Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

 

Lost America: The Story of Iron-Age Civilization Prior to Columbus. By

Arlington H. Mallery. With the assistance of Mary Roberts Harrison.

Illustrations by Paula Mallery. Introduction by Matthew W. Stirling,

Director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution.

(Columbus, Ohio, and Washington, D. C., The Overlook Company, 1951.

xviii+238p., illustrations, maps, tables, references, index, and appendix.

$4.50.)

This little volume has created a minor sensation in Ohio and other parts

of the country. Many newspapers throughout the nation have carried news

items and special feature stories of Mr. Mallery's reported discoveries. Mr.

Mallery has continued to be active in the field since his book appeared,

and news stories appear from time to time of his work.

Since much of the author's evidence to suggest that the Norse peoples were

in America centuries before Columbus visited its shores was found in Ohio,

the state historical society has felt a responsibility to evaluate that evidence

and Mr. Mallery's conclusions. Five Ohio State University professors, not

on the staff of the society, were asked to examine Lost America from the

point of view of their respective specializations: Dr. Paul A. Varg, asso-

ciate professor of history, the history; Dr. John W. Bennett, associate pro-

fessor of anthropology, the archaeology; Dr. Hans Sperber, professor of Ger-

man, the linguistics; Dr. Earle R. Caley, associate professor of chemistry, the

chemistry and metallurgy; Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman, assistant professor of

geography, the geography and cartography. Their brief statements follow.--

EDITOR.

The History

This is an amazing story of a Celtic and Norse civilization in America in

the centuries preceding the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492.

The author is deeply aware of the fact that this is a revolutionary thesis

which scholars will approach with a highly sceptical state of mind.

Unfortunately, by employing unsound historical methodology, the author

fails to meet this expected scepticism. In a number of instances he

asks the reader to accept as fact what is little more than daring conjecture

or, at best, theories which are still in dispute among scholars. This is true

of his account of Pythias, in which he asserts, as if it were a fact beyond

dispute, that this famous Greek explorer discovered Iceland. To be sure,

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286      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

there are scholars who think that this is probably true. Vilhjalmur Stefansson

is of this opinion but also recognizes that many able scholars have come to

a different conclusion. Among those who have come to the opposite con-

clusion concerning the land of Thule (Iceland) is Walter Woodburn Hyde

in his book Ancient Greek Mariners. It would seem that the author who

asks the reader to accept such an unorthodox thesis would take the trouble

to examine all the evidence and especially the evidence which seems to

contradict him.

The author bases part of his case for a well-advanced pre-Columbian

civilization in America on the Kensington Stone. It is particularly dis-

turbing to find that he claims the Smithsonian Institution has accepted

the famous stone as having authentic runic inscriptions, and documents

this statement by citing an article in the Washington Times-Herald. In sharp

contradiction to this is the statement by F. M. Setzler, Head Curator, De-

partment of Anthropolgy, Smithsonian Institution: "From the standpoint

of vouching for its authenticity or disclaiming it, the Institution assumes

the position that the entire matter needs considerable study and evaluation

by experts on runic writing before any final opinion can be reached."

Much has been written concerning the old stone tower in Newport, Rhode

Island. Some have held that it was built by the Norse, while others believe

that it was built by a governor of Rhode Island in 1675. The most scholarly

study of the problem of who built this stone tower is that by Philip

Ainsworth Means entitled Newport Tower. After an exhaustive examina-

tion of all the available evidence Mr. Means comes to the conclusion that

the tower may have been built by the Norse but that the available evidence

does not permit a definite conclusion to this effect. Mr. Mallery makes no

reference to this excellent study by Mr. Means. Nor does he exercise the

caution which distinguishes the writing of Mr. Means. It is true that Mr.

Mallery cites some very pertinent and significant evidence to support his

case, but to this reviewer, at least, it does not warrant his conclusion that

the tower was unquestionably built by the Celts.

Pythias may have reached Iceland, the Norse may have left their runic

inscriptions on a stone in Minnesota, and the Celts may have built the tower

at Newport. Indeed there is more evidence to support these possibilities

than most historians have recognized. Yet it is hazardous to permit in-

teresting speculations to become rather dogmatic assertions of "fact."

One of the dangers confronting any scholar is that he becomes so in-

trigued with his own hypothesis that he seizes upon all evidence that can

be made to support it. This reviewer is quite convinced that while Mr.

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Mallery has suggested some interesting lines for further investigation he

has failed to exercise that caution and care so necessary if the historian is

to avoid the many pitfalls awaiting those who would try to reconstruct

the story of the past.

PAUL A. VARG

The Archaeology

Matters of archeological interest occupy a central position in this rather

breathtaking and curious volume, for the author proposes that the prehistoric

Indians of the eastern United States--or at least those in the vicinity of

Chillicothe, Ohio--possessed the art of smelting iron. Since the author

seems to show no particular familiarity with the precise chronological and

comparative cultural knowledge gathered by professional and hobbyist

archaeologists of the past thirty years (for example, the word "Hopewellian"

appears not once in the entire volume, though most of the sites discussed

belong to that ubiquitous horizon), it is not easy to identify the Indians or

the peoples whereof he speaks, although in the last three pages of the

book, the Old World Bronze Age, the "New World Bronze Age," the

Aztec, Maya, Toltec, megaliths, and a miscellany of cultural artifacts and

developments are all mentioned in some rapid and soaring paragraphs.

The "highly civilized Iron Age people with a history rich in human ac-

complishment" who inhabited (eastern?) North America in pre-Columbian

times (see pages 214-215) are most certainly missing from the pages of

the hundreds of archaeological monographs and from all the museum col-

lections available on the area. But the author has an explanation for this.

It seems, on page 213, that the several generations of American archae-

ologists who have been digging (and destroying) the mounds of the

East, "did not realize, when they opened the furnace mounds, that they

were the relics of an industrial civilization. The iron tools had all dis-

integrated and disappeared." Such implications of omniscience are frequent.

The book is full of positive statements concerning the nature and

and uses of various features the author has excavated in Ohio mounds.

These are invariably iron furnaces, with all the typical European furnace

features: flues, large iron bars, ore, lime, and so forth. Some of these

statements sound as if they are verified by independent check, but in such

cases the checkers, for example, the Battelle Institute, have been either

passive observers or analyzers of specimens which the author has provided

for them. There is really no independent verification of Mr. Mallery's

assertions and conclusions, and nowhere is there a carefully documented,

step-by-step account of the excavation of an alleged "furnace," and analytical

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288      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

proof of identification and interpretation. The photographs of "furnaces"

could either be those of holes in the ground or ambiguous inner features

of Indian mortuary mounds.

The reviewer has seen documentary materials showing that the "iron

furnaces" for the Arledge and Haskins mounds, described in detail by the

author, are the remains of American pioneer-period lime kilns. Other of the

author's "iron furnaces," according to the drawings he reproduces in his

book, based on archaeological accounts and excavations, are excellent speci-

mens of Hopewellian crematory arrangements of several familiar types. The

reviewer wonders what might have happened if the author had conducted

his researches in the Davenport, Iowa, area, where the Hopewellian

crematory practices became really elaborate.

