Book Reviews

Edited by Melissa Lambert Milewski.(Logan:Utah State University Press,2007.xiv + 639 pp.Cloth,$34.95.)

BEFORE THE MANIFESTO is the ninth in the Life Writings of Frontier Women Series published by Utah State University Press,and like its predecessors, provides insights into life in early Utah.This volume focuses on LDS plural marriage in Utah,specifically during the period between Congress’s declaring it a felony in 1882 to the LDS manifesto ending that practice within the church in 1890.Whatever one’s view of polygamy – in favor,opposed,or completely baffled – this book offers information and insights into plural marriage in early Utah rarely accessible from any source.As both a polygamous wife herself and the mother of others who became involved in polygamy,Mary Lois Morris gives a sympathetic insider’s view,demonstrating her own commitment to the principle and her antipathy toward those who would imprison participants in the practice.

Mary Lois Walker married John Thomas Morris,an artist of some skill,on September 5,1852,after a six-month courtship.The marriage lasted less than three years.John Thomas Morris died February 20,1855,only a few days after the death of his and Mary’s son,their only child.As he was dying,John said to Mary Lois,“If anything should happen that I do die,I do not want you to leave the family.”She agreed that she would not.Then,turning to his brother,Elias,John asked,“Will you take Mary,and finish the work that I have begun,”referring specifically to having children and raising a family (115-16 ).Both Mary and Elias,already married to Mary Parry,agreed,and in a matter of months Mary Lois and Elias entered into a levirate marriage like that practiced in ancient Israel.When a husband died, the wife was constrained from marrying outside the family,and a brother or other male relative would accept her as his wife to produce children in the name of the dead husband (Genesis 38:6-11;Deuteronomy 25:5-10;Ruth 1 - 4).Mary Lois viewed her marriage to Elias,therefore,as entirely valid during her lifetime,but her children by that marriage would be John’s for eternity.

Mary Lois recorded her life in her diary and in a detailed life sketch.Of her eighty-nine day books,seventy-two are known to be extant.In those she wrote nearly daily,some entries only a few words,others of considerable length and detail,including information about herself,her family,and news of the period. Melissa Milewski has carefully chosen those portions of the life sketch and those years from the diary that detail Morris’s experiences with polygamy,her feelings about it,and her concerns and difficulties as she went into hiding when the practice was outlawed.

The organization of the volume helps the reader follow Mary Lois’s life easily. The initial section,the first part of the life sketch,introduces Mary and her husbands to the reader,and establishes her situation and her reasons for entering a polygamous marriage.The second section is the diary,from 1879 through 1887,a crucial period when the LDS church still advocated polygamy,but when the federal government attempted to capture and imprison polygamists.Mary writes with both passion and compassion about friends and neighbors who were being tried and sent to prison and her fears that she would be called as a witness in court.When federal prosecutors attempted to convict Elias,Mary Lois went into hiding,noting each time where she went,who helped to hide her,and how grateful she was when she found safe havens or could even be allowed to return to her own home and family.The final section of the volume returns to her life sketch, giving her account from 1902 through 1905,the years she spent with her daughter,Kate,also a polygamous wife,who was exiled to Mexico to avoid prosecution in the United States.

Milewski’s careful annotations make this book readily accessible.Notes identify things Morris mentions that were commonplace for her,but obscure for the modern reader,from stories in the Juvenile Instructor to specific court cases.Individuals are not only identified in the text,but appear additionally in an appendix,an alphabetical register of names,which gives the name,birth and death dates and places,brief description of the life,and sources of further information. Photographs of individuals,buildings,and pages of Morris’s diary add interest,and often clarity,to this account.The references and bibliographic entries to other studies of polygamy in Utah enhance the book’s value. Before the Manifesto is a valuable resource for any student of that crucial and,for people like Mary Lois, extremely difficult period in the state’s history.

COLLEENWHITLEY Brigham Young University

By Carol Cornwall Madsen.(Provo and Salt Lake and Deseret Book 2006,xiii + 498 pp.Paperback,$21.95.)

CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN,a meticulous scholar,has written many articles and books on Mormon history.After “living with”Emmeline B.Wells’journals and writings for many years,Madsen now exercises her expert abilities to produce her first book on Emmeline’s life–in this case,her public life.As in past work, Madsen again provides a well-documented account,this time on one of Utah’s outstanding women.

