Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Auntie Kate: Her Journey Through Ninety Years. By Katharine

Garford Thomas. (Columbus, Ohio History Press, Ohio State Archaeolog-

ical and Historical Society, 1949. ²⁵²p., illustrations. $3.50.)

Volumes of biography based upon reminiscences can be fruitful re-

sources for the historian who is attempting to reconstruct the details of

social history. In this book the memories of Katharine Moody Smith,

who during her long lifetime from 1838 to 1932 lived reasonably close

to the main current of American history, are recorded by her niece.

It is to the author's credit that in her role of historian she demon-

strated a concern for accuracy and eschewed embellishment where her

aunt's memories lacked coherence. Unfortunately she did not handle her

unusual collection of family records and her reports of interviews with

skill, and the result lacks clarity and style. Sentences like the following:

"While eager to be off, once plans were laid, yet there was sadness in their

hearts at leaving a home so dear to them all," disrupt the course of

thought and irritate the reader.

Auntie Kate would seem to have had an unusually full life that took

her from a childhood in Puritan Massachusetts to the rigors of pioneer

life in Washington Territory and back to a dignified retirement in a sedate

Ohio town. There are interesting glimpses of student life at Mt. Holyoke

in the decade before the Civil War and a few fragments of public opinion

in New England relative to that conflict. Auntie Kate's one national re-

cognition came by way of passing reference in the New York newspapers

to the unknown person who marred Elyria, Ohio's, reception for President

Johnson by waving a black flag from a window at his passing train. The

black flag was actually a piece of black silk fastened to a parasol on a

moment's inspiration, but it elicited a remarkable amount of speculation

about Elyria's sinister intentions toward the chief executive. Descriptions

of the graciousness of life in nineteenth-century Elyria are provocative of

nostalgia, while the endurance of frontier hardships by families who had

known a more comfortable existence is another aspect of the last century

which has been less reluctantly forgotten.

In the last chapters of the book the subject of this biography becomes

a more realistic figure, and the author succeeds in imparting to the reader

some of the veneration she felt for her aunt. Her correspondence with

324

• 1
 

Book Reviews                       325

 

Mrs. Herbert Hoover constitutes a delicate compliment to the good taste

of that first lady.

It is to be regretted that the author did not entirely succeed in re-

animating her aunt's world. The inclusion of many genealogical details

will make the book highly interesting to many persons with ancestral roots

in the Western Reserve, but to the average reader those details will be

chiefly a source of confusion which limit the interest of the book.

WILLIAM L. FISK, JR.

Muskingum College

 

 

Guide to the Burlington Archives in the Newberry Library, 1851-1901.

Compiled by Elisabeth Coleman Jackson and Carolyn Curtis. (Chicago,

Newberry Library, 1949. xxiii + 334p., index. Paper.)

The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company transferred the

bulk of its nineteenth century office and land office records to the Newberry

Library in April 1943. They cover the period from about 1851 to 1900.

The Misses Jackson and Curtis properly call this a guide, since it is con-

siderably more detailed than a mere catalog; and in addition it has a

comprehensive index.

The collection consists of more than a million letters, some fifteen

hundred bundles of miscellaneous material, and about two thousand bound

volumes of ledgers, accounts, and operative books. Some of the records

which will be of special value to investigators are the "Correspondence

Files"; "Decade Subject Files," containing statements, papers relating to

equipment, personnel, contracts, new lines, other roads, and pools; "Land

Records"; and the like. There are materials relating to some two hundred

other railroad companies listed in the table of contents, with detailed de-

scription of all the records pertaining to them in Section 8 of the Guide

(pp. 208-328).

The system of classification adopted is based primarily upon an

arrangement of the records as they came to the library, upon the theory

(a basic one in archival administration) that the original groupings were

done with a purpose, and that this may prove of value to the scholar in

using the material in research. The Guide is in no sense a calendar, for

the collection is much too large to expect such detailed treatment.

Aside from one or two minor flaws the work appears to have been

carefully and accurately done. The index is adequate and no errors were

• 2
 

326 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

noted. The collection is open for research but permission must be ob-

tained from the librarian in advance.

WM. D. OVERMAN

Firestone Library & Archives

Akron, Ohio

White Pine Days on the Taquamenon. By William Davenport Hul-

burt. (Lansing, Historical Society of Michigan, 1949. ¹⁵²p., illustra-

tions.)

The author was a native of Mackinac (born 1868) who spent most

of his life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The years of his early

maturity coincided with Michigan's great lumbering era, when the finest

stand of white pine in the world was slaughtered with obscene haste to

create a few dozen millionaires and a legacy of wasted resources which

left the northern half of the state a poverty-stricken ruin.

