Herbert Eugene Bolton_Historian of the American Borderlands Read online

  Albert L.

  Hurtado

  · HERBERT EUGENE BOLTON

  Historian of the American Borderlands

  University of California Press

  Berkeley Los Angeles London

  University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

  University of California Press

  Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

  University of California Press, Ltd.

  London, England

  © 2012 by The Regents of the University of California

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hurtado, Albert L., 1946–.

  Herbert Eugene Bolton : historian of the American borderlands / Albert L. Hurtado.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-520-27216-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

  1. Bolton, Herbert Eugene, 1870–1953. 2. Historians—United States—Biography. 3. Mexican-American Border Region—Historiography. 4. United States—Territorial expansion—Historiography. I. Title.

  E175.5.B66H87 2012

  907.2092—dc23

  [B]

  2011035056

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100 percent postconsumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.

  To the memory of David J. Weber

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on Language

  Introduction: The Border Lord

  1. The Scholars’ Hard Road

  2. A Gathering at Lake Mendota

  3. Gone to Texas

  4. Many Roads to California

  5. In Stephens's Grove

  6. Foundations of Empire

  7. Teachers and Students—Worlds Apart

  8. Of Presidents and Politics

  9. Race, Place, and Heroes

  10. Exploration, Empire, and Patrimony

  11. The Grand Patriarch

  12. Bury My Heart at Corte Madera

  13. Western Revolt and Retirement

  14. Defending the Empire

  15. The Fading Pageant

  16. The Emperor Departs

  Afterword: The Debatable Legacy

  Abbreviations Used in the Notes

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Figures follow page

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Bolton as a high school student

  2. Bolton the school teacher

  3. Bolton and his roommate at the University of Wisconsin

  4. Charles Homer Haskins and Frederick Jackson Turner at Johns Hopkins University

  5. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California

  6. Henry Morse Stephens at Bohemian grove

  7. University of California Faculty Club, 1902

  8. Doe Library under construction

  9. The Bolton family, c. 1919

  10. Bolton and Father Zephyrin Engelhardt, c. 1915

  11. Bolton with knights and a few ladies at his round table

  12. Bolton with a gigantic map of the Americas

  13. Bolton atop an Anasazi ruin

  14. Bolton with a Navajo guide at the Grand Canyon

  15. Bolton salutes his companions

  16. Bolton taking notes in Mexico

  17. Somewhere in Mexico with George Hammond and Aubrey Neasham

  18. Bolton in the Great Hall of the Faculty Club, c. 1948

  19. Frederick Jackson Turner at the Huntington Library

  20. “Captain” Reginald Berti Haselden in the Huntington Library

  21. The final Bolton residence on Buena Vista

  22. The Boltons’ living room

  23. Bolton in the 1940s, working in the Bancroft with his assistants Virginia Thickens and Margaret Walker

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This project began on the patio outside the snack bar at the Huntington Library in the summer of 1987. Wilbur Jacobs, my doctoral advisor, asked me if I would like to be part of an OAH roundtable on Frederick Jackson Turner that Robert E. Smith was organizing. I allowed that I did not know much about Turner but that I would like to do something on one of Turner's students, Herbert Bolton. I suggested a paper on Bolton's ethnocentric view of history, which I would contrast with Turner's ideas. Wilbur and Bob agreed. I thank them for setting me on this accidental journey.

  I have worked on this project off and on ever since my first foray into the Bolton Papers at the Bancroft Library in 1987. Along the way I accumulated the usual personal and professional debts that I acknowledge here with gratitude. The National Endowment for the Humanities funded a summer seminar on the Spanish Borderlands that David J. Weber convened in 1986. Arizona State University provided a series of grants that funded research at the National Archives and the Bancroft and Huntington Libraries between 1987 and 1998. Since that time the endowment of the Paul H. and Doris Eaton Travis Chair, which I hold at the university of Oklahoma, has generously provided research and travel funds.

  The bulk of the research was done at the Bancroft Library. The Bancroft staff has been unfailingly helpful and supportive of me and this project for the more than twenty years that I have been going to and fro. My old friend Walter Brem's knowledge about Bolton, Berkeley, and the Bancroft Library added immeasurably to the pleasure and joy of researching this book as well as to its substance. Theresa Salazar arranged for me to see Bolton's famous classroom maps and has helped in other ways. Bancroft director Charles Faulhaber gave me the opportunity to present a paper on Bolton at the celebration of the library's 150th anniversary.

  I am grateful to several of Bolton's grandchildren for their assistance. Robert Brower offered help, but sadly, did not live to see the book completed. Steven Johnson gave me his sketch of Bolton and other materials. Thomas Johnson reminisced about Bolton when Johnson was a student at Berkeley and about other matters relating to the Bolton family. Gale Randall graciously invited me into her home and shared photographs and memories of her grandfather. She also provided copies of family letters and other helpful information.