In an earlier chapter of the book an additional theory is advanced, namely,

that the Vikings influenced the Iroquois and the Fort Ancient Indians from

top to bottom. Practically everything from the Iroquois "Nordic" ap-

pearance, and the long house, to the interlocking scrolls on Fort Ancient

pottery are traceable to the Norsemen, whose iron trash, as well as furnaces,

incidentally, seems to be scattered on the hilltops of the eastern United

States. How several generations of American historians could have over-

looked these ubiquitous Vikings is very odd. And apparently the total

absence of historic or European materials in Iroquois and Fort Ancient

sites, save the very late, eighteenth and nineteenth century trade goods,

is a matter of little importance to Mr. Mallery's theories.

The hypothesis that some American Indians might have attempted iron

manufacture is not completely outlandish. As a hypothesis, it deserves some

attention. But the author's methods and approach to the problem are hardly

such as to instill much belief in the critical reader, the smooth and persuasive

writing notwithstanding. In place of all the "proofs," the omission of

contradictory evidence, and the piling up of statement after statement of

"fact" without sound evidence, one might wish for simply one single,

carefully documented and illustrated piece of research. Each of the many

sites which are freely and confidently labeled "iron furnaces" would require

separate and painstaking analysis and publication before such a sweeping

and revolutionary theory could be taken seriously. The reviewer's dis-

tinguished colleague in anthropology who wrote an introduction to the book

might well devote some thought to these matters also.

JOHN W. BENNETT

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The Linguistics

In one section of his book Mr. Mallery endeavors to show that a large

number of Scandinavian loan-words are to be found in various Indian

idioms. Such an attempt can, of course, only be successful if based on a

thorough knowledge of all the languages concerned. And while I can not

properly evaluate the author's familiarity with aboriginal American languages,

it is quite clear that his handling of the Scandinavian word material is so un-

satisfactory that the result of his effort must be deemed a complete failure.

In most cases the similarities he points out are restricted to two or three

letters and even where a closer affinity seems to exist, an examination of

his examples reveals serious errors and inaccuracies. A word equation like

Norse kagattu-Canadian quagathoma, both of which according to Mallery

mean "to perceive," may at a first glance look quite impressive, but a closer

investigation shows that Cartier, from whose vocabulary the Indian word

is taken, has quatgathoma not quagathoma and that the meaning is given

not as "perceive," but as "look at me" (The Voyages of Jacques Cartier,

Publications of the Public Archives of Canada, No. 11, p. 243); however,

these inaccuracies are relatively unimportant in comparison to the fact that

an Old Norse word kagattu, "to perceive," simply doesn't exist. Other

words in Mallery's lists that will be a great surprise to any student of the

Scandinavian languages are giota, "grandfather"; undlade, "leaf"; smoreise,

"fat"; krongast, "marriage"; onyta, "neck"; sa, "she"; jungum, "son";

hage, "dog"; gagaya, "dog." As long as the author does not give his

sources, we will have to assume that these words and a number of others

have found their way into his lists through misreading and misinterpretations.

In general, it must be stated that the presence of a "Norse" word in Mallery's

word lists is no guarantee that either its meaning or its form are given

correctly.

Question to Mr. Matthew W. Stirling, Director, Bureau American

Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution: Does your statement in the Intro-

duction that "the author should have the readers' full admiration for the

scholarly manner in which he has handled so controversial a subject, and

for the way in which he has followed his evidence no matter how far it

leads him from conventional points of view," encompass Mallery's treat-

ment of linguistic problems? If so, I must regretfully disagree. But perhaps

these parts of his work belong to the portions about which you say, "This

writer suggests that the reader make his own evaluation of the evidence

presented and draw his own conclusions." This certainly is sound advice.

HANS SPERBER

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290      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

The Chemistry and Metallurgy

In recent years the scientific examination of materials found in excava-

tions has often yielded information of considerable value to the archaeologist.

But such materials must be carefully collected from established sites and

be properly authenticated as to their antiquity. Even the most exact and

extensive examination of doubtful materials will at best yield information

of questionable value, and it may yield very misleading information. In

the opinion of this reviewer many of the samples of materials collected

by Mr. Mallery and submitted to various experts for chemical or metallur-

gical examination do not meet the fundamental criteria of being carefully

collected and properly authenticated. There is ample indication in his book

that many samples were collected in a haphazard way without much regard

to the possibility that they may have been intrusive or otherwise unreliable.

Hence the reported results of the chemical or metallurgical examination of

all such samples are of questionable value from the standpoint of the

archaeologist.

It is important also that the scientific examination of materials from

excavations be thorough enough that no doubt exists as to their identity.

In several places in Chapter 22 of his book he speaks of iron slag as being

present in abundance at certain sites in southern Ohio. But no complete

chemical analyses are shown to prove that the samples collected from

these sites were really iron slag rather than some other natural or artificial

material containing iron. The mere fact that iron was found to be present

in high proportion in the samples is no proof that they were iron slag, as

similar high proportions of iron occur in various minerals such as hematite

or in iron rust of recent origin. It may be that adequate chemical analyses

were actually made, but he reports only a few percentage figures for iron

content, and these are not sufficient to establish the identification.

Even when reliable samples of materials from excavations are subjected

to adequate examination, the archaeologist should exercise due caution in

drawing conclusions from the scientific data, and he should certainly not

come to conclusions not justified by the data at hand. In the opinion of

this reviewer Mr. Mallery frequently errs in drawing very extensive and

very general conclusions that are by no means justified by the meager data

he presents, even assuming that these data are both reliable and adequate.

His descriptions of primitive iron smelting in Europe and elsewhere

outside of the Americas are technically acceptable, but his attempts to use

such descriptions as evidence for the practice of primitive iron smelting

in Ohio and elsewhere in North America do not seem at all justifiable.

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Book Reviews                            291

 

Again, the technical evidence he presents for the existence of the practice of

melting and casting copper at an early date in North America is important

and appears to be both sound and adequate, but his attempt to use this as

evidence for the pre-Columbian smelting of iron does not seem reasonable.

The simple melting and casting of a native metal of relatively low melting

point is a very different matter from the smelting of an ore, especially

iron ore. The second process is such a radical technical advance over the

first that the ability to perform the first process is by no means an indication

that the second was ever discovered.

In general, this reviewer is forced to conclude that the chemical and

metallurgical evidence presented by Mr. Mallery is neither reliable enough

nor adequate enough to lend any support to his theory about the existence

of an Iron Age in pre-Columbian North America.

EARLE R. CALEY

The Geography and Cartography

Since the end of the Wurm-Wisconsin ice sheet (about 6500 B.C.),

there have been greater climatic changes in the northern hemisphere than

is usually realized, but none as great as assumed by Mr. Mallery in his

interesting but highly speculative thesis of pre-Columbian Celtic and Norse

colonization of the southeast quadrant of North America.

Glaciologists have considerable evidence that about 500 B.C. the high

latitudes experienced a deterioration of climate, with cool, wet conditions

predominating during the next millenium. Without mentioning this, Mr.

