Herbert Eugene Bolton_Historian of the American Borderlands Page 23

  The substantive chapters follow the well-worn trail of Bolton's work. Missionaries, especially Father Junpípero Serra, were explorer heroes. The Mexican American War came and went without apparent cause, but with a good effect—the U.S. acquisition of California. There were a few interesting twists in the gold rush story. So many men went to California that some people feared that the Eastern Seaboard would lack a sufficient number of workers to staff its industries. Luckily, failed revolutions and famine drove German and Irish immigrants out of Europe and into America. “Thus, the east got these new immigrants,” the authors explained, “while California got the pick of the energetic, daring, young Americans.” There was no question about who got the best end of that deal. California's Native Sons and nativists alike could cheer the Bolton and Adams narrative.

  As promised in the preface, the book portrays the San Francisco vigilantes in the best possible light, which is to say that it follows the reasoning of Mary Williams's thesis. The leaders of the first and second vigilance committees are presented as disinterested men who wanted only to restore good government to chaotic San Francisco. After hanging several bad men and whipping and banishing others, “San Francisco was a quiet, orderly city.” Thus salutary hangings and floggings were merely illustrative lessons in American civics. As Bolton and Adams explained, the only way to “have good government all the time was to be on the watch all the time against evil doers.”

  In addition to cultivating Anglo pioneer sentiment, Bolton intended his little textbook to instruct children in the fundamental facts of California's Hispanic history. More than one hundred heavily illustrated pages tell the story of the Spanish and Mexican influence on California, from the time of Cortes to the coming of Fremont. Watered down it may have been, but Bolton gave the children of California a positive history of the state's Hispanic past. It was the juvenile version of The Spanish Borderlands, complete with a hemispheric perspective.

  By the mid-1920s Bolton had become a familiar and respected figure in California and an asset for the University. Nevertheless, he was still an employee of the institution in an era when University presidents had immediate authority over the faculty and impressed a personal stamp on daily campus life that would seem extraordinary at today's large institutions. Even trivial transgressions by the faculty could attract the attention of the president. In 1926 President W. W. Campbell made clear Bolton's place in the Berkeley pecking order. It had come to Campbell's attention that Bolton had led his class in a football cheer during the week before the big game with Stanford. In Campbell's opinion, this was “an unjustified use of academic time and opportunity.”45

  Bolton was then fifty-six years old, the department chairman, a full professor with twenty-seven years of college teaching experience. During the 1926 academic year alone, he had published three books in six volumes, and he would be knighted by the king of Spain. Some senior professors might have given an impolitic response to President Campbell's reproach, but not Bolton. He waited a week, and then explained that the problem began when the previous class ran over its allotted time because of an examination. The air in the hall was “very bad,” and because of the lateness of the previous class, Bolton's students were slow getting to their seats so “the psychology of the class was very…disturbed.” He had prepared a difficult lecture that would require the full attention of his students, who suffocated in the fetid and perturbed atmosphere. What was he to do? Professor Bolton drew on his many years of teaching experience. He asked for someone to lead a cheer while his assistants held the doors open, thus clearing the air and improving student psychology in one masterly pedagogical stroke. The whole episode took only five minutes and the lecture was a great success. “I have written the above in order to explain and not to argue.” He had attended only one football game in his entire career (a Stanford game), because he was too busy with “writing to find the time.”46 In the end President Campbell agreed that a “reasonable amount of student cheering and singing” once in a while was all right.47

  This minor incident reveals Bolton's way of dealing with criticism from those who sat in judgment over him. Even as Bolton adroitly explained himself to the president, he insisted that he was loyal and obedient. This was more than a ploy. Bolton moved at the highest levels in the University and had no desire to alienate Campbell.

  The skirmish with Campbell preceded a controversy that could have had been more serious because it involved the Native Sons. In 1927 the state legislature with the advice of the Native Sons voted to place statues of Junípero Serra and Thomas Starr King in the national Capitol. Bolton and Davis had strongly supported Serra, but there was a vigorous debate over who should be California's other representative. Eventually a consensus formed among the Native Sons for King—a Protestant minister who supported the union and raised money for the Sanitary Fund during the Civil War. A newspaper reported that Bolton opposed the selection of King, and this came to the attention of President Campbell and Governor C. C. Young, who had already signed the legislation naming Serra and King. Campbell asked Bolton to explain his views so that he could share them confidentially with the governor.48

  Now here was some dicey business. If California's leading historian came out against King, then the governor, the state legislature, the Native Sons, the University, and President Campbell would be embarrassed. Bolton, of course, depended on the goodwill of all of these people, and he had just recommended some Berkeley students for Native Sons fellowships. Moreover, the controversy happened to come, Bolton explained, at a moment when there was “a pretty strong feeling on the part of some…Native Sons that more work should be done on the American period of California history and less emphasis placed on the Spanish period.”49