  A host of colleagues and friends have suffered through my telling of hundreds of gossipy tales about Bolton back in the day. Some of them were actually interested, or kindly pretended that they were. My friend and mentor Kenneth N. Owens heard my first seminar presentation on Bolton in 1974, when I was a master's student. Consider this book my final response to the criticism you offered then. Sorry it's late. At Arizona State University my friend Peter Iverson encouraged me to write this book. He also arranged for me to interview his mother, who was a student at Berkeley in Bolton's time. David A. Hollinger helped me with a few details about the history department after Bolton's time and sent me History at Berkeley: A Dialog in Three Parts, which he coauthored with George A. Bruckern and Henry F. May.

  Several of Bolton's graduate students have shared their reminiscences with me. Donald Cutter, Woodrow Borah, Engel Sluiter, and Ea
rl Pomeroy were especially helpful. Edward Von der Porten and Robert J. Chandler were kind enough to read the chapter on the Drake Plate. My university of Oklahoma colleague Donald J. Pisani, who happens to be the son-in-law of Bolton student Engel Sluiter, arranged for me to meet with him. Don is also a Cal alum with a lively interest in his alma mater. Consequently he has been a willing and informative conversationalist about all things Berkeley and Bolton.

  My friend and student William Carter sent me the Alfred Barnaby Thomas—Bolton correspondence from the university of Texas Pan American Library. Fellow Bolton scholar Russell Magnaghi generously sent me Bolton materials gleaned from the Georgia State Archives. Martin Ridge and Steven Hackel invited me to present papers about Bolton at the Huntington Library that helped me to sharpen my arguments.

  David Wrobel and two anonymous readers carefully read the first draft of this book and made helpful suggestions. Thanks to them, the book is more succinct and readable. My graduate assistants David Beyreis, Matt Pearce, John Rhea, and Ryan Sturdevant helped me to prepare the final version of the manuscript. Jean Barman, Rose Marie Beebe, Iris Engstrand, Richard Etulain, Pamela Herr, Paul Hutton, W. Turrentine Jackson, William P. MacKinnon, and Samuel Truett have helped along the way. Steven Baker's copyediting of the manuscript added precision and polish to the finished product.

  And as always, my wife, Jean, has been a willing listener and a knowing critic. Without her, where would I be?

  By 2007 I had finished almost all of the research for this book and was ready to write. Then came an unexpected gift. Robert C. “Roy” Ritchie, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at the Huntington Library, offered me the one- year Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship in American History. So I crated up eight file drawers of documents, notes, and my computer database and hauled them to San Marino. I conceived of the fellowship as an opportunity to write without distractions, and so it was. I had already reviewed the correspondence between Turner and Bolton held by the Huntington, but the collections there proved to be far more helpful after I looked more deeply into them. The Frederick Jackson Turner Collection, Max Farrand Papers, and the Institutional Archives provided important new information not available anywhere else. Because of the Times fellowship the book is significantly different than it would have been otherwise. At the Huntington, Peter Blodgett helped me in myriad ways with his incomparable knowledge of the collections. While I did not quite finish the manuscript at the Huntington, most of the first draft was written there. It is fitting that the book ended more or less where it began, under the spreading trees of that most wonderful place for scholars. Thank you, Roy.

  This book is dedicated to David J. Weber. More than any other historian David deserves credit for revitalizing the Spanish Borderlands as a respected field of study. Over the years he helped me and many others to achieve our professional dreams while building his own superlative record of scholarly achievement. I had hoped that this book would be in print before he died, but it was not to be. In his last few months of life I sent him some bits and pieces that I thought he would enjoy, and I trust that he did. David personified the scholar's life well lived. I hope this book is a fitting tribute.

  A NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  In most cases I have used the words that Bolton and his peers used. Their language included sometimes objectionable racial slurs, although these words and phrases are rare in Bolton's voluminous correspondence. I have quoted them in order to reveal as much about him and his views as possible.

  I have used the terms “Anglo” and “Anglo-American,” although these categories are usually not accurate representations of actual ethnic identities. Anglophone would perhaps be a more accurate way to describe the mass of non-Hispanic white people. In Bolton's time “Anglo” was often used as an ethnic identifier. There was a Crocker Anglo National bank (where my parents had an account), as well as a Hibernia bank. The bank of America, as all Californians know, got its start as the bank of Italy. I use the term “Anglo” because in the American West it is commonly understood as a means to distinguish Hispanic from non-Hispanic people; it should not be understood to indicate a precise ethnic identity.

  I sometimes use the terms “America” and “Americans” to refer to the united States and its citizens. Bolton must be spinning in his grave. He strenuously argued that everyone who lived in the Western Hemisphere was an American. Indeed they are, but it is awkward to use the phrase “United States citizens,” so I have used the commonly accepted “American” instead.

  For the sake of variety and to avoid the repeated use of cumbersome institutional names (Leland Stanford Junior university, for example), I often use shortened names of universities or their common nicknames. “Cal” and “berkeley” are used interchangeably. When unpunctuated initials (UCLA and USC) are commonly understood, I have used them. Readers should understand from the context that “Texas” and “Austin,” “Wisconsin” and “Madison” mean the universities rather than the places. If these literary decisions cause confusion or offense to any readers, I apologize in advance.