Mallery assumes that during this period the Celts colonized the North

Atlantic islands and parts of the North American mainland. There is good

historical evidence that the Irish did colonize at least Iceland and Greenland,

but the generally warm, dry period from about 400 A.D. to the eleventh

century seems a more likely period, and indeed the few historical evidences

date from the earlier part of this climatically milder period, rather than

from the Roman period as hypothesized.

There is also good historical evidence that just previous to the tenth

century the climate of the North Atlantic area was even more genial than

today, with areas in Iceland and Greenland then being cultivated which

today are just being uncovered by the retreating ice sheets. During this

period the North Atlantic atmospheric circulation was comparatively mild,

at least partially explaining how the Vikings' small boats were able to use

the Arctic Circle route to North America in their ninth and tenth century

voyages, and why they later shifted to more southerly tracts during

the twelfth century and later, with the return of stormier conditions pre-

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292      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

ceding the return of the "little ice age" which ended about the middle of

the nineteenth century.

Mr. Mallery's reasons for these climatic changes and interruption of

oceanic contact between Norse Europe and North America are highly con-

troversial. While there is evidence of small-scale reduction and expansion

of the Greenland ice sheet in historic times, his hypothesis of a great ex-

pansion in the width of Greenland to bridge a central strait and cover part

of an archipelago ("Gunnbiorns Skerries") seems far-fetched, and not

substantiated by his manipulation of a many times copied old chart (pp.

23a, b). There is also evidence of small-scale uplifts and downwarps in

coastal areas since the ice sheets have been retreating, but no substantial

evidence of large-scale diastrophism in the Denmark and Davis straits

during the recent past to explain the recurrence of colder conditions, as

postulated by Mr. Mallery. More likely, the return of ice-covering to the

Arctic Ocean prevented the influx of warm currents from tropical areas,

which had modified the climate during the fifth to eleventh century period.

The author's section on Norse maritime activity in the northeast quadrant

of North America--Greenland, Newfoundland, Labrador, Baffin Island--

seems better substantiated and a contribution of importance. His speculation

about Norse knowledge of the North American Arctic coastlands westward

to Alaska is at least plausible, as there is some evidence that the Arctic

Ocean was largely free of ice during the period from the fifth to the

eleventh centuries, allowing either Norse exploration or (more likely)

Eskimo movements which the Norse became familiar with. Later on, with

the return of ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean, such northerly exploration

became less feasible, and the stormy tract just south of the resurgent ice

made even regular Arctic Circle navigation from Norway more hazardous.

In the thirteenth century there is evidence that the Eskimos, who had not

inhabited the Greenland areas which were settled by the Norse in the tenth

century (Eastern Settlement just west of Cape Farewell; Western Settle-

ment 170 miles up the west coast), began migrating southward after the

seal following the edge of the ice sheets, and by the middle of the fourteenth

century had occupied and probably destroyed the Western Settlement. As

the climate became worse, the Greenlanders had become dependent or

Norwegian grain, but the visits of supply ships became fewer and fewer

and apparently ceased altogether in the fifteenth century, during the time

that Norway itself was passing through a time of stress.

In discussing the Markland and Vinland settlements, the author bases

his arguments on sound grounds, but his speculation about large-scale

colonization in the favored southeastern quadrant of North America--the

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Book Reviews                           293

 

Canadian Maritimes, the American Eastern Seaboard, the American Middle

West--is interesting but certainly not proved by his flimsy cartographic

evidence. His deciphering of copies of supposedly old Norse maps (pp.

26a, b; 159a, b) seems a slender reed on which to support his contention

of widespread Norse colonization in eastern North America, and seemed

to this reviewer to better indicate the author's geographic knowledge than

that of the Norse.

L. A. HOFFMAN

The Keystone in the Democratic Arch: Pennsylvania Politics, 1800-1816.

By Sanford W. Higginbotham. (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Historical and

Museum Commission, 1952. x+417p., illustrations, notes, bibliography,

and index. Cloth, $3.00; paper, $2.50.)

During Jefferson and Madison's administrations, Pennsylvania Republicans

repeatedly asserted that they formed "the keystone in the democratic arch."

Sanford W. Higginbotham's book is a detailed study of a complicated

period in Pennsylvania politics which analyzes the relationships between

national and state politics, demonstrating that the undeviating loyalty of

the Keystone State did much to buttress the national ascendancy and prestige

of Jeffersonian Democracy. As the subtitle indicates, however, the author

concentrates his attention on state and local issues, thus bridging the gap

between the recent work by H. M. Tinkcom on The Republicans and

Federalists in Pennsylvania, 1790-1801 and the older one by Philip Klein on

Pennsylvania Politics, 1817-1832.

The major portion of the book is devoted to a chronological presentation

of the political developments of the period, but a secondary feature is the

analysis of changing political techniques, so that the book becomes a

study of party politics as a method of translating the conflicting desires

of antagonistic groups into popular rule. Essentially, it is an examination

of the vicissitudes of the Democratic Republicans, who dominated the

political picture from 1800 to 1816. The regularity of their triumphs would

make monotonous reading were it not for the fact that the period is enlivened

by internal differences over vital issues, and spiced with intrigue, per-

sonality conflicts, and downright political chicanery.

Aroused by the arbitrary measures of the Federalists, the Republicans

perfected their political machinery in Pennsylvania by 1799 when they elected

Thomas McKean as governor. Capitalizing on the Federalist "reign of

terror," the Republicans stressed such national issues as the passage of the

alien and sedition acts, direct taxation, and the suppression of Fries's

"Rebellion," contrasting the conservative features of Federalist political and

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294      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

economic philosophy with their principles of democracy, which emphasized

universal suffrage, frequent elections, rotation of, and responsibility in,

office, and freedom of opinion in both civil and religious matters. The

Federalists never overcame their tradition of terrorism; the party's precipitate

decline in Pennsylvania was noted in 1802 by John Quincy Adams, who

asserted that Federalism was "so completely palsied, that scarcely a trace

of it is to be discovered except in here and there a newspaper edited by

New England men." The Federalists become important in this study, there-

fore, only when they cooperate with dissident Republican blocs who oppose

the policies or control of the Republican majority in Pennsylvania.

The political history of these sixteen years falls into two periods. The

year 1808 is not only the halfway mark mathematically; it is also the divid-

ing point in political events. From 1799 until 1808, during Governor

McKean's three terms, the political scene was dominated by such state

issues as constitutional reform, feuds over patronage, the conflicting am-

bitions of party leaders, and McKean's capacity for alienating the majority

of his original followers. In the absence of a strong opposition to enforce

party unity, the Republicans split into conservative and reform wings. The

majority in the legislature attacked the prerogatives of the judiciary and

favored several amendments to the state constitution. The conservatives,

taking the name of Constitutional Republicans or Quids, supported the

governor, who was a former chief justice of the state, in his opposition to

constitutional reform and to the impeachment of supreme court judges for

their severe exercise of the summary power to punish for contempt. In 1805

these contending factions nominated rival candidates, the legislative majority

backing Speaker Simon Snyder, who symbolized legislative prerogatives,

and the pro-McKean minority favoring the reelection of the governor. By

identifying McKean with the constitution, the conservatives tried to make

an attack on the governor tantamount to an attempt to overthrow the

government. These tactics won the support of the Federalists, who viewed

the return of McKean as the only alternative to Jacobinism and the de-

struction of the constituted order. Although the governor received a minority

of the Republican vote, his support by the Federalists and the anti-Snyder

Germans gave him a third term.

