Herbert Eugene Bolton_Historian of the American Borderlands Read online

  In 1914 and 1915 Bolton published two books about Texas that illustrated his strengths and weaknesses as a historian, as well as a path not taken. The first, Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768–1780, is a heavily annotated two-volume collection of translated documents with a large detailed map by Bolton.47 Bolton had developed this information while writing his essays for the Handbook of North American Indians. The book was in many ways a model for the many documentary editions he would publish in the coming years. It included his long introduction and notes, which were often as informative as the text itself. Athanase de Mézières displayed Bolton’s command of the archives and the deep knowledge of his subject that had taken him years to establish. He also began to emphasize Spain’s missionary effort, which he called “the principal weapon” in the contest for the frontier.48

  Focused on New Spain’s northeastern frontier at the time of the French cession of Louisiana, the book emphasized relations with American Indian peoples. The text and the map described the location, movements, and relationships of the many tribes that lived in the area. The oversized “Map of Texas in the Eighteenth Century” deserves special attention because it prefigured both Bolton’s subsequent cartographic contributions and a multicultural, multinational historical perspective. The map shows general tribal regions, such as the “Caddo Tribes,” “Hasinai Tribes,” and “Attacapan Tribes” on the Texas-Louisiana border. Bolton also located specific tribes within the general regions. Trails, each grandly called “Camino Real,” crisscrossed Texas linking Spanish missions, presidios, and Indian villages. One trail leads eastward across the Sabine River to the French outpost of Natchitoches. Another track extends southwest across the Rio Grande to Monclova in present-day Coahuila, Mexico. These tendrils were the beginnings of a transnational network of Spanish trails that Bolton would traverse and map. The De Mézières map connected the Spanish empire with the elaborate American Indian cultural geography of Texas and French Louisiana. By inference it connected the histories of the United States and Mexico.

  The map is a cartographic representation of a transnational world and the meetings of disparate empires, nations, and cultures. It illustrates a remote chunk of the Spanish Empire whose borders were jealously (if ineffectively) guarded, but the map infers the insubstantiality of borders, the mutability of imperial claims, and the significance of Native peoples in the contest for North America. Of course, words like “transnational” and “multicultural” would have been foreign to Bolton, but he mapped a world now understandable in these terms even though he lacked the interpretive framework to thoroughly explicate its meaning.

  Although Bolton was poised to pioneer in the field of American Indian history, he could not quite figure out how to interpret their past. He wrote a short book about the Hasinai Indians but could not bring himself to publish it. Russell Magnaghi, the editor of the posthumously published Hasinai book, suggests that Bolton was too busy with the move to California and his many other projects to bring the book to completion.49 This is no doubt true, but not the entire explanation. Bolton lacked useful models for Native American history. Parkman was the most obvious precedent, but the Texas Indians did not seem to offer Parkman-like narrative possibilities, at least not to Bolton. His book reads more like descriptive anthropology than history. Bolton presents useful cultural and geographic information, but he did not figure out how to convert his ethnology into ethnohistory. In short, he did not know how to make Indians the subject of American history. Bolton was already shifting his interest toward Spanish missionaries whom he could portray in a heroic light. If missionaries were the subject of his work, Indians were the objects of the friars, so after 1914 Bolton described American Indians from the missionary perspective—as prospective converts or resistant miscreants.

  Bolton’s next book, Texas in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, published in 1915, helps to explain his aspirations as a historian and how they might have taken him away from a career as a historian of American Indians. Like everything else that Bolton published, this book was based on meticulous archival investigation. Although some of it was published previously as journal articles, Bolton added additional information and interpretive sections. The result was not a seamless narrative, but as Bolton frankly admitted, a collection of special studies.50 The book has useful information, but its prose may be characterized as workmanlike at best.

