Book Reviews

The Latest Word from 1540: People, Places, and Portrayals of the Coronado Expedition.

Edited by Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint (Albuquerque: Universityof New Mexico Press, 2011. xi + 505 pp. Cloth, $55.00.)

THIS BOOK IS AN ABSOLUTE must-read for anyone who enjoys studying the rich history of the American Southwest for pleasure or as a professional. Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint are renowned researchers and writers on the American Southwest and the Coronado expedition in particular. They have pulled together into one seminal work an illuminating collection of essays written by fifteen of the most knowledgeable researchers on the Coronado expedition, ever. At first glance, the writing in this book might appear to be a bit technical for the average reader, but such is not the case. It does require commitment to read through the scholarly findings bringing that story out of legend and into a more finite reality, but the story is there. What is produced here is a canon-of-writ revealing the latest and most significant research on the Coronado expedition and its impact on American Indian cultures of the American Southwest. Individual studies are presented in such a way that a reader-friendly, time-progressive telling of events unfolds in the reader’s mind.

Anxious to get into the story of Coronado’s march into North America, one might be surprised to find that the first two chapters are biographical sketches introducing the main players in Coronado’s retinue. Brilliantly placed, by the time these pages are read, the reader has been taken through the busy, dusty streets of Mexico City, small hamlets for miles around, and even Mother Spain, meeting prominent nobles, soldiers, artisans, and common folk. As the story begins to unfold starting in Chapter 3, even the legendary Cabeza de Vaca is there to greet us. As the expedition comes together, one is brought up to speed on the socio-political milieu that was Nueva España in early 1500s Mexico, and one is allured into a feeling of connectedness, of a sense of belonging. As one study and another are presented in subsequent chapters, that sense of being there, of having a feel for those who went on this march, and the complexities it brought upon native peoples, is compelling. Furthermore, along with all the archaeological findings presented, definitively fixating events to locations on the ground, equipment used, and hardships faced, it is easy to conjure up a more salient idea of the size and sheer magnitude of this meandering swarm. More than three thousand strong, herding cattle and sheep and hogs as they lumbered along, expedition members went filled with dreams of settlement and riches but returned disillusioned and heavily in debt, those that returned at all. In their wake they left disorder and destruction among the Native Americans of the region, setting the stage for further hostilities when the Spaniards returned four decades later.

The studies presented take the reader along with Coronado all the way to Quivira in what is today central Kansas, and back. They reveal the quintessential paradigm of history as dynamic: cultures wax and wane, cities rise and then crumble into oblivion, streams change course, and place names upon the land are commuted or lost in the ebb of generations. What is handed down in the resultant folklore is not always what really happened. From within the folklore of the American Southwest and a multitude of recent findings that present new understandings while in some cases stimulating even more ideas, the Flints have pulled together the words of many modern scholars, all attempting to piece together the story of European and American Indian history that is the Coronado expedition. It is a history that is not yet fully deciphered, but loved all the more.

H. BERT JENSON Utah State University, Uintah Basin

Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition.

By Tom Mould (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011. xi + 448 pp.Cloth, $39.95.)

MOST PUBLISHING BY FOLKLORISTS (Mormon and non- Mormon) about Mormon folklore has addressed performed genres. Though it would be difficult to speak analytically about folklore without taxonomies, these can keep a folklorist from noticing genres not already named: like the grooves of a wagon track, studies of Mormon folklore proffer paths to legends of the Three Nephites, anecdotes about J. Golden Kimball, dialect stories of Brother Petersen, faith-promoting stories—a small child rescued from an irrigation ditch, a genealogy researcher finding a long-sought, elusive and crucial name from a stranger—and other genres, all marked “visible” because they are out of the ordinary. But now folklorist Tom Mould’s Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition treats a previously invisible narrative genre that has existed abundantly all along at the very center of Mormon religious culture, hiding in plain sight.

