossing of southern Iowa (February–August 1846); second, the temporary layover at Winter Quarters (fall 1846–spring 1847); third, the vanguard company’s overland journey to the Salt Lake Valley (April 1–July 24, 1847); fourth, establishing the Salt Lake settlement (July 25–August 31, 1847); and fifth, the return to Winter Quarters/Kanesville (late August–October 31, 1847). The book is composed of six chapters that correspond with the period covered by Whitney in the six journals. While this is certainly fitting, it is my opinion that a better arrangement would have been to organize the narrative chronologically into chapters associated with the five periods or phases of the Mormon trek as outlined by Bennett.

Readers will appreciate Bennett’s thirty-seven-page introduction, in which he shares an informative overview of the lives of Horace and Helen, both of whom were children of prominent early LDS figures. Less than four weeks after their marriage, the newlyweds left Nauvoo as part of the first wave of Latter-day Saints to begin the 1,400-mile trip to the Salt Lake Valley.

On March 8, 1847, Horace and his younger brother Orson were chosen to be members of Brigham Young’s vanguard pioneer company. The two were selected to go in place of their father, Newel, who, as the presiding bishop of the church, remained behind to take charge of important affairs at Winter Quarters (178). Both brothers were assigned to be members of the 10th company, 2nd division, headed by Heber C. Kimball, Horace’s father-in-law (194). One month later, on April 9, Horace started west, leaving Helen to remain at Winter Quarters. But Bennett does not leave Helen behind. Periodically he includes excerpts from her autobiography in order to give the reader occasional glimpses into what Helen and the main body of Latter-day Saints were experiencing back at Winter Quarters (190–91, 195–96, 197, 212–14, 219, 225–27, 246–249, 256, 269–70, 365–66, 367).

The assignment to be in the advance company filled Whitney with a sense that their undertaking would influence the future history of both the American West and, more importantly, the LDS church. His journal reflects a feeling that he believed the reason he was selected to be in the company was because it was his mission and duty to record in detail the company’s travels. This is partially evidenced by the fact that at this juncture his journal entries are generally lengthier and more detailed and descriptive, suggesting he was more conscientious of time and place. It further demonstrates that he considered the trek to the Salt Lake Valley to be the most important aspect of his overland experience. Given the ordeals associated with the daily grind and long arduous hours of overland travel, one wonders how he could even find time to write so much material—in longhand no less—at the end of each day.

The book is printed on glossy paper and enhanced with photographs, drawings of geographical landmarks, illustrations, paintings, and maps (both period and modern). It also includes an extensive glossary of individuals mentioned in both Horace’s journals and Helen’s autobiography (although not all persons in the texts could be identified) and a substantial subject index. The volume will be the most useful to historians, researchers, history buffs, and students of the Mormon exodus. Given that the narrative includes an extensive amount of reading material, it will be used mostly by individuals who are not necessarily planning to read the entire narrative, but rather to refer to it to learn more about a particular aspect of the 1846–1847 Mormon migration, such as details about what occurred on a certain day, a specific event, or an individual.

Bennett is to be commended for his painstaking efforts to produce an accurate transcription of Whitney’s original text, as well as for his extensive annotation. The book makes a significant contribution to the study and understanding of the early Mormon experience and western expansion and migration. This is indeed an important and impressive work!

—Alexander L. Baugh Brigham Young University

Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer and American Frontiersman

By Carmen R. Smith and Talana S. Hooper

Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2018. xi + 289 pp. Paper, $28.95

Can one man really have been a soldier in the Mormon Battalion, a guerilla fighter during the Utah War, the commander of Utah’s only active duty military unit during the American Civil War, a friend of Brigham Young, one of the rescuers of the Willie and Martin Handcart companies, a member of the Utah legislature, a missionary in Great Britain, a polygamist with eight wives and over fifty children who often outfoxed federal marshals intent on arresting him, a Latter-day Saint stake president, and a colonizer assigned by Brigham Young to preside over a communal settlement in an extremely harsh northern Arizona locale who was killed during a grazing dispute with Native Americans? 1 In Lot Smith’s case, the answer is “Yes!”