Emmeline Wells, a prolific writer, editor, and advocate for women’s suffrage, stands alone in Utah women’s history for her dedication and life-long active participation insuring that the women of Utah and of the nation received the right to vote. Though other Utah women such as Emily S. Richards, and Dr. Ellen B. Fergeson actively supported the cause, it was Wells who was always ready, always eager to attend meetings and always prepared to speak for women.

Wells lived during a difficult time in Utah’s history.Though both men and women had been granted the right to vote,federal legislation continually frustrated their efforts to exercise that right,and also thwarted their attempts to achieve statehood.Polygamists were harassed and arrested,church funds were threatened unless the church complied and ceased its marriage customs.

Madsen demonstrates that Wells determined that association with influential women in the east would help Utah’s populace,especially women,to be seen in a more sympathetic light.Wells reasoned that having seen the capabilities of Mormon women and getting a better understanding of Mormonism,these women would pressure lawmakers to grant Utah sovereignty.Thus,she made repeated forays to meetings of the National Woman Suffrage Association,the National and International Councils of Women,the League of Women Voters,and other powerful groups.She became friends with Elizabeth Cady Stanton,Carrie Chapman Catt,Charlotte Perkins Gilman,and numerous leaders of these groups. She invited them to Utah where she made sure they saw all the positive things that Utah and Mormonism had to offer.

A woman of little means,Wells spent her life almost single handedly publishing the Woman’s Exponent to maintain an income,as well as to express her strongly held views.Her polygamous marriage to Daniel H.Wells did not provide her with enough money to raise their daughters,nor to take care of her own needs.Perhaps this situation drove her to see that all women received the rights and opportunities needed to improve their lives.

The discussions of her travels and relationships in the east,which cover the bulk of the almost five hundred-page book,results in a sometimes tedious narration. Each trip has the same components–getting chosen to attend,raising money for the trip,presenting papers or presiding at meetings,feeling elation when things went well or frustration when they did not,then returning home to write about her experiences in the Woman’s Exponent.The chapters of the book move from discussion of one organization to another as Wells changes her focus,but the sameness of the discussions is demanding on the reader to keep interested.

Emmeline Wells is an individual to be admired.The total dedication she had to her causes,even though others didn’t always share her view of their importance,is extraordinary.Madsen gives us much information on her contributions,but has little on Wells’work in the Relief Society and little explanation of what rank and file Utah women thought of suffrage.For instance,did they even read the Exponent? Madsen alludes to the younger generation’s lack of commitment to the cause,and to those who did join in,are seen by Wells as being inept.

When popular lecturer Victoria Woodhull came west and spoke at the Liberal Institute in Salt Lake City she downgraded women as weak,ignorant,vain and silly.Emmeline defend them,as she did all her life,by writing,“I believe in women,especially thinking women”(95).

This reader looks forward to Madsen’s future book on Wells which hopefully will give us a more personal look at her life.

AUDREYM. GODFREY Logan

By Diana L.Ahmad.(Reno and Las Vegas:University of Nevada Press, 2007.xiii + 132 pp.Cloth,$34.95.)

THIS NARROWLY FOCUSED—but illuminating—monograph concentrates on “the impact smoking-opium and its culture had on the demands for Chinese exclusion”(xi).Using newspapers,contemporary medical discourses, government documents,and court transcripts, The Opium Debate explores the significance of the recreational use of opium by both Anglo-Americans and Chinese immigrants in the American West.

Opening with a discussion of how use of this poppy-based narcotic first spread through China and then to the western United States alongside Chinese immigrants,this short book then turns to newspapermen’s lurid descriptions of opium “dens”found in Chinese communities across the West throughout the 1860s, 1870s,and 1880s.Examining the discourse crafted by physicians,politicians,and journalists about the relationship between smoking opium and its purported side effects—sexual immodesty and racial degeneration—the work notes the growing concerns about Anglo-American opium use in the debates surrounding exclusion in the early 1880s.The most useful section of the book scrutinizes the surprising expansion of opium use after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that eventually led to a 1909 federal law prohibiting the importation of the drug.

Given their sizable Chinese communities in the years leading up to exclusion, Salt Lake City and Ogden newspapers offer important examples of AngloAmerican views on Chinese immigrants and smoking opium.The author appropriately draws on a variety of articles published in the Deseret Evening News, Salt Lake Herald, Salt Lake Tribune,and Ogden Herald during the 1870s and 1880s to include the perspectives of white Utahns in this regional study.