From 1808 until 1816, during Governor Snyder's three terms, foreign

policies and national issues were the dominant themes in Pennsylvania

politics. When Jefferson's embargo threatened to renew the strength of the

Federalist party in 1807-8, the Quids bolted their marriage of convenience

with the Federalists and rejoined the ranks of the Republicans. The renewal

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Book Reviews                            295

 

of Democratic unity in the face of resurgent Federalism resulted, as usual,

in another Democratic sweep of the state in 1808. Nonetheless, the internal

strife between the Philadelphia machine, headed by those two colorful

characters, Congressman Michael Leib and editor William Duane, and the

country faction, led by Governor Snyder, did not slacken until 1811, by

which time the Snyderites had won a decisive victory.

The War of 1812 dominated the election of that year, and the Republicans

once again subordinated their internal differences to support the national

administration, furnishing Madison's margin of victory over Clinton. Demo-

cratic divisions within the Keystone State, however, were too irreconcilable

to be suppressed completely, even by the pressure of war. Following the

treaty of Ghent, the Federalists, who administered their own death blow at

the Hartford Convention, disappeared, thus leaving the Republicans free

again to fight their internecine wars, as the so-called Era of Good Feelings

dawned.

Because of its microscopic examination of sixteen years in thirteen

chapters, this book will be read almost exclusively by specialists in party

politics and constitutional and political history. Mr. Higginbotham is

especially illuminating in his discussion of McKean's resort to libel pro-

ceedings against Democratic editors who were critical of his public actions.

The first important measure passed after Snyder replaced McKean was a

revised libel law, which forbade criminal prosecutions for publications

respecting the official conduct of public officers or proceedings of the legis-

lature. The author also gives full treatment to the dramatic Olmstead Case,

which involved armed resistance by the state militia to the service of

federal court writs, although his discussion of side issues sometime obscures

the real cause of the conflict over the alleged encroachment of the federal

judiciary upon the rights of the state.

The outstanding shortcoming of the book is the lack of any map showing

the county boundaries and the congressional districts. During these years

the number of counties grew from thirty-five to fifty-one and the state was

redistricted for representation in congress. The bibliography and the annota-

tion show that Mr. Higginbotham has exploited personal papers, official

documents, newspapers, and other original sources. In addition to the

secondary accounts which he cites, he certainly would have found Dumas

Malone's Public Life of Thomas Cooper helpful, especially the two chapters

devoted to Cooper's career as land commissioner and state judge in Penn-

sylvania from 1801 to 1811.

Ohio State University                           JAMES MORTON SMITH

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296      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Iroquois Pottery Types: A Technique for the Study of Iroquois Prehistory.

By Richard S. MacNeish. National Museum of Canada, Bulletin, No. 124.

(Ottawa, Canada, Minister of Resources and Development, 1952. vii+

166p., charts, plates, and index. Paper, $1.50.)

During the years 1947-49 Richard MacNeish carried on an extensive

survey of Iroquois archaeological materials in museum and private collec-

tions throughout the Northeast. This report contains the results of his

analysis of the ceramic data and some conclusions based on the overall

study of the collections.

This research was the first attempt in many years to collate the body

of data collected by American and Canadian archaeologists in over a century

of field work so that it could be applied to the problem of the origin of

the Iroquois. The view that the Iroquois represented a migration into the

Northeast in late prehistoric times was generally accepted until in 1944

James B. Griffin of the Museum of Anthropology of the University of

Michigan pointed out the possibility of a local development. The Museum

of Anthropology and the Indiana Historical Society sponsored MacNeish's

investigations.

MacNeish applied the direct historical approach to establish the complex

of traits characteristic of the tribal units on a historic level and to trace

these complexes into prehistoric times on the basis of similarity to historic

sites. In some cases the evidence for the identification of historic sites is

very limited. The assignment of sites to historic tribes is especially un-

convincing for the Neutral-Wenro and the Erie, who were uprooted by

1650 and whose territory is only vaguely delineated. No detailed con-

sideration was given to the archaeological materials from the Whittlesey

Focus of Ohio, which have also been suggested as the products of an Erie

occupation.

The site seriations have been postulated on the evidence from pottery

types which were defined from rim sherds showing "temporal and spatial

significance." Thus only a part of the cultural data has been selected for

the basis of the seriations. The attributes utilized in establishing the pottery

typology were chosen by inspectional methods solely for the purpose of

seriation. No attempt was made to exhaust the ceramic data. Furthermore,

inaccuracies in the statistics--evident also in the names of sites and their

excavators--weaken the evidence presented.

After fifty-seven pottery types were defined and eight seriations es-

tablished for the Huron, Neutral-Wenro, Erie, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga,

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Oneida, and Mohawk, MacNeish has suggested certain general conclusions.

Early Iroquois sites are believed to have developed from localized Owasco

manifestations in Late Woodland times. The latter in turn developed from

the Point Peninsula culture of the Early and Middle Woodland periods.

Four regional variants of the Owasco may represent the first differentiation

of the proto-Iroquois.

In the Ontario Peninsula, for example, one variant is ancestral to the

Neutral-Erie-Huron group. Later differentiation occurred as the Huron

separated from the Neutral-Erie and moved north. Finally the Erie separated

from the Neutral in late prehistoric times and moved into their historic

position south of Lake Erie in western New York and northern Pennsylvania.

MacNeish has pointed out that many of his conclusions are tentative

and require additional data and thorough testing in the field before they

can be assessed. He has presented the first comprehensive classification of

Iroquois pottery and has suggested a framework which future studies in

Iroquois archaeology may test.

Museum of Anthropology                           MARIAN E. WHITE

University of Michigan

 

Forests for the Future: The Story of Sustained Yields As Told in the

Diaries and Papers of David T. Mason, 1907-1950. Edited by Rodney C.

Loehr. Publication of the Minnesota Historical Society, Forest Products

History Foundation Series, Publication Number V. (St. Paul, The Forest

Products History Foundation, Minnesota Historical Society, 1952. xi+

283p., illustrations, appendix, and index. $3.50.)

This book is based on the diaries of a crusader for sustained yield forest

management in the United States. Prior to 1920 most American forest

businesses were forest exploitation enterprises that cut the timber without

regard for continuity of operation. Under such management or lack of

management forests had an uncertain future. It was only when forests

began to be managed for sustained yield through the adoption of measures

which resulted in their perpetuation and renewal that they began to have a

dependable future.

Mason's diaries show that during the past thirty years, whenever he had

in opportunity, he discussed with and urged upon private owners sustained

yield forestry. He defined sustained yield management for a given forest

is "limiting the cut of trees for each year to the continuous productive

capacity of the forest. Such regulation of cutting is most advantageously

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298      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

applied to a unit of forest area at least sufficiently large to supply con-

tinuously an efficient size plant converting the forest products into salable

material."