The author, a non-Mormon folklorist working with members of the two LDS wards in the North Carolina town where he lives, began collecting one of the “visible” genres—Mormon “Apocalore,” narratives about the end of the world. Following standard research practice as a participant-observer who has read extensively in advance, he respectfully built trust with his Mormon consultants and attempted through sensitive observation to develop an insider’s view of what he was studying. It was his outsider status, though, that made it possible for him to identify a genre not visible to insiders, radically changing the direction of his fieldwork and leading to a groundbreaking study of the everyday center of Mormon spirituality. Lest his North Carolina findings not be representative, Mould augmented his fieldwork with archival research in the great repositories of Mormon folklore at Brigham Young University and Utah State University, and he moreover accessed relevant narratives in all possible LDS church publications, including the Ensign and other periodicals along with faith-promoting story books from the nineteenth century. The genre he theorizes did not have a name among the people he interviewed, so he has named it personal revelation narrative.

As Mould explains for the benefit of outsiders, Mormons are taught that God speaks to humankind in the present day, and that Mormons who practice their faith gain access to personal communication from God through the Holy Ghost. Mormons learn from childhood to be open to such revelations (called promptings, intuitions, feelings, or “the still small voice”), to make sense of these messages doctrinally, and to narrate their experiences of them in church as part of their religious duty. This transition from experience to narrative can be arduous, for promptings are not always easy to interpret, and once interpreted through scripture study and prayer they must be shaped into appropriate form and delivered in a verbal style that respects certain inherent social and hierarchical strictures placed upon the narrator. The skill required of the person telling the story bespeaks an artistry of performance that is real and analyzable.

In Still, the Small Voice, scholars of Mormonism will find a thorough compilation of archival and print LDS personal revelation narratives (441 in all), many of which are printed here, along with verbatim transcriptions of numerous narratives by his LDS consultants in North Carolina. In addition to text sources and statistical analyses, this book provides an outsider’s sensitive, far-reaching, accurate, and respectful description of LDS history, scripture, and religious practice, and a convincing account of the convergence of these elements in individual Mormons’ experience of personal revelation.

Folklorists, for their part, will find chapter by chapter a multidimensional performance-based exploration of a newly named genre and of the process by which intensely private spiritual experience is transformed into public performance. An exemplar of good fieldwork and good theorizing, Still, the Small Voice promises to play a large role in future performance-based study of folklore.

POLLY STEWART Salisbury University, Salisbury, Maryland

No Communication with the Sea: Searching for an Urban Future in the Great Basin.

By Tim Sullivan (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2010. xvii + 217 pp.Paper, $19.95.)

IN NO COMMUNICATION WITH THE SEA: Searching for an Urban Future in the Great Basin, urban planner and former Salt Lake Tribune writer, Tim Sullivan confronts the challenges currently facing Reno and Salt Lake City, two of the Basin’s most populous areas. Since the 1990s, both cities have experienced significant growth and strive to balance urban realities with open space preservation. Sullivan seeks to understand the binding relationship between community, environment, and place. “One of the best chances we have for preserving these landscapes is to build better cities that use resources efficiently and make urban living comfortable and enticing enough to reduce the urge of so many to flee to the unbuilt edge,” Sullivan writes (xv).

Sullivan first describes the region’s unique landscapes. Located on opposite ends of the Great Basin, Reno and Salt Lake City are what Sullivan terms urban paradoxes: “no one in the region lives outside a city, yet few seem to want to live in one” (16). Residential housing crawls up mountainsides, making the transition between city and wilderness relatively nonexistent. Mountains dominate the skyline as spring runoff trickles into playas and saline seas. Because of geographic constraints, Sullivan observes, population centers are especially dense.

Sullivan next discusses features unique to Reno and Salt Lake City. Reno’s nearby Woodland Village attracts Sullivan’s attention because its drainage system captures floodwaters and diverts them back into the system, working within Great Basin hydrologic patterns. Woodland’s culinary water is supplemented by wells from California’s Long Valley. Drawn only once, well- water is used, treated, and then left to restore the local aquifer. Despite water purification, Sullivan worries about the potential for long-term pollution, noting “The image of the big wide open is at odds with its reality of the closed hydrology and possibility of a slow pollution boomerang lurking underneath” (64).