The Opium Debate carefully scrutinizes the supposed relationship between opium use and male as well as female sexuality.Its discussion of local and state opium prosecutions in the 1870s and 1880s makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the efforts by middle-class Anglos to evict the drug and its users from their communities.Finally,the work stakes out an important role for debates about opium use (and concurrent immorality) in the better-known political and economic justifications for Chinese exclusion.

Even so, the ongoing scholarly debate on the impulse behind exclusion—one group of historians suggesting that exclusion stemmed from the racism of white laborers concerned about economic competition (best illustrated by Andrew Saxton’s classic The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California) and the other arguing that the ruling Republican Party latched on to calls for exclusion to ease national social tensions (laid out by Andrew Gyory in Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act)—remains completely absent from the book’s analysis, notes, or bibliography. This oversight fosters a debilitating lack of precision about exactly how concerns about opium fed into the motives for federal legislation barring male Chinese workers from the United States.

Furthermore,fascinating primary sources describing opium use (and its users) are too often taken at face value.Laden with judgments that speak volumes about how Anglos imagined both opium and the Chinese,these rich texts might have been more fruitfully mined.One also wonders if sentiments to ban opium use and distribution at the local and state levels in the 1880s and 1890s were related to the emergence of middle-class temperance movements.

Finally,given the importance of both Chinese immigration and opium in California history (and vice-versa),the book strangely avoids the close study of its subjects in that state,instead turning to cases and sources from the Mountain West (with nods to Texas and the Pacific Northwest).This proves to be both a strength and a weakness.It reclaims the social history of Chinese and Anglo-American relations in many smaller cities across the regional West even as it fails to illuminate the role of opium in race relations in Chinese America’s most significant communities.Despite these flaws, The Opium Debate fills a historiographical gap on smoking-opium use and its ramifications in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American West.

MICHAEL J. LANSING Augsburg College Minneapolis, Minnesota

Edited by Doug Brugge,Timothy Benally, and Esther Yazzie-Lewis.(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,2006.xix + 210 pp.Cloth,$29.95.)

THIS IMPORTANT STUDY provides a clear,wide-ranging analysis of the impacts that uranium mining and milling left in Navajo Country over the past sixty years.The editors skillfully weave together diverse issues surrounding the entangled history of uranium and the Navajo Nation in this compact volume.

Serving as a companion piece the Navajo Uranium Miner Oral History and Photography Project (which included photos exhibits,video,newsletter,and archive), this book employs public health experts,legal analysts,social scientists,and perhaps most importantly,Navajo testimonies.Collectively,these perspectives reveal the historical injustices experienced by Navajos and highlight how Navajo responses to the federal government and uranium industry have evolved during the past several decades.

Over ten chapters,experts outline these detrimental biological,environmental, cultural,psychological,and historical impacts shared by Navajo individuals,families,and communities.Esther Yazzie-Lewis and Jim Zion explore Navajo cultural concepts of uranium,including “Leetso”(“Yellow Monster”),and “Nayee”(“that which gets in the way of a successful life”),while Carol A.Markstrom and Perry H.Charley argue that the cumulative effects of uranium mining,tailings piles, milling,and government indifference to Navajo concerns constitute a singular, enduring “uranium disaster”that cannot be repaired without taking into account a more holistic Diné concept of uranium.Doug Brugge and Rob Goble provide a concise history of uranium mining and milling in Navajo Country while also evaluating the shortcomings of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) since its passage in 1990 and amendments in 2000.

The book rests upon seven interviews with Navajos themselves.Indeed,these oral histories serve as the most compelling part of this study.Timothy Benally, retired director of the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers and Uranium Education Center,skillfully draws out harrowing stories shared by miners and their widows detailing their hazardous working conditions and frustration with inadequate compensation.Significantly,the last interview (an excerpt from the film Homeland ) with Rita and Mitchell Capitan,co-founders of the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM),reflects the shift towards Navajo empowerment and resistance to recent plans to resurrect uranium mining in their backyard.

Most of the material in this book already appeared in other venues.Hence,no new research or revelations are presented.Rather,the study’s significance lies in its synthesis of a broad range of issues facing the Navajo Nation.Due to its enormous complexity,the scholarship on uranium and nuclear development tends to get compartmentalized according to historical,environmental,and legal issues. Similarly,the complexities of uranium tailings,mining compensation,mills,and weapons testing also get pigeonholed.Thus,this collection provides historians a comprehensive cross-section of the Navajo Nation while also commanding some reflection on the larger issues of environmental racism and energy development in the West.Most importantly,though,it allows Navajos to speak for themselves— which they do forcefully and clearly.