  Considering all of this, Bolton answered Campbell carefully. The newspaper had misquoted him, he said. Actually, Bolton had told the reporter that he “had not given the matter sufficient attention to have a personal opinion.” Now, Bolton was pleased to report, he had studied King's life and found that “he was a much larger figure than I had supposed.” Bolton went on to characterize King as “a worthy representative of California.” But he hedged a bit, saying that it would require further study to determine whether King, “next to Serra,” was “the best representative of California.” Nevertheless, he added, two legislatures and the Native Sons had thoroughly considered the matter. Bolton also warned Campbell that some aspects of the question were “not altogether historical. I do not need to commit these to paper, but…could tell you better such things as I have learned in a personal conference.”50

  Whatever Bolton might have said privately to President Campbell, some things seem obvious. If Serra, a Spanish Catholic missionary, was to represent California in Washington, D.C., then a New England Protestant minister like King would provide religious and ethnic balance that would mute anti-Catholic sentiment against Serra. At Campbell's request Bolton wrote to the governor expressing his support for Serra and King.51

  But by then, Bolton had formed an opinion of King quite different from the one he had given to Campbell and Young. When the controversy over King erupted, Bolton asked a former student, Professor Joseph Ellison of Oregon State College, about King's role in the “saving of California for the union.”52 under Bolton's direction Ellison had written a dissertation about California during the Civil War. “To say that King ‘saved California for the union’ seems to me a great exaggeration,” Ellison replied. “It is a myth.” King preached to the converted, who received “an extra dose of loyalty making some of them perhaps hysterical.” Bolton responded to Ellison on the same day that he wrote the governor. “My opinion of King coincides quite closely with yours.”53

  Bolton's shrewd negotiation of California's cultural fault lines helped to make him the most important historian in the state. Bolton was not only a leading academic historian with an international reputation but also a well-known public figure in California. His rise to public prominence was no accident. He worked at it. By the 1920s Bolton
had become the face, the voice, the embodiment of history to Californians—a leading spokesperson for the University as well as the history department and the Bancroft Library. He represented the University's history program before the regents and the state legislature. Newspapermen asked his opinions about historical topics and he provided them, usually without the sort of repercussions that resulted from his comments on Serra and King. Bolton was famous—very famous by academic standards. There are several cartons of newspaper clippings about him in his papers at the Bancroft.54

  For the most part, Bolton told his public audiences what they wanted to hear, even when that meant ignoring complicated and contradictory evidence. If his supporters in the Native Sons wanted heroic tales about their Anglo forefathers, Bolton provided them. Yet he simultaneously argued in favor of an inclusive, multinational, and multicultural historical view that suggested a new way to envision American history. He had the canny ability to wrap these ideas together in a narrative that washed over his audience without alienating them. When Bolton did disturb his listeners, they let him know about it and he adjusted accordingly. Bolton served many masters, including the University, the Native Sons, and private benefactors. As he saw it in the 1920s, it was his job to keep them all happy. He believed that by serving the University and its friends, Bolton's California school of history would produce a narrative that would stand alongside or even supplant the established story with its northeastern biases. But to do that, Bolton had to cultivate public and private support in a world where history was politicized along ethnic and religious lines.

  FIGURE 1.

  Bolton as a high school student. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 2.

  Bolton the school teacher. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 3.

  Bolton and his roommate at the University of Wisconsin. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 4.

  Charles Homer Haskins and Frederick Jackson Turner at Johns Hopkins University. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.

  FIGURE 5.

  Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 6.

  Henry Morse Stephens at Bohemian Grove. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 7.

  University of California Faculty Club, 1902. Stephens is fourth from left. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 8.

  Doe Library under construction at about the time Bolton was hired. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 9.

  The Bolton Family, c. 1919. Courtesy of Gale Randall.

  FIGURE 10.

  Bolton and Father Zephyrin Engelhardt at the Mission Santa Barbara, c. 1915. Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Mission Archive.

  FIGURE 11.

  Bolton with knights and a few ladies at his round table in the 1930s. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 12.

  Bolton with one of his gigantic maps for the Americas course. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 13.

  Bolton atop an Anasazi ruin. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 14.

  Bolton and a Navajo guide survey the Grand Canyon. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 15.

  Bolton salutes his companions (and rides on). Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 16.

  Bolton taking notes in Mexico, c. 1940. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 17.

  Somewhere in Mexico with George Hammond on his left and Aubrey Neasham on his right. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 18.