Sullivan’s chapters on the Wasatch Front are especially strong and will find broad appeal among Utah readers. Here Sullivan focuses on Syracuse and Tooele, reiterating earlier points made about geography and urban-rural tensions. Located in Davis County, Syracuse is marked by population growth and new transportation networks, all of which threaten Great Salt Lake wetlands. While Davis County works to maintain the lake’s shorelines, Tooele fights to preserve its open spaces. Tooele planners call five-acre lots large-scale sprawl, favoring clustered development instead. It all depends on how one defines open space, Sullivan remarks.

In recommending remedies, Sullivan reiterates core tenets of New Urbanism: mixed-use housing and neighborhoods, employment opportunities closer to home. Sullivan explores Kennecott’s Daybreak community and applauds the efforts of Envision Utah and Reno’s counterpart, the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency.

As Sullivan notes in his preface, logistics prevented him from fully covering the Great Basin’s nuanced urbanism. For Utah readers, his emphasis on the Wasatch Front is a definite strength as his synthesis identifies avenues for further investigation: the role of Ivory Homes in defining Wasatch Front subdivisions, other planned communities, and transportation networks.

Carl Abbot noted in his Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern West, that concentrated population nodes exist throughout the western United States where post World War II suburban sprawl blossomed like Isaiah’s desert rose. Understanding the history behind these transformations is crucial and implies that we should look carefully at the interrelationship between communities and their local environments. Sullivan’s well-written contemporary perspective on Great Basin urban life raises important questions historians and others interested in the region’s unique dynamics would do well to consider.

REBECCA ANDERSEN Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona

Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism.

By Terryl L. Givens and Matthew J.Grow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. ix + 499 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

THE SUBTITLE FOR THIS EXCELLENT and praiseworthy biography of Mormon apostle and publicist Parley P. Pratt emphasizes his preeminent position in the Latter-day Saint tradition as a missionary and author. Pratt preached in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Chile. He published numerous influential tracts and books. He suffered in a hellish Missouri prison. He led an exploring party to locate sites for settlement in Utah. He died at the hands of an assassin who enjoyed local acclaim for this nefarious deed.

Born in Burlington, New York, in 1807, Pratt grew up in a family of transplanted New England dissenters. After sampling a number of churches as a seeker, Pratt joined Sidney Rigdon’s Reformed Baptist congregation. Rigdon was part of the primitivist movement championed by Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, and Walter Scott.

Reading the Book of Mormon led to Pratt’s conversion to Mormonism. In the book he found support for his long-standing belief in the divine destiny of the American Indians. He soon actualized his belief by accepting a call to travel westward to preach the gospel to them. This mission generally failed to convert Indians, but resulted in the conversion of Rigdon and 127 of his community, including a number of future LDS leaders.

By vocation a farmer, Pratt assisted in founding the Mormon colony in Missouri. This venture, as most of his economic activities, took second place to his preaching and writing, and he frequently found himself deeply in debt. Pratt suffered in and wrote about the persecution of the Mormons in northern Missouri. Imprisoned like other Mormon leaders, he eventually escaped and fled to Illinois.

He achieved fame for his writings. The authors rightly point out that, with the possible exception of his brother Orson, Parley was the most prolific and influential Mormon publicist. His earliest works like Voice of Warning . . . . (1837) and History of the Late Persecution inflicted by the State of Missouri . . . (1839) were reprinted multiple times. He wrote an apocalyptic letter to Britain’s Queen Victoria (1841). His last major work: Key to the Science of Theology (1855) has been frequently republished in edited form and is still in print. He edited the Millennial Star. His posthumously published The Angel of the Prairies is a creative novel which outlines Pratt’s vision of the Millennium.

He arrived in Utah in 1847, settled his polygamous families, and continued church service. He embarked on explorations during the severe winter of 1849-50 to find the locations for new settlements and resources. Eventually, he married twelve wives and fathered thirty children. His final marriage to Eleanor McComb McLean Pratt led to his cold-blooded murder by Hector McLean in 1857 on a lonely road northeast of Van Buren, Arkansas.

A number of authors have asserted that Pratt’s murder played a major role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. By contrast, the authors rightly conclude: “Pratt’s murder probably contributed to the mentality of persecution that helped spur the perpetrators at Mountain Meadows. But it ranks low in the scheme of causation of that crime, a conclusion Juanita Brooks reached in her classic history sixty years ago” (390).