A foreword by Steward Udall—the longtime proponent for RECA—as well as an endorsement on the book jacket from current Navajo President Joe Shirley,Jr., further indicate the current pulse of Navajo attitudes vis-à-vis uranium.In 2005, Shirley signed the Diné Natural Resources Protection Act.The law prohibits all forms of uranium development in Navajo Country.It is the first such law passed anywhere within Indian Country.Thus,this book marks a dark chapter in Navajo history but also reflects a new narrative shared by many Navajos—one that turns its back on future nuclear development.

NATALE (NAT)ZAPPIA University of California Santa Cruz

By Marilyn Norcini.(Tucson:The University of Arizona Press,2007.xxii + 179 pp.Cloth,$45.00.)

WHEN DR.EDWARD DOZIER became a fully credentialed anthropologist teaching within the American university system,his very personhood challenged fundamental assumptions in the field of anthropology.He may even have contributed to historical changes in anthropological practice.Edward P.Dozier (19161971) was born on Santa Clara Pueblo,New Mexico,to a Tewa Indian mother and an Anglo father.He was raised and he self-identified as a Tewa Indian.He went on to pursue a highly successful career as an anthropologist,studying Pueblo linguistics and social organization as well as the Kalinga people of the Philippines. Norcini’s book is an intellectual biography that examines Dozier’s role in the history of anthropology and attempts to explain how he turned a paradox into an advantage.

At the time,being an Indian and an anthropologist was a paradox.During the mid-twentieth century,anthropology was predominantly a practice of Europeans and European Americans who studied “the Other,”predominantly non-European peoples.Anthropology presented itself as an objective science,and held that only an outsider could objectively examine and interpret the culture and behaviors of other peoples.By simultaneously being an “insider”—related by blood,culture, and language to the Pueblo peoples he studied—and an “outsider”—through his anthropological training and position as a professor—Dozier challenged the assumption that an outsider could best study and interpret a culture.

Norcini’s book shows very clearly that,in fact,his personal background made him uniquely suited to bridge the intellectual divide between anthropologists and the Pueblo Indians.His dual role,while sometimes challenging personally and professionally,contributed to his success.His fluency in Tewa,intimate understanding of Pueblo social norms,concerns and taboos,and kin relationships helped him gain access to and trust from the people he studied.His training enabled him to interpret for his colleagues in the idiom they understood,and helped him find success.

The book is a combination of biography and intellectual history. Norcini focuses on key moments and transitions in his professional development – his multicultural childhood, his early interest in linguistics, his graduate studies and fieldwork among clan relatives, his first years in the tenure-track system, his studies in the Philippines, and finally his role in the formal development of American Indian studies programs. Throughout, the book also provides interesting background and overviews to the history of anthropology in general, the history of certain Pueblo tribes, changes in government approaches to Indian affairs, the history of acculturation studies, and the development of ethnic and Indian studies programs.

The book provides a particularly valuable historical discussion of historical changes regarding key anthropological questions:How do we study and interpret other peoples or even ourselves? Is the explanation of an “insider”(called the “emic”approach) more valuable than the explanation of an “outsider”(the “etic” approach)? What is the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in a fundamentally interpretive social science? Fifty years ago most anthropologists would have argued that interpretations of human cultures were best done in an “objective”manner,using an “etic”approach,by a “disinterested outsider.”Today, the practice of anthropology admits that there is no truly disinterested observation and interpretation of other peoples,that the voices and interpretations of peoples can greatly enhance our own understandings,and that the study of cultures,even our own,by “insiders”is a legitimate approach to explaining human diversity and cultural practices.While Dozier cannot be credited with all of those changes,there is no doubt that through his courageous and steadfast efforts to resolve the false paradox of the Indian anthropologist,he greatly contributed to the growth and development of the field.

MATTHEWT. SEDDON Utah Division of State History

Edited by Donald G.Godfrey and Kenneth W.Godfrey.(Provo:Religious Studies Center,Brigham Young University,2006.xix + 604 pp.Cloth,$29.95.)

A PREQUEL VOLUME to Donald Godfrey’s and co-editor Brigham Y.Card’s

The Diaries of Charles Ora Card:The Canadian Years,1886-1903 (University of Utah Press,1993),Card’s Utah diaries are the inseparable companion to this long overlooked documentary record.The diaries document a critical time of economic growth in Cache Valley,an important agricultural region in northern Utah and Southeastern Idaho.

This volume is expertly annotated by two experienced scholars who are wellsuited for the task.Editors,Donald G.Godfrey and Kenneth W.Godfrey,the former a professor of journalism and the latter a trained historian and educator of religion,provide ample footnotes and photographs,placing the diaries in historical and social context.