  The preface, however, hints that Bolton had something larger in mind than reprinting his old essays. “My quest has been as romantic as the search for the Golden Fleece,” he wrote. He had dug into the forgotten archives of Mexico City and a dozen Mexican state capitals, not to mention those in Texas and Louisiana. Ambassadors, secretaries of state, governors, cardinals, archbishops, and other luminaries had helped him in his work. Humble padres had given him food and shelter. Bolton’s research had taken him not only to distant archives but over “hundreds of miles of old trails in…the Southwest, in search of topographical and archaeological data,” he explained.51 Whether by horse team, horseback, rail, or automobile Bolton had followed in the footsteps of his Spanish frontiersmen. He had found the sites of long-forgotten missions, a lost mine, and the location of La Salle’s old fort on the Texas coast.52 Bolton was not merely a historian who haunted dusty archives and wrote turgid monographs, but an explorer who searched the world for lost empires and then wrote romantic historical narrative history about his discoveries. Indoors and out, he practiced history as high adventure. His research had transformed him from a striving young professional historian into a romantic adventurer, at least in his own mind.

  The chapters that followed did not measure up to Bolton’s high-blooded preface. He aspired to be the Francis Parkman of the Southwest, but his literary style did not yet match Parkman’s, as Bolton’s most astute critic explained. Bolton often sent Turner offprints of his work and his students’ as well. Turner acknowledged these publications with grace, but once responded with what seemed like critical advice. “The definiteness of information presented regarding facts of settlement[,] dates of advance, etc.” astounded Turner.53 Bolton, who could be sensitive, understood Turner’s criticism: Bolton and his students were mere chroniclers who recapitulated the facts of Spanish-American history without providing critical analysis. It was dull reading, and what did it all mean? Bolton’s response was defensive. He knew that his work was loaded with detail, but he thought that such densely written publications were needed to provide a “clear understanding of the Spaniards in the American west.” That goal explained “the dreariness of most of what I have written,” Bolton concluded.54

  Turner waited several months to reply to Bolton, pleading the press of work at the end of the semester. When summer came, Turner explained, he had found “so fascinating a trout country in the Bitter Root Mountains that letters seemed sacrilegious!” Once he had caught enough trout to clear his mind, he informed Bolton that “there wasn’t a vestige of subconscious or implied criticism in my compliments of the seminary work exhibited by your pupils and yourself.” Such details were “essential,” and Turner had “no doubt” of Bolton’s “ability to see the forest” as well as the trees.55

  But Turner was not through advising Bolton on matters of style and substance. After perusing Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, Turner complimented Bolton, but the book was not easy reading. “You must water your rum, and offer it in a small glass to the man who is brought up on the Parkman light wines,” Turner advised. “Sometime you are going to complete your Parkman-like work,” he continued, “by putting your material in a format of interpretation and generalization suited to the general reader, not for the sake of the general reader only, but because by doing this you will make clear to eastern and northern scholars also what a rich field you are working and what its bearings are in general American history, in the larger sense.”56 Bolton replied that he understood Turner’s remark about watering the rum, but first he needed a good supply of rum. Besides, “when I have to plant t
he seed and grow the cane before even beginning to distil, its a slow process.” Bolton asked Turner to be patient. “I mean to live a long time yet.”57 He would remember Turner’s remark about Parkman.

  Bolton’s growing list of publications, burgeoning reputation, and attractive personality were not enough to assure a steady stream of graduate students. They needed funding. The university provided some financial support by appointing several graduate assistants. Research in foreign archives for dissertations and for augmenting the Bancroft’s collections required outside funds. Professor Stephens had foreseen the need and was already working on the problem when he was recruiting Turner in 1909.58 Stephens convinced the Native Sons of the Golden West, a fraternal organization founded in 1875 and interested in Pacific Coast history, to establish fellowships. Sons membership had at first been limited to those born in California under the American flag, on or after July 7, 1846.59 This restriction, which precluded membership by californios (Mexicans born in California before 1846), was eventually lifted, but many of the Native Sons were interested primarily in celebrating the state’s Anglo-American past, the gold rush in particular.