Although we might quibble over the subtitle that calls Pratt "The Apostle Paul of Mormonism," there is no question that he was one of the most important figures in all of Mormonism. His work as a publicist, missionary, and defender of the faith certainly places him in the first rank as a faithful and independent thinker in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER Brigham Young University

Violent Encounters: Interviews on Western Massacres.

By Deborah and Jon Lawrence(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. xiii + 258 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

THROUGH A SERIES of interviews with prominent scholars, the reader learns about bloody episodes in Western history—from Sand Creek to Mountain Meadows to Camp Grant to the Oatman and McComas massacres—as well as larger events including the Sioux and Cheyenne wars, clashes in California and the Great Basin, and hostile encounters along the overland trails. Interviewed for their expertise are Marc Simmons, Margot Mifflin, Will Bagley, Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Michael Tate, Albert Hurtado, Robert Utley, Jerome A. Green, and Ned Blackhawk. According to the Preface, the book “differs from most modern scholarship on the West by including a broad range of interviewees: academic historians, National Park Service historians, nonacademic professional historians, an anthropologist, and a journalist” (xi).

While the accounts of the “violent encounters” are informative, more interesting is what the interviews reveal about the historians— the problems they encounter in research, the difficulties of writing history, and their attempts to maintain objectivity.

Will Bagley’s opinion on historical analysis is straightforward: “[W]hen historians try to come up with an interpretation of history, it should be the one that is simplest and answers the questions most consistently” (41). But, according to Marc Simmons, “It’s what it means, the interpretation, that gets you in trouble because nowadays academics say that there’s no way anybody can be objective” (16). Understanding, let alone interpreting, violence can be difficult. Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh says, “We can study them and try to dig into their psychology, but can we truly understand people who perpetrate those kinds of acts? I’m not sure that it’s entirely possible”(59). Jerome A. Green offers a more accepting approach to understanding: “Rather than looking back today and saying that it shouldn’t have happened, we should understand that the people who were facing these events at the time had a very different perspective on the situation than we have now. And perhaps the way it turned out was the only way it could have happened”(148). Ned Blackhawk talks of the difficulty of including Indian viewpoints, both because of the lack of primary sources and the questionable value of tribal traditions. “I think the best strategy…is to try to triangulate or situate historical materials within broader fields of information. And while it is true that there can be no history of the American frontier without incorporation of Native American voices, we must treat these Indian testimonies as historically produced texts and documents, just as we treat all historically produced testimonies”(176). Robert Utley is more direct on this point “Forget it! They have no tribal memory. They have what Momma and Grandma have passed down over the years, and while everybody believes that the oral tradition is preserved exactly as it was passed down, it isn’t….I regard modern Indian testimony as worthless. It’s a waste of time”(132-33).

Historians face other obstacles, as well. “[E]ven though we would deny it, few of us are really free agents when we write history,” Albert Hurtado says, “There is a real world that is impinging on us in a variety of ways….Certain terms, words, attitudes, points of view, and issues are inherently controversial”(116).

Despite the difficulties of writing history, the authors of Violent Encounters have created an interesting, informative, and useful book dealing with some of Western history’s darkest days. Readers should come away from the encounter with better understanding of the subject and an appreciation of the making of history.

ROD MILLER Sandy

A History of Utah Radicalism: Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary.

By John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011. x +477 pp. Cloth, $37.95.)

THIS DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT of the history of radicalism in Utah culminates years of research by two well-established and highly productive scholars in the field. It is well written, well researched and well argued. The authors view radical movements as those seeking fundamental change in the organization, structure and operation of society so as to increase the sphere of freedom and opportunity. Utah, they demonstrate, has a long tradition of such movements lasting to the present day. Early Mormon settlers, the Knights of Labor, the Populists, and a variety of other third political parties established the tradition. The book offers insights into the lives and thoughts of several important figures who led the radical charge during its various phases. The bulk of the book, however, focuses on the Socialist movement in Utah which, as represented by the success of the Socialist Party, reached its peak in the early twentieth century. Attention is given to the backgrounds and thinking of its most prominent members, and, with considerable emphasis, to the opposition of the Mormon church to the party and Socialism in general.