Known to most Mormon historians as the one who led a group of colonists to settle southern Alberta,Canada,Charles Ora Card (1839-1906) spent his formative years of leadership in Cache Valley between 1859 and 1887.Card was elected to a seat on the Logan City Council in March 1866,carrying with it responsibilities as director of the irrigation canal company and road commissioner.In addition to his service on the council,Card held the position of superintendent of common schools in Logan.His community service and associations with prominent businessmen and church leaders Moses Thatcher,William B.Preston,Charles W. Nibley,and James A.Leishman undoubtedly influenced his own acumen.Having also received formal,though short-term,business training in Ogden,Card brought administrative savvy and organizational skills to a number of local enterprises, including the United Order Manufacturing and Building Company,Zions Board of Trade,and other projects such as the Utah and Northern Railroad and the Cache Valley Agricultural and Manufacturing Association.

A very important feature of the Utah Years is Card’s untiring fulfillment of duties in positions of church leadership.Card’s Utah diaries record his duties as first counselor in the High Priest Quorum under President Moses Thatcher from 18771879.The diaries also record his service as counselor to Stake President William B. Preston from 1879 to 1884,and his own tenure of service as president of Cache Stake,a position he occupied after the release of Preston in May 1884 until August 1890.As a consequence,he recorded the innumerable church meetings,sermons by visiting apostles,his many trips to attend conferences in neighboring communities, and his pleasant experiences as an overnight guest of hosting families.

Perhaps the most prominent activities recorded in his diary involve the two largest church building projects in the valley.From 1873 to 1877,he superintended the construction of the Logan Tabernacle,and in 1877 he was called to superintend the construction of the Logan Temple.Card’s diary entries record his visits to the temple sawmill in Logan Canyon,his encounters with mill workers and quarrymen,the purchasing of materials and supplies for the various temple work camps,and meetings with church officials.

For all their worth as documentary source,Card’s diaries read more like formal logbook entries than introspective musings.Meetings and sermons are recorded with utmost detail and serve as semi-official minutes to all the important ecclesiastical events that took place in the Cache Stake during the 1870s and 1880s.Rarely does Card give us a sense of what he thinks,but more a factual narrative telling what happened.

While the editors concede that “Card’s diary entries are seldom personally reflective,”they are correct in pointing out the value of the diaries for recording religious meetings,the initiation of cooperative enterprises in northern Utah,and the planning and carrying out of significant church building projects.

The holographic diaries—primarily written in pencil—require expert eyes like those of a paleographer who reads ancient texts.Card’s grammar is quite good and his script proficient,but the quick graphite jottings are often hard to clearly discern.Though the diaries have been available for many years at Brigham Young University and in microfilm copies deposited at a number of western repositories, historians have long avoided them as a source because they are so difficult to read.

Despite these difficulties,the editors have done a fine job transcribing and providing historical context to the diaries.In addition to writing an informative introductory essay,the editors divided the diaries into meaningful chapter segments and include historical photographs at appropriate locations in the text. The annotations are well placed and provide pertinent background information on people and events recorded.

If one must point out any undesirable qualities,it is that the volume is marked by incongruencies in physical design and format.While the choice in typeface is pleasant and easy to read,the massive length of the diaries must have prompted the publisher to choose a double-columned text.A handsome photo montage on the cover is appealing but falls short of making up for the glossy textbook binding.A jacketed cloth binding might have given it a more understated,elegant appearance.From an aesthetic standpoint,it is unfortunate that the two published Card volumes will now not only be distinguished by different editorial teams and publishers,but also physical differences in size and cover designs.Despite these superficial criticisms,the Utah Years will stand as an invaluable source for a crucial period of economic and religious transition in nineteenth-century Cache Valley.

Recently awarded the Mormon History Association’s prestigious Steven F. Christensen Best Documentary Award for 2007,Card’s Utah Years will undoubtedly rank among the very best of edited Mormon diaries.The diaries can now take their place on the shelf next to other great published diaries including those of John D.Lee,Hosea Stout,Heber C.Kimball,and Wilford Woodruff.The editors are to be commended for this monumental achievement.

NOELA. CARMACK Utah State University

By W.Paul Reeve.(Urbana and Chicago:University of Illinois Press,2006.x + 231 pp.Cloth, $35.00.)