  Introduction

  The Border Lord

  On one of his southwestern expeditions Herbert Bolton clambered atop an Anasazi ruin tucked into a canyon wall. From there he surveyed his domain like a conquistador viewing his latest conquest. The pose suited him. Bolton was the undisputed master of a scholarly domain that he had pioneered and conquered. It is a memorable image of Bolton at the height of his powers. Of course, the snapshot did not capture a true conqueror, but a historian doing field research for one of his books. Yet the pose reveals the aspect of Bolton's work that today's historians find most objectionable—his complete identification with Spaniards who were conquerors. This is the Bolton that is easy to dismiss as an artifact of colonialism's bygone days.

  But there is another Bolton whose work suggested a tolerant and capacious view of American history, an outlook more congruent with today's values: the transnational Bolton of the borderlands who was equally at home in Mexico and the United States. This Bolton conceived of the borderlands—the southern tier of states that extended from Georgia to California—as a liminal space that transcended national boundaries. Within this space he found a Spanish past that illuminated and expanded United States history. According to Bolton, Spanish explorers, missionaries, and soldiers were heroes who paved the way for Anglo pioneers who came later. The story of the Spanish Borderlands was the indispensable preface to the national history of the United States. Thus Bolton's borderlands comprised a transnational region that told a national tale. His essential concept, that the borderlands were the meeting place of diverse cultures, is an important foundation for today's multicultural borderlands studies.1

  Bolton conceptualized a second broad idea that has continuing significance: hemispheric history or the history of the Americas. His sojourns in Mexico and his study of the history of colonial New Spain and the Spanish borderlands of the United States convinced him that national histories could be better understood in a hemispheric setting. When seen in hemispheric context, the history of one nation sheds light on the history of the others, he argued. He also claimed, too grandly for many specialists, that there was an essential unity in the history of the Western Hemisphere. His Americas course aimed to provide a broad comparative foundation for Berkeley's undergraduate students. He hoped that his course would be generally accepted in American universities, and he met with some success. Although critics charged that Bolton too easily glossed national and cultural differences, Bolton's hemispheric perspective was influential for decades. In recent years some of Bolton's ideas have been resurrected in the guise of transnational history.2 These coexistent, sometimes incompatible Boltons—the colonial apologist and the progressive transnational scholar—make his legacy a debatable matter that demands scrutiny before it can be fully appreciated.

  Bolton was one of the most respected historians of his generation. His professional accomplishments were prodigious. He was a prolific publisher. Hundreds of
graduate students studied with him. He helped to establish the academic reputation of the University of California in the eyes of the world. The presidency of the American Historical Association and many other professional honors marked him as one of the elite academics of his time. Yet his once towering reputation gradually faded and became the subject of scholarly debate.3 There were several reasons for Bolton's decline. The rise of Native American history made Bolton's appreciative treatment of Spanish missionaries and explorers seem an apology for colonialism. Latin American historians regarded his studies of the far northern reaches of the Spanish American empire as marginal episodes of limited significance and explanatory power. The romantic tone of Bolton's triumphalist narrative no longer matched the critical sensibility of American historians.

  Yet, when all is said and done, there he stands, like a colossal ruin on the intellectual landscape of the borderlands. Right or wrong, au courant or passé, Bolton is impossible to ignore. Historians and anthropologists continue to rely on his many volumes of carefully translated and edited documents and detailed maps. His ideas about the borderlands and the Americas are once again relevant to historical studies. Bolton's graduate students added hundreds of scholarly articles and books to the corpus of essential borderlands and Latin American studies. He personally contributed thousands of pages of original and transcribed Spanish documents to the Bancroft Library and, as its director, acquired tens of thousands more—an essential cache of primary documents for scholars to use now and in the foreseeable future.

  Now, more than a century after Bolton began to investigate the Mexican archives, with a steady stream of revisionist borderlands and transnational studies issuing from academic presses, the time has come for a new assessment of Bolton and his work.4 The appreciative biographical treatments of Bolton by his students emphasize his scholarly contributions but do not adequately contextualize his work.5 I believe that Bolton's work is best understood when it is seen in a world that was not always prepared to accept his ideas. Today Bolton's critics emphasize his ethnocentrist, pro-missionary perspective, but in valorizing Catholic missionaries, Bolton (a Methodist) challenged the commonly held anti-Catholic prejudice of his day. Some Californians (Bolton called them “local patriots”) objected to Bolton's Hispanophilia and wanted the University of California to emphasize the history of their Anglo ancestors (see the “Note on Language” herein). In the university of California Bolton also met resistance that was sometimes intellectual and sometimes personal. Long-forgotten political controversies sometimes influenced Bolton, and vice versa. Thus I have explored Bolton's larger world in order to fully comprehend his work.