The story of Lot Smith’s interesting and colorful life is told by the mother-daughter team of Carmen R. Smith and Talana S. Hooper in Lot Smith: Mormon Pioneer and American Frontiersman. This book will appeal to casual and serious readers alike. Smith (1917–2018) was married to Omer Smith, one of Lot Smith’s many grandsons. Hooper is the author of A Century in Central [Arizona], 1883–1983, and several family histories.

The authors plumb nineteenth-century resources masterfully, from diaries and letters to newspaper reports and Latter-day Saint church records. The book falls short, though, in considering recent scholarship, especially for the three key military-related periods in Lot Smith’s life: service in the Mormon Battalion, the Utah War, and the American Civil War. With a bibliography listing almost 450 sources, it is telling that only seven were published in the twenty-first century and none pertain to Smith’s important military service. Consequently, some military-related factual errors crept into their book, such as differences between serving on U.S. Army active duty and in a territorial militia, such as the Nauvoo Legion (74, 81, 89).

The absence of insights from historical scholarship is especially noticeable in chapter 1 (“Mormon Battalion”). Sherman Fleek’s excellent work History May Be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion (2006) and other Mormon Battalion histories receive no mention. In chapter 3 (“Utah War”), the authors fail to reference any of William P. MacKinnon’s myriad articles or books representing exhaustive research during the past half-century, including his outstanding documentary histories At Sword’s Point—Part 1 (2008) and Part 2 (2016).

Similarly, the authors’ research fell short in chapter 6 (“Civil War Captain”), which discusses Lot Smith’s military service from May to August 1862 as a Union Army captain and commander of Utah’s Lot Smith Cavalry Company. The only book acknowledged by Smith and Hooper is Margaret M. Fisher’s 1929 Utah and the Civil War, which contains no footnotes or bibliographic entries but does include hyperbolic overstatements, such as the whopper (repeated by Smith and Hooper) that Smith’s unit completed “the most hazardous [duty] ever performed in the West by United States troops in defense of their country” (89). 2

The chapters on Smith’s military experiences as well as his life in Utah seem slighted when compared to the detail and length the authors devote to Smith’s civilian colonization efforts in their native Arizona. Throughout the book, the authors share interesting stories, though— several of which they note are based on family or local folklore. Here’s one: “Lot looked up the road to see a man on horseback. . . . He told [his son] Al to stay in the wagon and not to lie or he’d skin him alive. Smith took his gun and hid behind a bush. . . . When the [federal] officer asked where his father was, Al answered, ‘Right behind that bush beside you.’ The officer didn’t look; he only said to wish his father a good day and rode on” (211).

Even with its deficiencies, this is a worthwhile biography of Lot Smith, more readily available than Charles Peterson’s landmark journal article about him. 3 The authors paint Smith as a resolute, talented, and heroic figure, but acknowledge he was less than perfect—perhaps Mormonism’s premier horseman, but a man who frequently angered and offended his wives as well as associates, especially in his later years.

This biography might profitably be read in tandem with William G. Hartley’s chronicle of Lot Smith’s equally accomplished contemporary, Howard Egan—Faithful and Fearless: Major Howard Egan: Early Mormonism and the Pioneering of the American West (2017). Both men—rivals as well as comrades-in-arms— shared an extraordinary, Forrest Gump-like range of experiences in support of the Latter-day Saints in the West.

—Kenneth L. Alford Brigham Young University

Notes

1 The authors mention Smith’s “last and fifty-second child” (ix) and “fifty-two children” (241), but appendix C (“Wives and Children of Lot Smith”) lists fifty-five children born to his eight wives (247–48).

2 Only a few books have focused exclusively on Utah’s role in the American Civil War, including Margaret M. Fisher, Utah and the Civil War (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1929); E. B. Long, The Saints and the Union: Utah Territory during the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981); Kenneth L. Alford, ed., Civil War Saints (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center, 2012); John Gary Maxwell, The Civil War Years in Utah: The Kingdom of God and the Territory that Did Not Fight (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015); and Kenneth L. Alford, ed., Utah and the American Civil War: The Written Record (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2017).

3 Charles S. Peterson, “‘A Mighty Man was Brother Lot’: A Portrait of Lot Smith—Mormon Frontiersman,” Western Historical Quarterly 1, no. 4 (October 1970): 393–414.