  Judge John F. Davis was a Native Son who had a much broader outlook on history. Born on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay in 1859, Judge Davis was a Roman Catholic and a Republican, a graduate of Harvard and the University of California Law School, and an active participant in state politics. He became a lawyer, then an Amador County judge, before serving in the state senate. By the time Stephens and Bolton knew him, Davis was in private practice in San Francisco. He had a deep interest in California history and was an influential member of the Native Sons and the Bohemian Club.60 As a Catholic lawyer, judge, and politician in a state dominated by Anglo Protestants, Davis was sensitive to California’s cultural currents. An admirer of author Charles F. Lummis, Davis had a particular interest in California’s Spanish and Catholic heritage.61 Bolton and Davis were natural allies.

  Religion in history and at the University of California was a touchy matter, as Stephens had learned when he proposed a joint appointment with the Pacific Theological Seminary of Preserved Smith, a leading authority on Martin Luther. “But I could not get the slightest encouragement. The odium theologicum is too strong.” In order to keep everyone happy, Stephens had “to go around and speak once a year in Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Unitarian churches.” If he left one of them out, “some sect” would accuse him of “sectarianism.”62 Bolton’s emphasis on Spanish Catholic history ran the risk of arousing sectarian concerns.

  With the strong urging of Stephens and Davis, the Native Sons funded the first traveling fellowship, which provided $1,500 for research in foreign archives. In 1911 the group added two resident fellowships. Davis publicized these fellowships in a popular magazine, suggesting that some California philanthropist should permanently endow the fellowships, but that was never done.63 Thus the fellowships depended on a vote at the organization’s annual meeting. The Native Sons continued to provide this essential support for historical study through World War II. In his plea for fellowship funding, Davis emphasized the singularity of the missions and the gold rush as forming a heritage that made California history and Californians unique in the annals of the United States. For Davis, the support of historical scholarship was no less than a sacred patriotic duty. In one essay he piously concluded that California’s history should be preserved so “that our fathers’ high achievement in a later day shall not be unknown to their descendants. Let us go hence with hearts courageous and minds determined, each to make good his ‘full measure of devotion.’ Thus, may California’s story become known to all Americans, and sink into the hearts of a grateful people.”64 Judge Davis knew how to appeal to local patriotism, and Bolton congratulated him for it.65

  President Wheeler was also thinking about sources of funding for history. In 1913 Wheeler asked Bolton for a letter describing his funding needs.66 The president hoped to interest Edward L. Doheny, the immensely wealthy California oil man, in Bolton’s plan to publish southwestern and California history.67 At Wheeler’s direction, Bolton met with Doheny and explained his request. Doheny asked Bolton to draft a letter of agreement for Doheny’s signature, which was sent in April 1914. It appeared to be all but certain that Doheny would provide $50,000 over five years for collecting and publishing documents from the archives of Spain and Mexico. Bolton’s former student Eddie Dunn was already on his way to Spain to head a team of American copyists.68

  A month passed with no response from the oilman. Bolton sent a letter to Doheny ostensibly asking for information so that Wheeler could announce the gift at commencement. He signed off, “trusting that nothing will happen to prevent you from carrying out what would be the greatest undertaking in Western history.”69 But something had happened: the revolution had spilled on to Doheny’s Mexican oil fields. “All of the American employees have been driven…away…with the result that our properties are now at the mercy of any Mexican vandal or American hater,” Doheny replied. He estimated his losses at $250,000 per month. Doheny hoped for better times when he would again consider aiding Bolton.70 Bolton would hear from Doheny again, but with a very different sort of proposal.

  The revolutionary period was not a safe time for Americans to be in Mexico. Bolton family tradition includes an incident when Bolton was in an “archive near Juarez, when Pancho Villa’s Army arrived.”71 The townspeople fled, but Bolton stayed at his work. Villa’s officers questioned Bolton, who responded with an appreciative lecture on the glories of Mexican history. According to the perhaps apocryphal story, the Villistas put Bolton in charge of the archives. This family account may have been somewhat embellished in the retelling, but it seems true to Bolton’s character. He could speak endlessly with high enthusiasm about his subject and was always willing to work cheerfully with whomever happened to be in charge, whether it was Porfirio Díaz or Pancho Villa.

