Byron Cummings, Classic Scholar and Father of University Athletics

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 23, 1955, Nos. 1-4

BYRON CUMMINGS, CLASSIC SCHOLAR AND FATHER OF UNIVERSITY ATHLETICS

BY WALTER A. KERR

BYRON CUMMINGS was born at Westville, New York, September 20, 1860, the youngest of seven children of Moses

B and Roxana Headley Cummings. His father, a Union soldier, was

killed during the Civil War. After graduating from the Oswego Normal School in 1885, Byron entered Rutgers College, one of the most outstanding institutions of that day, receiving his A. B. degree in 1889, and his A. M. degree in 1892. In following years he studied at the University of Chicago (1896), and the University of Berlin (1910-11), and went on to receive his LL.D. from the University of Arizona in 1921, and his Sc.D. from Rutgers College in 1924.

Byron Cummings learned the fundamentals of school teaching in the public schools of New York and in the Rutgers Preparatory School. He came to the University of Utah in 1893, as instructor in Latin and Greek. A series of promotions raised him to assistant professor, 1894-95; professor, 1895-1915; dean of the school of arts and sciences, 1905-15; and dean of the medical school, 1910-11.

Fate never did a better service for athletics in Utah than when Byron Cummings came to the university. To many, a professor of Greek would seem far remote from college athletics. The life of Byron Cummings, however, combined an admiration for the Greek way of life, a love for athletics and a love for culture. He considered the development of one's body as vital as the development of one's intellect. He personified the ancient Greek scholar and citizen. Although he would have liked to have been a discus thrower or a marathon runner, his small frame forbade it. However, he did appear on the athletic field in homemade football togs and running pants. In 1898, students arranged a race between a student, Nelson Dickerman, and Cummings. Of course, the professor was no match for his tall, agile opponent, but with true sportsmanship the two participants were able to joke about this interesting race fifty years after its occurrence, at a reception given by Neil Judd, in Washington, D. C.

Professor Cummings organized the Athletic Association of the University of Utah in 1894, and served as its first treasurer, From 1894 until 1910, he was actively engaged in the athletic program, with the rolls of the Athletic Association frequently carrying his name. Each year he was among the first to pay his dues, to make liberal contributions to the athletic fund, and to aid athletes and other students in need of financial help.

When the University of Utah moved to the east bench in 1900, Professor Cummings and Coach Harvey R. Holmes led the movement to plow and level the football field, and later to enclose it. Prior to this time, the townspeople had been able to watch the games free from the side lines. It was not an unusual sight to see the professor walking along the side lines with a little, black leather bag, into which the spectators put their admission price. In the emergency, the kind professor dismissed his Latin and Greek classes and led his students to the athletic field, where he gave them hammers, nails, and lumber, and joined them in building the fence enclosure.

But the Athletic Association had its financial problems, too, and Professor Cummings was the first to help solve them. On June 6, 1900, he wrote to the Board of Regents of the university: "The Athletic Association has struggled hard for the past few years to build up healthful athletic sports. They have fenced and prepared the athletic field and have maintained teams against great discouragement. The expense in bringing the Nevada team here was $275. The attendance at the meet was rather small. We find ourselves without means to meet the $275 necessary to pay the expenses for the Nevada team. We respectfully request that the Board of Regents advance the $275 and wait until our association can reimburse them." The author is happy to report that the money was advanced—and paid back.

Professor Cummings encouraged interclass games, and it was through him, also, that Harvey R. Holmes, the University of Utah's first paid coach, was brought to the campus. In 1901, Byron Cummings had the pleasure to award the first "Silver U and Crimson Sweaters" to the University of Utah football team, and in 1902, a beautiful silver and crimson pennant was hung in the Library Building, his gift to the team that won the interclass meet. Professor Cummings continued to serve as a member of the Executive Committee of the Athletic Association for many years, and as faculty representative to that organization from its inception until 1910. It was especially fitting, then, that the University of Utah Chronicle should name him "The Father of Athletics."

Byron Cummings, 1940 Pottery found in the ruins at Kinishba

Like the Greeks, Dean Cummings also was interested in civic and religious affairs, and was a devoted and active member of his church. He was a prominent member of the Board of Education of the Salt Lake City schools, 1902-10; of the Utah State Park Commission, 1909-15; and a member of the managing board, School of American Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico. He sponsored a Boy's Home Club in Sugar House, and for this service, the boys presented him with a beautiful gold medal consisting of a pendant on a gold scroll. Cummings Field was named in his honor sometime around 1902-03, and as long as football teams and members of physical education classes play on this field, it will be known by that name.

Regardless of his interest in civic and athletic affairs, however, it was not in these areas that Professor Cummings was to make his mark. Sometime in 1900, after the University of Utah had relocated on the east bench, he was given a small office in what was known as the Library Building. It was here, in 1906, that Byron Cummings taught his first classes in archaeology. Soon his office became the gathering place for students, who told him of countless prehistoric ruins in southeastern Utah, mounds near Willard, artifacts on the flat land near Plain City, and of the great mounds near Paragoonah. He learned of the many box canyons of southeastern Utah, with their hundreds of cliff dwellings, and he knew that in prehistoric times the valleys of Utah had prospered with Indian communities.