  Bolton (at the head of the table on the left near the windows) in the Great Hall of the Faculty Club, c. 1948. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 19.

  Frederick Jackson Turner at the Huntington Library. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.

  FIGURE 20.

  “Captain” Reginald Berti Haselden at his microscope in the Huntington Library. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.

  FIGURE 21.

  The final Bolton residence on Buena Vista. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 22.

  The Boltons' living room. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

  FIGURE 23.

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

  T E N · Exploration, Empire,

  and Patrimony

  Bolton wanted to know the ground that his Spanish explorers had covered. His keen interest in mapping and historical geography was apparent as soon as he arrived in the Southwest. For the rest of his life Bolton either would be on the trail in search of Spanish explorers or planning a new expedition. He loved these trips more than anything else he did.

  Personal examination of the trails of Coronado, Kino, Anza, and Escalante was as important to Bolton as minute examination of their manuscripts. Bolton conducted his trail research in roadless, rugged, desert terrain that stretched for many hundreds of miles and across an international border. When on horseback, he carried transcripts of the originals in a briefcase looped over the saddle horn in order to accurately map the route and (just as important) to detect inaccuracies, lapses, and elisions in the manuscript. Cross-country travel in the desert could be dangerous, especially in the summer. A few hours in the desert without water in July could kill the unprepared sightseer. Winter days were mild, but nights could be bitterly cold. Bolton's desert treks were not for people who required creature comforts.

  By the 1920s the topography of the Southwest was as familiar to Bolton as the card catalog of the Bancroft Library. He liked to call himself an explorer, a title that associated him with the last wave of European and Euro-American discoveries from the poles to the mountains and jungles of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

  Any other scholar working on the exploits of early Spanish adventurers probably would have toured at least some of the territory he had traversed. Few historians would have explored the country as comprehensively as Bolton did. Indeed his name became synonymous with personal exploration of western trails and terrain. His maps remain important sources for the study of northern Mexico and the Southwest. Maps and mapmaking delighted Bolton. “He would work for days and days,” recalled Bolton's doctoral student William Henry Ellison, “with large detailed maps spread over the floor…on his hands and knees with documents…trying to figure out whether Anza passed on one side of a certain hill or the other.” Ellison and most of Bolton's other graduate students admired his attention to cartographic detail. A few dissenters thought that his minute attention to explorers’ routes and campsites amounted to a trivial pursuit. One of his graduate students boldly murmured during a Bolton lecture that he did not care on which side of the arroyo Jedediah Smith had urinated.1

  It is safe to assume that only a minority of Bolton's listeners shared such sentiments—and even safer to assume that they would not dare to utter such heresies within Bolton's hearing or within earshot of some of his more loyal students. Indeed, Bolton's students and friends regarded travel on the trail with him as a rare privilege to experience history firsthand, with Bolton's running commentary on historical figures, history, and geography as sound track. Bolton's expeditions to the borderlands were famous. A retinue of guides, National Park Service employees, and friends accompanied him. The cast of supporting characters changed over time, but Bolton was always the star of these desert traveling parties.

  On occasion Bolton sought fresh companions for his trail trips. In late 1927 Frank C. Lockwood, a dean at the University of Arizona, invited Bolton to serve on a committee to promote the erection of a statue of Jesuit pioneer Father Eusebio Kino. Bolton enthusiastically accepted Lockwood's assignment. He invited Lockwood to join him on the trail of Juan Bautista de Anza, who had led two expeditions across the Colorado Desert to California between 1774 and 1776.2 Lockw
ood jumped at the chance and hired two automobiles and drivers for the occasion.3 Bolton and Lockwood quickly became fast friends.

  Dean Lockwood was the sort of muscular scholar that Bolton appreciated. After a stint as a Methodist minister Lockwood earned a PhD in English literature at Northwestern University in 1896. He taught at Allegheny College, but his political activism and his wife's membership in the Unitarian Church combined to force his resignation.4 He took a position at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The desert and its history appealed to Lockwood. He switched from studying Wordsworth and Coleridge to writing about Kino and Geronimo.5 Bolton's work inspired Lockwood to travel in Mexico to see historic sites. On one such foray he hired a guide to go to Cocospera, an isolated mission in the state of Sonora. Once they reached that remote place, the guide attempted to rob Lockwood at knifepoint while they were climbing the stairs in the ruined bell tower. Instead of forking over his cash, Lockwood shouted, “You unmitigated reprobate!” and knocked his assailant down the stone steps.6 The dean was neither a sissy nor a cusser. One has to admire a man who would not resort to coarse language even while engaged in a knife fight.