The authors examined the backgrounds of nearly two thousand Socialist Party members and found that most were male, married, and native born (not a bunch of foreigners) engaged in a variety of occupations. Around 40 percent of them were Mormons—sizeable, but much less than the percent of Mormons in the state population which stood at around 75 percent.

Examining the writings of Utah Socialists, they found the core of their message to be capitalism undermined morality, making it impossible to lead an ethical life. Socialist party writers and speakers found allies among the Christian Socialists who “saw the teachings of Christ and the dictates of the market economy as incompatible” and that “true Christianity could be achieved only through Socialism”(152). Christian Socialism was strong in Utah and the authors present an illuminating treatment of the principal figures, including national leaders such as Franklin Spencer Spalding.

Though the nature of voter support for the party is not extensively examined in this volume, it is clear that it drew a considerable amount of its support from workers in the labor movement. The party did particularly well in local elections. From 1900-25 Socialists won at least 115 elections in two dozen cities and towns of all sizes. Why did the party fail to generate long term support? One reason suggested by the authors is that the Socialist office holders failed to distinguish themselves from other “good government” reformers and, thus, to give the voters any particular reason why they should vote for them. Still, one wonders how much voter support the Socialists could have built up either initially or long term by going all out as revolutionaries.

As the authors themselves suggest, a much more substantial problem for the Socialists was the opposition of the Mormon church. Under tremendous pressure from the federal government and public opinion at large, church leaders moved to assimilate Mormons into American society. They abandoned their radical tradition, embraced capitalism, accepted the two-party system, and proceeded to conduct a wide ranging campaign against Socialism. The opposition of the church, the most powerful force in Utah, made it difficult if not impossible for the Socialist Party to succeed.

The Socialist story in Utah is not just about campaigns and elections but about people who shared a world view and who were engaged in a wide variety of social and cultural activities designed to build solidarity. The party in several ways was like a church itself. The members, though, also reached out and made an important input into the intellectual, political, and cultural life of the state.

Overall the book is valuable in not only uncovering the past of what is commonly thought of as one of the nation’s most conservative states but as an important thought-provoking addition to the literature on radicalism.

DAVID R. BERMAN Arizona State University

Pie in the Sky: How Joe Hill’s Lawyers Lost His Case, Got Him Shot, and Were Disbarred.

By Kenneth Lougee (Bloomington, IN: Universe, Inc., 2011.xxii + 183 pp. Paper, $14.95.)

JOE HILL WAS A LABOR ORGANIZER, poet and songwriter who was convicted and executed for the murder of John Morrison and his son Arling in their grocery store on the night of January 10, 1914. Hill is an icon, remembered today in stories and song as a martyr for workers and the downtrodden. In popular culture, the martyr Joe Hill was murdered by the State of Utah at the behest of the Copper Kings, or maybe the Mormon church, or a cabal of the powerful interests that controlled the state of Utah at the time.

Given the prominence of the case, there has been surprisingly little serious historical evaluation of the Joe Hill trial and the events surrounding his execution. Since 1967, Gibbs Smith’s book, Joe Hill, has been considered the most objective and comprehensive work. It is fitting then, as the one hundredth anniversary of his trial and execution approaches, that these events once again become the subject of serious historical study.

Kenneth Lougee is a practicing trial lawyer with more than thirty years' experience, and he brings both his expertise and deep interest in Utah history to the examination of Joe Hill’s trial, his appeals, and the disbarment of Hill’s attorney, Judge Orin Hilton. Lougee does not voice an opinion on Hill's guilt or innocence, saying that a definitive answer is impossible.

The book’s intent is to maintain a narrow focus on the events that actually took place and on what the author believes can be definitively established by an examination of the available records in an assessment of whether or not Hill received a fair trial and justice was fairly served by the State of Utah's execution of Joe Hill.