His first venture in "Utah Archaeology," according to Neil Judd, one of his students, was a brief horse and buggy trip, in the summer of 1906, through Nine Mile Canyon, on the northern border of Carbon County. That particular holiday may have been prompted by student descriptions of cliff dwellings and petroglyphs, or by Dr. Henry Montgomery's paper, "Prehistoric Man in Utah." In either case, the chance to visit Nine Mile Canyon won a champion for Utah's prehistory. Thereafter, as long as he remained on the University of Utah faculty, Professor Cummings dedicated each summer to archaeological work, with the exception of those spent in Europe (1910 and 1911).

The summer vacation of 1907 was an especially fruitful one, Neil Judd, Malcolm, the professor's son, and one or two others, made up an exploring party to the White Canyon natural bridges in San Juan County, Utah. According to Mr. Judd, the trip to the San Juan country was extremely difficult. The party left the train at Thompson Springs and "travelled by a four-horse freight wagon a day and a half to the cable ferry at Moab; thence two more days to Monticello." There was no auto road from Monticello to Bluff, so the trip was made on horses and mules. Cliff dwellings and ruins were found in great abundance, and when, in early September, they camped on the site of present-day Blanding, on their way back to Monticello, a lone sheepherder's wagon, parked beside a juniper, proclaimed the town's beginning. The White Canyon bridges had been known by cattlemen for some time, but first attracted national attention in 1903 and 1905. The Cummings' party located the bridges and other points of interest, and furnished the data for the General Land Office. The report of Professor Cummings, and the material sent by him, had great influence, and was a deciding factor in President Theodore Roosevelt proclaiming the Utah Natural Bridges a national monument.

Each summer the Cummings' expeditions returned to the campus with dozens of boxes filled with Indian and cliff-dwelling artifacts. In all the excavations. Dean Cummings was very careful not to lose a single bit of broken vase or bowl; everything was collected. Later, in his office, he could be seen putting the hundreds of bits of pottery together. Many of the beautiful bowls in the University of Utah collection were put together by his skillful hands.

The Cummings' exploratory expeditions were no pleasure trips, however. Life, for the members of the party, was not an easy one. The trips meant hard work, self-sacrifice, often a mile or two walk from camp to the excavations, and "eight hours or so on the shovel," dragging oneself along sandy Indian trails over the roughest hills, crossing treacherous quicksand, and climbing to almost inaccessible sandstone cliff dwellings.

Money allotted for archaeological work by the state legislature was very limited. Although Dean Cummings received money from friends (Col. E. A. Wall was a most generous contributor), he accepted much of the financial responsibility himself, and, "He shouldered an additional chore." Although he was an exceptionally competent cook, cooking over an open fire for a dozen men was not an easy undertaking. Then, too, the Dean was never one to ask assistance. If student companions were not sufficiently adult enough to see when water and wood were needed, he fetched them himself. On top of all this, night and morning he had to "suffer the camp jesters," in spite of his perfect Dutchoven biscuits and delicious fried potatoes and coffee.

Many have wondered why Dean Cummings and his immediate successor did not write more of the scientific facts of these early expeditions. When asked once, he replied: "I am anxious to get as much for our museum as I can before the large eastern schools fill their museums with our material. Writing can be done later. I say let's get what we can before it is too late." His later prolific writing justified this attitude. Neil Judd explained it in another way, however, "Only a life too filled with service for others repeatedly postponed the writing of those more detailed papers on special features promised in his first pamphlet, The Great Natural Bridges of Utah."

During his lifetime, Dean Cummings was a member of many scientific and educational societies and fraternities, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, the American Geographical Association, the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, Delta Upsilon, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Sigma Xi. His name appeared in Who's Who in America, American Men of Science, and other scholarly biographical dictionaries. In a letter from Neil Judd, July 11, 1954, we find that "He was leader of the party that discovered Betatakin, Inscription House, and other famous Arizona ruins now administered by the National Park Service, He was leader of the National Geographic Society expedition that laid bare the lava-covered pyramid of Cuicuilco, in the Valley of Mexico, 1924-25. His major archaeological contribution was at Kinishba, a great ruin on the Apache reservation, Arizona....."

Professor Cummings married Isabel McLaury, August 12, 1896. The young, attractive eastern bride adapted herself to the new community life and became an efficient, intelligent and active Salt Lake City clubwoman. Malcolm, their only child, accompanied his father on many of his archaeological expeditions. Mrs. Cummings died November 11, 1929. On October 17, 1947, Dean Cummings married Miss Ann Chatham. It was Miss Chatham who first told him of the extensive pueblo ruins of Kinishba, the excavation and exploration of which he supervised. The publication of his last two books also was greatly due to her help and encouragement.

From 1915 until 1953 he contributed many articles of archaeological value too numerous to mention. His three books, Kinishba, A Prehistoric Pueblo of the Great Pueblo Period (1940); Indians I Have Known (1952); and First Inhabitants of Arizona and the Southwest (1953), constitute a great scholarly contribution to Southwestern archaeology. The latter volume, published on the eve of his ninety-third anniversary, is a wonderful climax to a richly spent life.

Byron Cummings, director emeritus of the Arizona State Museum, died May 21, 1954, at Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 93. Retired from administrative work at the age of 86, he served as a teacher for over fifty years, twenty-two of which he taught at the University of Utah, and the remaining years at the University of Arizona.