Mason did not invent sustained yield. His contribution, through many

years of persistent effort, was to make many lumbermen and others under-

stand it, to lead some of them to practice it, and to promote legislation

on the subject.

Mason did for sustained yield forestry what many advertising men have

done in establishing a name or a characteristic in the public mind. In a

sense, sustained yield forestry was a slogan which at first appeared merely

utopian and improbable of realization, but has now become a practical

reality on an ever increasing scale. He had no interest in the passage of laws

forcing sustained yield upon the operators. His persistence and persuasiveness

through his one-man educational campaign for over 30 years has resulted

in such wide acceptance for the sustained yield concept that it is now a

commonplace, not only with respect to forests, but in some other fields

as well.

The editor, Rodney C. Loehr, did an excellent job in going through

Mason's diaries and other materials and coming out with an exciting story

of the development of sustained yield forestry in this country.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station              OLIVER D. DILLER

 

Bourbon Democracy of the Middle West, 1865-1896. By Horace Samuel

Merrill. (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1953. viii+274p.,

bibliography and index. $4.50.)

The generation after the Civil War, the legendary Gilded Age, witnessec

rising captains of industry successfully plotting, through the media of the

Republican and Democratic parties, to "contain" the strivings of the laboring

and agrarian classes toward greater freedom and justice. Covering the

Middle West (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minne

sota, and Nebraska), the only "vulnerable outpost in the political-economi,

empire of big business" (p. 2), were the Bourbon Democrats of that area

Why were they called Bourbons? They were "Bourbons in the sense o

being wealthy, self-esteemed, self-appointed guardians of an already fixed

pattern of living. . . . They jealously guarded the machinery of materia

progress against threats of restless farmers and wage-earners" (pp. vii-viii)

The Democratic party renounced its Jeffersonian heritage, succumbed t

Bourbon thinking, and sat on the lid of reform. This is the theme

• 14
 

Book Reviews                            299

 

Professor Merrill's volume. Is it a valid one? In the eyes of this reviewer

it is not.

To begin, while it is conceded that the Republican party emerged from

the Civil War as "the party of big business," it does not necessarily follow

that the Democratic party was an anti-Big Business party. Indeed, as the

author points out, some of our greatest industrialists, men like James J.

Hill and Cyrus McCormick, were Democrats. Why therefore should we

expect an attitude other than that exhibited by the Bourbons? The point

here is that both parties were controlled by business interests. Personalities

rather than issues were the really distinguishing features of our major

parties. It would seem to be stretching the fiber of history to set off one

particular political group and accuse it of frustrating progress, when, in

fact, our whole political and economic atmosphere militated against such

progress. Although Professor Merrill holds no brief for any party or

person connected with these "reactionary" proceedings, he is especially

irritated by the midwestern Bourbon Democrats. One might ask, was not the

guilt of the Republicans in betraying Lincoln's ideals as grievous as that

of the Democrats in betraying Jefferson's? Whereas the Republicans were

apparently hopeless in this regard, the author would reply, the Democrats

had a real opportunity, but fumbled it like a Cleveland shortstop.

As we proceed through the volume it becomes increasingly unclear as to

just whom we are talking about. In handling Cleveland's first term, more

and more the author criticizes the reactionism of both national parties with

little reference to midwestern Bourbon Democracy. He is angry at the

weakness, insincerity, and hypocrisy of our congressmen (Republican and

Democrat) as evinced, for example, in the interstate commerce and Sherman

anti-trust acts. Following the election of 1888, the victorious Harrison

acknowledged the role of Providence in his triumph. Professor Merrill

drily prophesies, "Perhaps the day would come when Providence or some

other factor would cause the voters to arise in earnest against the hierarchy

of both old parties" (p. 200; italics mine). Repeatedly he aims his barbs

at Bourbons and Republicans combined and loses sight of his principal

target, the midwestern Bourbon Democrats. This seems to sustain the

argument that the major thesis is artificial.

An undercurrent of sarcasm, pervading the volume from beginning to

end, detracts from the fine scholarship which Professor Merrill has poured

into his study. The worst meaning is attached to all deeds of the Bourbons,

and the best meaning to those of the "liberals," "reformers," "progressives,"

or whatever you call them. For example, in the 1892 Illinois gubernatorial

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300      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

campaign, Altgeld violently attacked the anti-parochial school Edwards

act. It came out subsequently, although too late to figure in the campaign,

that Altgeld himself had been active in urging the bill's passage. Altgeld's

tactic here the author terms "shrewd" (p. 236). Yet had a Bourbon per-

petrated such a subterfuge he would doubtlessly have been labeled a

"hypocrite." Similarly loose use of such words as reactionary, plutocrats,

Wall Street, and so forth, mars the book's effectiveness.

An associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Pro-

fessor Merrill has done an admirable piece of research, utilizing nineteen

manuscript collections (eleven of them at the Wisconsin Historical Society,

where the author carried on his graduate work), and a formidable array

of secondary volumes. It is the synthesis which is held in question. Apart

from this there are several unusual looking footnotes. Witness number 61

on page 230:

Id. to id., July 20, 1892; id. to id., August 12, 1892; id. to id., (telegram),

August 13, 1892; id. to id., September 8, 1892; and id. to id., November 30, 1892,

ibid.

Technically, I suppose, this is proper, but could it not have been simplified?

Finally, the style is awkward and labored. A little more editorial oil would

have lubricated the literary squeaks.

Rio Grande College                            EUGENE C. MURDOCK

 

Horse Power Days: Popular Vehicles of Nineteenth Century America. By

Ivan L. Collins. (Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1953.

ix+88p., illustrations. $2.50.)

A vital but often neglected element of the nineteenth century scene--

the horse-drawn vehicle--receives unusual treatment in this small volume. The

years between the birth of the American Republic and the advent of the

automobile witnessed a succession of vehicles whose common denominator

was the faithful horse. The field of inland transportation was invaded,

to be sure, by the canal boat (itself dependent upon the horse or mule),

by the railroad, and by the steamboat, but to the average American in 1900

as in 1800 the horse was a sine qua non to travel. At one time or another

the Conestoga wagon, the Concord coach, the sleigh, and the farm wagon

were as familiar to the eye as they were important to the development of

a rapidly expanding nation.

Horse Power Days is not a treatise on transportation. It makes no

pretense of being a serious study in the usual sense. In its own way

• 16
 

Book Reviews                            301

 

it is something more than this, for here is a collection of photographs

depicting many typical horse-drawn vehicles with a clarity and detail that

could never be achieved with words. Each of the forty illustrations is

accompanied by approximately one-half page of text describing the use

of the vehicle. These are grouped under three headings. Under "Long

Distance Transportation" one finds the stage wagon, the road coach, and

five others. The dozen employed for "Short Journeys and Social Uses"

include the canopy-top surrey, the barouche, and the victoria. "Serving

the Growing Nation" were the logging, brewery, and express wagons, the

hook and ladder, the hotel omnibus, and some sixteen others.

The book is actually the by-product of a much larger project, for the

vehicles pictured on its pages are miniatures constructed by the author,

Ivan L. Collins. This fact in no way detracts from the usefulness of the

volume. After extensive travel, research, and observation, Mr. Collins built

his models at one-eighth scale, reproducing the original vehicles which he

found scattered (often in a dilapidated condition) throughout the country.