  In his first few years at Berkeley Bolton established a pattern that he would maintain for decades. He kept to his rigorous schedule of research and publication and quickly established himself as the most productive member of the history department. Likewise he became the wheelhorse in the doctoral program, though Teggart no doubt thought that Bolton gained quantity by sacrificing quality (as in the case of Chapman). The production of publications and new doctors marked the University of California as an increasingly important research university, just as Wheeler and Stephens had intended. Numbers mattered, but Bolton did not invent the metrics by which institutions and professors were measured. To advance in the professional and institutional pecking orders, the university and Bolton had to keep those numbers up. For better or for worse Bolton was creating a PhD mill in Berkeley.

  S I X · Foundations of Empire

  In late 1913 the Boltons’ seventh and last child was born, the only boy. “His only handicap seems to be that they have given him my name,” he informed Fred. “I wanted to give him yours, but the matter lay rather outside of my jurisdiction.”1 Now with children who ranged in age from infancy to sixteen years old, the Bolton home must have been a bustling habitation. The demands on Gertrude were especially great. Bolton’s letters to his brother sometimes mentioned her ill health and general weakness.2 The strain of bearing seven children, the last one born when she was forty-one, had taken a physical toll.

  Gertrude was by no means an invalid, for she continued to run the densely populated Bolton home with the assistance of a cleaning woman. Herbert Jr. recalled his mother as a vigorous woman who was more than a match for her husband. “Dad’s domesticity was limited to dressing himself.” Years of living on Bolton’s modest earnings had made Gertrude a careful manager of the household treasury. She used seven-and-a-half-watt lightbulbs, and resisted turning on even these dim bulbs, in order to save money. The children often wore clothes that their mother made rather than store-bought goods. “Dad was at the university so much,” Herbert Jr. recalled, “that nearly all of the task of raising us f
ell to our mother.” She settled quarrels, allotted chores, and oversaw music lessons, practice, and homework. Young Herbert remembered his father standing at the head of the dinner table carving meat: “That’s a fine roast, Mama. A little more Herbert?…it’s good. More potatoes, and peas Tootie? [sister Gertrude] Here, pass your plate.” While he served his family, Bolton incessantly spoke about history and ate heartily and quickly, usually finishing before anyone else. Then he would ask, “Mama, have I had my pie?” Within the family the Boltons were known as Big Papa and Big Mama. Bolton loved to have his family around him, “but he was always the center of attention, as he talked on-and-on.”3

  His family enjoyed, or at least humored, Bolton’s long evening lectures over the carving board. They knew that he was completely engrossed with his work, though Herbert Jr. later insisted that he was an attentive father who gave each child personal attention. Nevertheless, his unusual work habits often extended to Thanksgiving and Christmas even with large family gatherings on hand. He would work at his office until dinnertime, when one of the family would pick him up. After eating and visiting for a while, Bolton would become restless. Then he would ask someone to drive him back to the university. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he would explain. Off he went, returning home at midnight or later. He was something of an insomniac. Eventually he established his own bedroom so that he could read without disturbing Gertrude. “And so it was,” young Herbert wrote, “day after day, year after year, Saturdays and Sundays and holidays included.”4 Bolton sometimes set aside time for family outings on the weekends (although he probably inwardly chafed at losing precious time in the library). Usually the trips involved a heavy dose of history. There were missions to visit and old explorers’ trails to drive over.5

  Bolton’s obsessive work habits conditioned his family life, but nothing suggests that this arrangement caused unhappiness in the Bolton marriage or maladjustment in the children. Letters between Herbert, Gertrude, and the children give a picture of a busy, contented, middle-class family (if one somewhat strapped for cash and a little overeducated in history) that was headed by a strong, though somewhat distracted, father. Herbert described his father as “in charge…master of the house,” but the most striking word he used to describe him was “gentle.” The letters that passed between Herbert and Gertrude bespoke a close relationship and the sort of mutual dependency that marks a successful marriage.6