For all this, however, our author bore no share of responsibility.

Infantile paralysis incapacitated him for the strenuous physical life of a

lumberjack, and this condition, combined with a taste for natural history,

led him to become an observant student of the life-animal, plant, and

human-of the north country to which be belonged.

He recorded his observations and experiences in attractive narratives

which found a ready market in the newspapers and magazines of the time,

some of them being eventually reprinted in the form of books. All but

two of the stories which comprise the present volume are reprinted from

McClure's Magazine, the Youth's Companion, and other publications in

which they originally appeared. The present publication is issued as a

memorial volume by Hulburt's brothers and sisters. The nine separate

stories which it contains are replete with human interest, and insofar as

the reviewer can judge they present a faithful picture of the life and times

to which they are devoted.

Since the narratives are human interest stories rather than formal

history, it would be idle to subject them to any detailed criticism. One

closing comment, however, seems appropriate. From cover to cover the

book contains no single hint of the existence of Paul Bunyan, the mythical

lumberjack hero--suggestive evidence, although negative in character,

in support of the contention of some investigators that Paul and his cycle

of tales are the twentieth-century invention of certain literary romancers

rather than the folklore of the lumberjacks themselves.

M. M. QUAIFE

Detroit, Michigan

• 3
 

Book Reviews                         327

 

The American Indian: An Introduction to the Anthropology of the

New World. By Clark Wissler. (New York, Peter Smith, 3d edition,

reprinted, 1950. xvii + ⁴⁶⁶p., frontispiece, illustrations, maps, charts,

appendix, bibliography, and index. $5.50.)

Books out of print but still in demand are often hard to obtain and

expensive to buy when they are available. To overcome these difficulties

Peter Smith of the National Bibliophile Service is reprinting such books

from time to time. The present volume has been reprinted in a limited

edition by the photo-offset method.

The third edition of The American Indian, though outdated, still

remains the best general work on the subject and is a standard summary

of anthropological research in the western hemisphere. The late

Dr. Wissler, who served for many years as curator of anthropology at

the American Museum of Natural History, and who had vast experience

in the field, was eminently qualified to produce this volume. In a very

systematic manner he classifies the culture of the new world natives and

describes it from the standpoint of food areas, domestication of animals,

methods of transportation, textiles, ceramics, architecture, stone and metal

work, inventions, fine arts, social patterns, and mythology. Further

delineation is made linguistically, archaeologically, and somatically.

Wissler's most important contribution is the "culture area" concept

which he builds up to and finally presents in full in the now famous

Chapter Fourteen. This classification of social groups according to their

culture traits is reached by a simultaneous consideration of groupings of

the Indians according to single traits that result in certain definite geo-

graphic regions such as "food areas" and "ceramic areas," and applica-

tion of this consideration to the social or tribal units. Using this method

he divides the two Americas into fifteen culture regions or areas. In each

there is a focal point around which are grouped specific culture traits

that are common to the tribes within the area. These traits diminish in

number and decrease in intensity as one goes further from the center.

New ones gradually increase in number and intensity until one arrives at

a new center. This is essentially the thesis of The American Indian.

The "culture area" concept as developed by Wissler, as well as Franz

Boas, N. C. Nelson, and others, has become the standard means of classi-

fication. The chief criticism of its application by Wissler is that although

he has perceived the importance and significance of focal points resulting

in culminations which may be defined in temporal and spatial terms, he

has applied this only very indefinitely and summarily. This is noticed, for

• 4
 

328 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

example, in what he defines as the "Eastern Woodland Area," comprising,

approximately, the territory bounded by the Hudson Bay, the Mississippi

and Ohio rivers, and the Atlantic Ocean. Within this area, the localization

of a center is attempted only half-heartedly. That portion of the region

above the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River he passes over as being

comparable to the Mackenzie Area of upper Canada. The balance of the

Eastern Woodland is divided into three sub-areas, comprising the Iro-

quoian, "Central Algonkin," and "Eastern Algonkin" tribes. Suggesting

that a southern origin disqualifies them for a place in the type group, that

the tribes are not well known, with some being extinct, and that the data

are far from adequate, Wissler dismisses this culture area by saying its

characterization is "difficult." While there is validity in questioning such

an arbitrary application of his culture area concept, Wissler's critics do

not hesitate to acknowledge their indebtedness to him for his pioneering

work in the study and classification of the American Indian.

DWIGHT L. SMITH

Ohio State University

• 5