The miniatures are authentic to the last detail, including the paint colors.

The last twelve pages of the book show the various steps in the con-

struction of one miniature, from the discovery of the original in a field

to the application of the seventh coat of paint. By placing each vehicle

close to the camera and a considerable distance from the background,

Mr. Collins successfully creates the illusion that the models are full size.

Horse Power Days is a fascinating and captivating volume. It is at-

tractively printed by Stanford University Press, with the names of the

vehicles appearing in type which varies in weight and character to harmonize

with the rugged Conestoga, the more delicate fringe-topped surrey, the

starkly severe hearse, and so on. The spiral binding leaves much to be

desired, but this is at best a trivial criticism.

Ohio State Archaeological                              JOHN S. STILL

and Historical Society

 

John McMillan: The Apostle of Presbyterianism in the West, 1752-1833.

By Dwight Raymond Guthrie. (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh

Press, 1952. x+296p., frontispiece, maps, appendices, bibliography, and

index. $3.00.)

This is a carefully documented account of the career of a pioneer

missionary preacher among the early Scotch-Irish settlements of south-

western Pennsylvania. The author is an ordained minister, now professor

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302      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

of Bible at Grove City College, who thoroughly understands the back-

ground of his research.

A native of Chester County (Pennsylvania) and the son of Scotch-Irish

parents, McMillan early saw the need for religious ministrations west of

the Allegheny Mountains, and his first missionary journey to that region

was in the summer of 1775. His work as a minister, revival preacher, and

teacher for fifty-five years entitles him, according to the author, to be con-

sidered "without question . . . the father of the Presbyterian churches in

the West" of that time.

He was an intensely practical man, not without humor, but, like other

Scotch-Irish ministers, blunt in denouncing what he deemed vanity and

wrongdoing, and insistent upon correct theological doctrine. Yet so great

was the sensitivity of the period to possible heresy, that he was once

accused of unorthodox views regarding the Trinity. He, however, was

such a staunch supporter of well-established doctrines that the presbytery

recognized the charge, in the words of Professor Guthrie, as "utter

foolishness."

His zeal in teaching pioneer candidates for the ministry and in giving

assistance to many schools, including Washington Academy and Jefferson

College (antecedents of Washington and Jefferson College) made him

one of the fathers of education in western Pennsylvania.

Not a politician in the ordinary sense, he was a staunch defender of law

and order and lent his influence against the Whiskey Rebellion in the area.

The author summons a wealth of information to give a vivid picture

of the personalities with whom McMillan worked and with some of whom

he disagreed. Much of the material will be of interest only to students of

religious history, but to such it will illustrate anew the sources of the

strength and the limitations of organized Presbyterianism in what has con-

tinued to be one of its centers of greatest influence--southwestern Penn-

sylvania.

Ohio State University                       FRANCIS P. WEISENBURGER

 

Proud Kate: Portrait of an Ambitious Woman. By Ishbel Ross. (New York,

Harper and Brothers, 1953. 309p., illustrations, bibliography, and

index. $4.00.)

This is the study of an era and of a woman. The woman is Kate Chase,

the spoiled but talented daughter of Salmon Portland Chase, governor of

Ohio, United States Senator, secretary of the treasury in Lincoln's cabinet,

• 18
 

Book Reviews                           303

 

and chief justice of the supreme court. But he never became president

of the United States.

This significant omission in the record is the hard core of the theme of

this engrossing book. Salmon, more than anything else, would be president

of the republic; Kate, more than anything else, would be the mistress of

the White House to her widowed father! Out of this situation emerge the

portraits of a madly ambitious father shadowed by his imperious daughter,

and around the two many notables of the Civil War drawing rooms.

Except for a romantic entanglement with Roscoe Conkling, Kate lived

every minute to no other end than to make her father president, or, perhaps

more properly, to make herself mistress of the White House. As hostess

to her father in the governor's residence in Columbus, Kate charmed all

visitors with her beauty and wit and polished manners. Whitelaw Reid,

William Dean Howells, and James A. Garfield were among the promising

young men who attended her levees and festivals. Each wielded a trenchant

pen that might contribute to the cause.

Kate caught the ogling eyes of the young blades of the city with

a cold relish, and ignored the whispered talk behind ruffled curtains that a

local married man paid her court. Marriage itself was for sale, and later

she married Senator William Sprague of Rhode Island, scion of the

wealthy textile family of that state. Obviously, social prestige and money

were indispensable to Salmon's feverish ambitions. To the end, Kate

remained her father's daughter rather than her husband's wife.

The story was the same in Washington. All was attention when the

stately figure of Kate Chase swept across the foyer at Willard's Hotel, or

in a grand ball at the White House. A bid to one of her parties was some-

thing cherished and sought by the Perle Mesta crowd of another era.

Artists, generals, diplomats, statesmen--all swarmed around the glamorous

woman. At Mary Todd's dances Kate all but took over the affairs. She

dared to snub the hostess. For one thing, Mary spoke such abominable

French as compared to the fluent French Kate acquired at Miss Haines's

elite New York finishing school! Besides, Mary's husband dared to hold

the office rightfully belonging to Salmon! It seems petty and trivial enough

to us today. But at the time it tied in to the next presidential election.

When Roscoe Conkling crossed Kate's path her house of cards began

to crumble. Titian-haired, tall and elegant, every inch a man, Conkling

stirred Kate to the depths. Compared to jealous, bibulous Sprague, he was

a giant among pygmies. Scandal followed. There were scenes, one such

involving a shotgun, that made the headlines in Providence, New York,

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304      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Cincinnati, and Washington. The divorce that followed left Kate tarnished.

It was the beginning of the end. The Sprague fortune dwindled and

Salmon died. Kate flew from pillar to post with her three growing daughters.

Aging, at times almost destitute, thrust aside as a bad woman by the more

punctilious social leaders that rose to power in the second half of the

nineteenth century, Kate, with head unbowed, died an outcast within

sight of the splendor she once knew. She lies buried beside her father

in a Cincinnati cemetery.

The story is one of stark tragedy. Kate's great mistake was to accept her

father on his face value. The man had assets in his quenchless thirst for

the presidency--a noble bearing, a fine mind, and lofty spiritual qualities.

But he was ambitious beyond Caesar or Macbeth. And he possessed grave

political liabilities--an icy and smug exterior that chilled his public like

the cold winds of his native New Hampshire. And he changed parties as

readily as he changed overcoats. Such inconstancy is seldom rewarded in the

political arena. But what is a young and spirited girl expected to know of

such things? The essence of great drama is in the situation.

The book rustles with crinoline and organdy, the tinkling of tea cups and

the popping of corks, and the pale chit-chat of ambitious dowagers. At

times it seems the Civil War was a mere incident in the lives of these

women close to the scene of authority through their husbands and families.

Only an observing woman could write this book, and catch the spirit of

polite banter and brazen jealousies of the women of Washington during

the Civil War.