In his examination of the trial records the author is not dismayed by the unfairness of the trial, but by the blunders and mistakes committed by the inexperienced and incompetent lawyers that represented Joe Hill. Neither of Hill’s lawyers, Ernest MacDougall or Frank B. Scott, had ever tried or participated in a serious trial, let alone a death penalty case. Both claimed to be Socialists, and were perhaps more interested in arguing for Socialism than they were in defending their client.

Lougee acknowledges that much has changed since the early twentieth century regarding the rights of defendants, but he argues that many standards, such as the rules of evidence, have not changed. More important, the skills needed to be a successful trial lawyer remain the same. Hill’s lawyers failed to understand the community in which the trial took place, and as a result failed to select jury members who might think favorably or at least neutrally of their controversial client.

Representative of this failure was in allowing Joseph Smith Kimball, who would become the jury foreman, to sit on the jury. Joseph Kimball had not been in the jury pool for the Hill trial but was brought in by the judge from a previous jury. MacDougall and Scott apparently did not know that Kimball was an important member of the Mormon church, and had served in the legislature and in the Utah Constitutional Convention. Hill’s lawyers should have exercised their preemptory challenge to reject Kimball because he would have very unfavorable influence over the jury.

What follows in the trial is a litany of errors by MacDougall and Scott. Joe Hill was a difficult client, but he could see his lawyers' incompetence, and at one point, he fired them in front of the jury and asked to defend himself. The Judge insisted that the lawyers remain to assist Hill, who eventually allowed them to represent him even though they failed to manage the jury selection, to properly cross-examine and impeach witnesses, and to bring evidence beneficial to Hill before the jury. Most important, they failed to establish a creditable counter-narrative to the prosecution's story of Joe Hill as the robber and murderer. Without a counter story, Lougee argues not one jury member was able to find reasonable doubt and vote for acquittal. There was nothing irregular about the trial and Judge Morris Ritchie’s legal rulings were in accordance with the law and authority of the presiding judge.

After the trial Orin Hilton, a highly successful labor lawyer, represented Joe Hill in his appeals. While Hilton was a fine trial lawyer, he had no experience in appeals. He botched the process by appealing to have the guilty decision overturned rather than sticking strictly to questions of law. That approach made it easy for the Utah Supreme Court to uphold the conviction of Hill.

Lougee finds no error by the Utah Supreme Court in upholding the conviction when Joe Hill failed to provide new evidence to explain his gunshot wound. He criticizes historians for not understanding that appeal courts rule on questions of law; only in the rarest of circumstances will they set aside a verdict based on the findings of a jury. Lougee's criticism makes an excellent point, and historians with no legal background would be wise to consult a legal expert when writing about legal matters.

The author is critical of Hilton's public statements, claiming that Hill received an unfair trial and that the Mormon church was responsible. Hilton expanded his complaints about the judicial system in Utah and the influence of the Mormon church, particularly in his speeches after Hill’s execution. Hilton’s accusation led to his justifiable disbarment.

Lougee goes a little too far here, making the Mormon church appear to be a victim of the propaganda espoused by Hilton and the socialists he represented. While the Mormon church probably had nothing to do with Hill's conviction, it did help to create a hostile environment with its decades-long campaign against Socialism and labor unions.

Once Mr. Lougee leaves the legal realm of the Joe Hill case, he is often on shaky ground. Inconsistencies appear in the narrative, and several fallacies of historical reasoning, common to an inexperienced historian, mar his findings such as the odd comment that the strength of an argument is more important than footnotes. Still, Pie in the Sky is a welcome addition to the literature on Joe Hill.

CLAYTON A. COPPIN Salt Lake City

Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley: Making the Modern Old West.

By Thomas J.Harvey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. xii + 237 pp. Cloth, $34.95.)

THOMAS HARVEY RIGHTLY CLAIMS that both Rainbow Bridge and Monument Valley “have meant something in American culture”(4). He also correctly asserts that the latter place “became the iconic image of the American West”(5). In his well-researched and thoughtful book, Harvey sets out to show the reader how those places came to mean something and exactly what it is they mean. Largely his book is one of cultural interpretation of physical space. In each chapter the author examines how succeeding cultures and/or individuals helped shape the way we think about Rainbow Bridge and Monument Valley: Navajo Indians, Rainbow Br idge “discoverers” Cummings and Douglass, novelist Zane Grey, filmmaker John Ford, environmental groups like the Sierra Club, and tourist guides such as John and Louisa Wetherill.