VIRTUALLY EVERYONE interested in Utah history is aware that Native Americans—Utes,Goshutes,Paiutes,Shoshones,Navajos,Hopis—populated the area for centuries before Europeans arrived in the nineteenth century.Mountain men and explorers came through the area but it was the Mormons who came to stay.For a decade between 1847 and 1857 they were the main white contingent. There was some culture clash between the Mormons and Native Americans but both groups worked at resolving their differences,particularly because the Mormons needed the Indians.

From then on others came—soldiers, miners, railroad builders, merchants, missionaries. This migration greatly multiplied the culture clash, not only between the newcomers and the Native Americans but also between them and the Mormons. The general outline of this story is known to Utah history readers. Now a new book comes on the scene. Paul Reeve’s work puts meat on the tale of culture clash. It zeroes in on the Southwest (including southern Utah, southern Nevada and northern Arizona) and on three competing groups—the Paiutes, the Mormons and the miners.

The Paiutes saw the area as chosen for them,a place for the only true humans on earth.The Mormons who came there intended to establish God’s Zion and they wanted to include the Paiutes in their fold.When the miners came to the same places,they considered themselves the true Americans.They were disciples of work and wealth.The Mormons,they felt,were clearly un-American and the Paiutes,in their view,obstacles to progress who should be moved from the area, specifically to the Uintah Reservation in northeastern Utah.

Reeve shows how the miners developed close contacts with the United States government emphasizing they were productive tax paying citizens whereas the Mormons operated a cooperative agricultural system that consumed its own goods and produced nothing for the nation.The miners were able to present their case so believably that they twice convinced Congress to redraw the western boundary of Utah,slicing off substantial portions of the Utah territory and putting them in the new state of Nevada.Utah officials found little support.The powerful senator from Ohio,James M.Ashley,favored the miners and even proposed a bill in 1869 to eliminate the Utah Territory.Clearly the miners and the Mormons were involved in a cultural clash,each decrying the other’s world view and lifestyle.

The three groups worked at maintaining their cultural boundaries,denying that the others had any claim to morality.The Paiutes successfully resisted removal to the Uintah Reservation because the Utes,their traditional enemies,were there.Despite many efforts by the federal government and the miners,they stayed put but they lost most of their land to Mormon farmers and the miners.They were marginalized, forced into bare survival,and resorted to raiding Mormon farms and livestock.The Mormons were determined to co-exist with the Paiutes,even marry them,and hopefully convert them.Eventually,Anthony W.Ivins convinced the federal government to set up a Paiute reservation near Santa Clara,but even that was too small.

Reeve shows how each of the three groups tried to hold the other two in check.The Mormons were instructed by their leaders that those who went to the mines would likely leave the faith.Erastus Snow told them,“…it is better for us to live in peace and good order,and to raise wheat,corn,potatoes and fruit,than to suffer the evils of a mining life.”(92) The miners responded by condemning the Mormons.The Latter-day Saints had no individualism;they committed horrors like the Mountain Meadows Massacre,they were polygamists,they were,as the Pioche Daily Record claimed,a curse on America.The miners were equally critical of the Paiutes,savages in their minds,who were in the way of mining.Many miners saw Pioche surrounded by dangerous Indians and were not hesitant to adopt extralegal methods to hang Indians suspected of crimes.Both Mormons and Native Americans considered the miners to be transients who had no sense of place,no reverence for the land,no attachments to the divine.

The author in chapter 7,“Dead and Dying in the Sagebrush,”describes traditions in each of the three groups,particularly dealing with health and medicine.While the Paiutes and Mormons were devoted to herbalism and spiritual blessings,the miners established two hospitals,but both were limited in their services.Many miners were lonely,without attachments to family,and faced death often in poverty.The Mormons had close communities,as did the Paiutes,but the latter often let the elderly choose to die alone in order to save their group the anguish of care.This chapter is a most sobering one,clearly depicting the distinct differences in culture of people occupying the same land.

Reeve shows that with time the groups not only interacted,but relied on each other.The miners needed the food the Mormons raised and the timber they harvested.The Mormons wanted the currency the miners provided.The Native Americans could not subsist on the marginal lands available to them and looked to labor opportunities and trade from both groups.Despite these economic and geographical links,the three groups maintained boundaries.

Reeve captures the reality of this culture clash.The book is deeply thoughtful and offers important perspectives for the present occupiers of this desert land.The book is extensively researched.Reeve has read deeply in the rich documentary record,and has examined contemporary newspapers,letters,diaries,church records,government documents and many secondary sources.

DOUGLAS D. ALDER Dixie State College