The author is at her best in passages like, "In soft candlelight, wearing

pink moir6, her hair burnished and her eyes alight with animation, she

[Kate] conversed with Sumner about his experiences abroad" (p. 92)

Or, "Her skin was as white and smooth as the long velvet train of her

dress. Her lace veil was held in place by a parure of pearls and diamonds

in orange blossom design, the gift of the bridegroom" (p. 140).

A study of this kind is something more than a biography and something

less than a history. Unless the two genres are kept in a reasonably nice

balance, events either overtake the character or the character runs away

with the events. In either case the result is chaos. Only in a few mino

instances are events lumped around Kate rather than integrated with he

motivation. The author manages this difficult problem of integration ad

mirably, and her final chapter impresses this reader as the definitive essay

on capricious but tragic Kate Chase.

Ohio State University                               EARL W. WILEY

• 20
 

Book Reviews                           305

 

South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900. By George Brown Tindall. (Columbia,

University of South Carolina Press, 1952. xii+336p., illustrations, ap-

pendix, bibliography, and index. $5.00.)

For the first two hundred and fifty years of our history the relations

between the white man and the Negro were those of master and slave.

Today, according to most sociologists, that relationship is best described

as one of caste. The transition from slavery to caste has seldom been traced.

One might guess that the road was neither a straight nor an easy one.

Just how the transformation did occur, at least in the crucial state of South

Carolina, is faithfully and thoroughly reported in this excellent book. It

adds greatly to our understanding of the course of race relations in the

United States, and fills in an important gap in our knowledge of the history

of the American Negro.

The author begins with a brief sketch of the coming of the Negro to

South Carolina, and of the system of slavery as it developed and functioned

there. He next treats, also briefly, the turbulent period of Reconstruction.

Some attention is given to the role played by Wade Hampton, for the

author insists that this heroic figure has been grossly misunderstood. Says

he, "It is . . . irony that Wade Hampton . . . should be canonized in the

white folklore, not as a man of generous sentiments and great moral courage,

so much as the leader of a violent campaign to remove the Negro from

the government of the state."

The greater part of the book is devoted to the political, economic, and

social developments, insofar as they affected the Negro, in the period follow-

ing the withdrawal of federal troops. The author discusses, among other

matters, the decline of the Republican party from its post-war position of

dominance, the techniques and processes whereby the Fifteenth Amendment

was nullified, the economic adjustments made by the Negro to his new

status, and the emigration of Negroes from the state--to Liberia, to the

West, and to the cities.

The book brings out many novel, surprising, even incredible, facts--at

least to this reviewer, who was himself born and reared in South Carolina,

but in the present century, when the system of segregation and caste was

firmly established. The color line, as this book demonstrates, was not so

clearly drawn prior to 1900, and Jim Crow was but a young, though husky

and growing, infant.

The book is interesting and readable, and at the same time scholarly and

dispassionate. It treats the good and the bad, the pleasant and the un-

pleasant. It ends, moreover, on an optimistic note, for the author cites

• 21
 

306      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

some evidence for his belief that "there has been demonstrated a profound

shift of public sentiment which promises a revival of the spirit of inter-

racial good will and cooperation that was lost in the aftermath of

Governor Hampton's administration."

This reviewer is basically in agreement with the point of view of this

author, who also is a native of South Carolina, and is a graduate of the

University of North Carolina and a member of the history department of the

woman's college of that university. He commends him for writing so

frankly and fairly on so controversial a subject. He suspects, however, that

Governor Hampton and his followers were somewhat less magnanimous

and somewhat more expedient than this author believes, and that the progress

toward equality is somewhat less conspicuous.

Ohio State University                               BREWTON BERRY

 

The Bounty Lands. By William Donahue Ellis. (Cleveland and New York,

World Publishing Company, 1952. 492p., end-paper illustration. $3.95.)

This historical novel tells the story of young Tom Woodbridge who

migrates from Concord, Massachusetts, to "Mesopotamia" in the Northwest

Territory in 1799 with two fixed purposes--to secure a land grant for his

father's military bounty warrant and to raise pedigreed pigs. Mesopotamia

is described as a private land purchase in the United States Military Tract

near the Greenville Treaty Line, and its proprietor is Elnathan Shuldane, a

shrewd and influential New England speculator who is selling lands for

bounty warrants and runs into difficulties with Woodbridge over land and

pigs. He sends his daughter Veronica and his attorney, Jonathan Blair,

to the new settlement to checkmate the rugged hero, but the latter turns

the tables on Shuldane by getting Veronica to marry him after he has

unwittingly compromised her--the most improbable incident in the book.

The father-in-law remains unreconciled and the rivalry of the two men

runs on through twenty years of early Ohio history. The complicated plot

introduces frontier problems, an array of frontier types, and a new breed

of frontier porkers. An especially significant character is Slover Navarre

(or William Hogland), called the squatter governor, who turns up at

opportune times all over the Northwest Territory to assist Woodbridge

and protect squatters.

The leading characters are well drawn, the action is handled skillfully

and reader interest is well sustained. The story is carried along almos

entirely by conversation and reads like a series of episodes in a radio serial

• 22
 

Book Reviews                            307

 

The action is too rapid, however, and is not sufficiently tempered by de-

scription and character analysis to picture effectively life in a frontier settle-

ment. This reader missed the sights and sounds and smells of the Ohio

woods, and the brawling, sinning, raw humor, religious revivals, and other

emotional outlets of the pioneers. The minor characters are generally nice,

simple-minded people who listen to their leaders, solve frontier problems

satisfactorily, establish good government, and work over the ruggedly in-

dividualistic hero into a pillar of the community.

But a more serious criticism applies to the author's use of historical

materials. Only a few examples may be cited. The purported survey of the

United States Military Tract has been lifted from the survey of the Seven

Ranges some thirteen years earlier and does not fit the former. Winthrop

Sargent, depicted as leading a party of surveyors in the military tract, was

actually governor of Mississippi Territory in 1799. Rufus Putnam surveyed

the military tract in 1797, two years before the book begins. The exaggerated

description of Indian difficulties which interrupted the survey also belongs

to the earlier period. Thomas Hutchins, mentioned as geographer of the

United States in the book, died in 1789 and the title had been dropped

before 1799. The Geographer's Line did not extend "due west from the

southwest corner of Pennsylvania" and it was not the base line for the

military tract, nor was Section 16 reserved for schools in this area.

The account of Indian troubles in the early 1800's, as given in the book,

makes the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 a useless performance on Anthony

Wayne's part. Nor was Tecumseh organizing his Indian confederacy around

1800. Not until the War of 1812 was there a British-Indian danger. The

author's story of a far-reaching web of squatter organizations under Navarre

(alias Hogland), who is elected to the first Ohio legislature, may be within

the latitude of a fiction writer's creation, but Ohio squatters were hardly

so stupid as to expect the Ohio legislature to amend federal land laws.

Federalists and Republicans did not battle over land policies in Ohio, and

squatters' cabins were not being burned by troops in the period covered by

the book. A Hogland was sometimes termed the squatter governor in the

1780's but disappears after that.

The location of Woodbridge's farm is given as Section 15, Township 7,

Range 5, in the military tract. This would put Mesopotamia in northern

Coshocton County. Yet characters in the book make frequent trips by wagon

to Cincinnati for supplies, thus crossing two-thirds of Ohio (then almost

without roads), when Marietta could have been reached far more easily

by the Tuscarawas-Muskingum route or Wheeling by way of Zane's Trace.