Navajo ideas about these places, Harvey says, evolved out of their culture and their experience with the environment. On the other hand, Anglo- American perceptions about these spaces derived from their dissatisfaction with modern life and from their desire to connect with something they considered untainted. With each chapter Harvey carefully researches the background of each encounter with these spaces; then he interprets the meaning of that encounter. For example, with filmmaker John Ford (his best chapter), he first reveals that westerns had been filmed in Monument Valley before Ford shot his classic Stagecoach in 1939. We then read about how Ford’s Irish immigrant story is woven into that film’s themes, we see how the Depression affected Ford’s work, and we learn details of Stagecoach’s filming process. Harvey also discusses other films Ford shot there: My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Searchers (1956), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Through these films Ford succeeded in turning Monument Valley into a national mythic space, while addressing such contemporaneous issues as the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and civil rights. Harvey’s analysis of each film in terms of these issues is perceptive and enlightening. This is the case most of the time but not always. Harvey’s interpretations sometimes ignore other possibilities. For example, he claims the Wetherills adorned their house with Indian relics because they and their visitors believed this décor was somehow more authentic. That may well be true, but Harvey offers no proof of such. Possibly the Wetherills had nothing else with which to decorate. Or the couple may have just thought it beautiful, period.

Likewise, while it is likely that most modern tourists see Monument Valley through the eyes of John Ford, other western films, or even television and magazine ads, they may end up finding other meanings as well. Some will become interested in Navajo culture, buy a book like John Holiday and Robert McPherson’s A Navajo Legacy, and learn about the Diné in that place. Or they might wonder how the buttes and spires formed, pick up a geology book, and begin to visualize the area’s spectacular geological history. People can imagine beyond what they have been taught to think.

In sum, though, Harvey’s research is impressive and his interpretations are provocative. His study opens up new ways to think about these two iconic landscapes. The book will appeal to those familiar with these two spectacular spaces and with their interpreters.

JAMES M. ATON Southern Utah University

The Glen Canyon Country: A Personal Memoir.

By Don D. Fowler (Salt Lake City:The University of Utah Press, 2011. xix + 424 pp. Cloth, $75.00; paper, $39.95.

DON D. FOWLER, presently a distinguished anthropologist emeritus at the University of Nevada, got his first field experience as an archaeologist working on the Glen Canyon Project in the late 1950s while an undergraduate at the University of Utah. Only about the last third of this book delivers on the subtitle’s promise of “a personal memoir” of that project, but it is the best part. Preceding that is a sprawling history of the region from its earliest inhabitants to the inception of the Glen Canyon Project. Although organized around various themes, it is a historical hodgepodge with no discernible principle of selection, in which the monumental and the trivial—the Clarence Duttons and the Georgie Whites—float through its pages side by side. But there is reason beneath this chaos—in fact, at least a couple of good reasons. One is that there is no longer a comprehensive history of Glen Canyon in print, but Fowler needs a context to frame his memoir, and he refers back to that context repeatedly in the memoir chapters. The other reason (unstated but implicit) is that he wants to show the astonishing variety of people who have lived in, worked in, and passed through the canyon. In that, he succeeds so spectacularly that he almost makes life on a Manhattan street corner look monotonous by contrast. So instead of pondering what “Sheena, the Queen of the Jungle” might have in common with Grove Karl Gilbert, we should just buckle our life jackets and head down the rapids; at the takeout point below, it will have been worth it. Not that there are no omissions, the most regrettable to this reviewer being an extended discussion of Indian traders and trading posts, for over a century the primary point of economic and cultural contact between Indians and whites, and an institution heretofore studied least thoroughly in that far-flung northern part of Indian Country. Even the Wetherills, who have attracted some historical study, are more often treated as explorers and guides than as traders, whereas they were great pioneers in opening up that part of the West to commerce and establishing the symbiotic relationship with their Indian neighbors that characterized the best of the traders. Fowler understandably may not be trying to break new historical ground, but simply summarizing the literature on the subject, which over recent decades has included some remarkable works by such scholars as Martha Blue and Willow Roberts Powers, would have been welcome.

But whatever one thinks of the historical section, the “personal memoir” is well worth the wait. In addition to explaining the techniques employed for surveying and excavating prehistoric sites throughout a vast geographic region under very serious restraints of time, Fowler’s sketches of the personalities involved in the salvage project are vividly drawn and full of humor, especially his portrait of the fearsome Jesse Jennings, the Dark Knight of Utah archaeology. He even includes some of the crazy songs composed by and for the archaeologists, which they used to while away the hours around the campfire. Best of all, though, is Fowler’s self-deprecating narrative of his own evolution from a confessed urbanite who had never slept on the ground to not only an expert archaeologist, but also a highly competent boatman and quartermaster who could organize the supplies and equipment for an entire field season. Those of us who were not there missed out on a lot.

GARY TOPPING Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City

Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty: Navajos, H0zh= ,and Track Work.

By Jay Youngdahl (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011. xxi + 185 pp. Cloth, $32.95.)

THIS SLIM VOLUME ADDS to a growing body of literature about Navajo economic development during the mid-to-latter half of the twentieth century as livestock practices gave way to wage dependence. The author, who holds a law degree and a master’s of divinity from Harvard, used these two disciplines to examine Navajo history and culture as indicated by the title. The first part, Working on the Railroad, is highly successful. As a lawyer who has often defended injured Navajo railroad workers in court, Youngdahl builds his case concerning three main entities representing corporate America—read profit motive over human welfare. The primary triangle of institutions that interfaced with Navajo workers was comprised of the railroad who specified labor needs; the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) created in 1935 to handle pensions, unemployment insurance, and job placement for workers; and trading posts scattered across the reservation who recruited laborers to work in “gangs.” Each of these groups benefited financially while the Navajos provided excellent service, laboring beside other blue collar employees in menial, often dangerous tasks. Indeed, of all nationalities toiling in this setting, the Navajos were preferred. In 1951, for example, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad hired 7,500 Indian workers, 85 percent of whom belonged to this tribe.

There were, however, problems—everything from simple misunderstandings from mistranslation and cultural ignorance to large scale attempts to deny benefits, create unfair charges, and hide a paternalistic orientation under an outward appearance of assistance. Each of the organizations received enough scrutiny from the government and Navajo legal services (DNA) to change the entire process of hiring workers. By the mid-1970s, trading posts lost their role as recruiters and began to either shift business practices or close; the RRB stepped aside from direct contracting, a job assumed now by the railroads who hired and offered directly employment benefits. By using rarely accessed railroad and government documents, the author gives a clear but little-known picture of Navajo relations with the railroads and their cooperating partners.

The second half of the story, Walking in Beauty, is not as successful. The author proclaims: “The soul of this book and the focus of the interviews in it, examines the religious practices that play a major role in helping these men to find the required resources to navigate their terrain and to build and maintain a productive and meaningful life” (22). While recognizing the role of the Native American Church and Christianity, he tends more toward traditional Navajo beliefs, which distinguishes these people from other tribes. The names of those interviewed are not in the bibliography, but Youngdahl makes reference to a dozen men or couples that he talked to, none of whom get into significant depth about religious practices. There is mention of ceremonies, protective objects, miraculous results, and h0zh= (a complex term often glossed as harmony) but how it all works is absent. Instead, the author turns to the white scholarly community for an intellectual dialogue about Navajo religious concepts then adds his own thoughts. A highly academic view, up-to-date citation of scholarly analysis, and an almost total absence of the Navajo voice keeps the reader out of the hogan and in the classroom. The problem is that he never gets to the root of their perception deeply embedded in language, traditional teachings, and mythology. To do so is a complex undertaking, but at the heart of what he set out to accomplish. Thus this book is highly recommended for those interested in learning of Navajo labor relations with the railroad, but one must look elsewhere for the philosophical underpinning of what made it bearable for workers plying their trade along the tracks of this nation.

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON Utah State University, Eastern-San Juan Campus