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308      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

And the feat of Attorney Blair and Veronica in driving a light surrey

across central Ohio from the upper Miami River in 1799 staggers the

imagination.

Space does not permit further examples of the book's historical lapses

and improbabilities. Certainly, the author does not let the facts of history

interfere with his plot. He has written an entertaining story, but this

reviewer refuses to believe that early Ohio was quite like that.

Ohio State University                          EUGENE H. ROSEBOOM

 

The Course of Empire. By Bernard De Voto. (Boston, Houghton Mifflin

Company, 1952. xvii+647p., maps and end maps, list of comparative

dates, notes, bibliography, and index. $6.00.)

Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri,

1785-1804. Edited, with introductory narrative, by A. P. Nasatir. Two

volumes. (St. Louis, St. Louis Historical Documents Foundation, 1952.

xv+853p., illustrations, maps, and index. $15.00.)

George Rogers Clark: Soldier in the West. By Walter Havighurst. (New

York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1952. vii+216p., illustrations, index,

and end maps. $3.00.)

Although the last to appear, The Course of Empire is chronologically

the first of three volumes by the same author tracing the fulfillment of "a

feeling which, historically, the American people have always had, a feeling

that properly they must become what they have become, a single society

occupying the continental unit" (p. xiii). De Voto's Across the Wide

Missouri and The Year of Decision have already earned for him the right

to complete the story with this background volume.

Across the pages of this book march Narvaez, Cartier, Cabeza de Vaca

Fray Marcos, DeSoto, Coronado, Champlain, Nicolet, Groseilliers, Radisson

Jolliet, Marquette, LaSalle, Kelsey, Verendrye, Carver, Mackenzie, Gray

and many others. To chronicle their activities and to use their motivating

ideas and the events in which they figured to support the central theme is it

itself a tremendous undertaking. To accomplish it in a volume of approxi

mately five hundred pages of text is a more difficult task. But when the

author devotes well over one hundred pages to the Lewis and Clark stor

alone he sacrifices the effectiveness of the remainder considerably.

It is this contraction which weakens The Course of Empire. Of necessit

it is reduced in many places to a statistics-like account. Reading becomes

• 24
 

Book Reviews                            309

 

labored process. Perhaps two separate volumes would have been more ade-

quate, if indeed all of the detail contained in the present one is considered

necessary to support the theme.

Aside from this imbalance, however, other aspects of De Voto's work

should be noted. The literary style used lends itself to well-turned phrases.

"Louisiana welded the implicit significance of the American political ex-

periment to the implicit logic of continental geography. Thereafter they

were not to be distinguished from each other" (p. 400). At the same time

this style renders some sentences so as to be of little meaning to the average

reader. "When Cabeza de Vaca walked naked out of a miracle," he writes,

"imperial ingredients were waiting in solution for just such a precipitant

as he at once became." Continuing, "This slight increment of force, itself

a minute integer of experience in a sum of fantasy, made the first whorl in

what would be a vortex of forces, and that vortex would become the con-

tention of four empires" (p. 10). Or again, after Gray's discovery of the

mouth of the Columbia River, De Voto says, "It was as if a whirling sphere

had detached an asteriod that traveled in a concentric orbit, and yet the

attractive force was in the direction of the asteroid--pulling the sphere

toward it" (p. 410).

Characterizations of some of the men who cross these pages are excellent.

Wilkinson is called a "small-time confidence man" (p. 432), and "a very

small villain on a very large scale" (p. 338). Genet was "as odd a figure

as ever represented a nation anywhere" (p. 340). In summing up one of

his principal characters, De Voto says, "To his contemporaries Thomas

Jefferson did not seem a bemused ideologue. . . . His opponents thought of

him as the embodiment of realism and even opportunism, as pragmatism's

pope" (p. 339). Literary excellence, as well as historical accuracy, is attained

in describing such things as the coureurs de bois, geographic features, the

fur trade, ethnographic data and modes of travel through the wilderness.

Typographical errors are few and unworthy of mention. Some historical

inaccuracies should be corrected. Ouiatenon, for example, is not present

Fort Wayne (p. 223); and Quebec and Montreal do not belong on an

early sixteenth century map (p. 56). The volume is illustrated with a number

of maps, both good and bad. Some are excellent aids in following the text,

but others are so detailed as to be of little value--the end maps, for

example, with minutiae of physiographical features that are too difficult

to interpret. And still others are needed to clarify textual details that other-

wise call for intimate geographical knowledge not possessed by most readers.

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310      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

Though the place of geography and its determinism in the narrative are of

prime significance, the maps, on the whole, are not adequate in their

supporting role.

De Voto has taken a great number of factors--missionary zeal, love

of adventure, desire to find an all-water route across the barrier of continent

to India, the fur trade, the Indian, greed for power--and has woven them

into one grand fabric. These are the ingredients of the Spanish vs. French

vs. English struggle of empire, out of which emerges logically and inevitably

a new factor triumphing over all others, the United States. Manifest destiny

is indeed the thesis of The Course of Empire.

The author frankly admits his work to be primarily a synthesis of "an

appallingly large number of historians." Nevertheless, much of what he

refers to as "the connective tissue [and] the background of historical judg-

ment" is his. Although it does not make for casual reading, a thing which

will discourage many, this work is a significant piece of Americana.

Dealing alone with the two decades Before Lewis and Clark, Professor

Nasatir has brought together some two hundred and thirty-eight documents

into his two volumes. The basis of selection of these items has been their

pertinence to the continuous story of the exploration of the Missouri River

Although not intentionally planned as such, his work is a source collection

that might well be used for a detailed study of a portion of the De Vote

story. There are journals of journeys of explorers, descriptive accounts o?

the natives, minutes of meetings, proclamations, petitions, letters, statistics-

the usual selections for collections of this nature.

More than half of these documents are the products of four men. And

when it is further noted that the same four men are also the recipients of

many more of the items, a rather clear picture of Nasatir's emphasis can be

obtained. After the American Revolution, the British not only continues

to control the Indian and fur trade south of the Great Lakes, but the

penetrated as well into Spanish Louisiana across the Mississippi River

Spanish fear that the British would go further and thereby threaten Santa F?

and other outposts of their empire spurred them to renewed activity. In

the spring of 1794 Jacques Clamorgan and other merchants incorporate

the Missouri Company with the approval of Zenon Trudeau, lieutenar

governor of Spanish Illinois (Upper Louisiana) and commandant ??

St. Louis, and Francois Carondelet, governor general of Louisiana. Counter

acting the British threat was the chief concern of these officials and c

Charles De Lassus, lieutenant governor of Louisiana. This is the story tol

by Before Lewis and Clark.

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Book Reviews                             311

 

For an introduction, Nasatir has written a brief history of the Missouri

River concerning its discovery, the little known French period, the Spanish

period, and the Anglo-Spanish rivalry. Of necessity brief, it does, however,

serve especially as a valuable introduction to the sources of the period.

This essay is illustrated by five fold-in contemporary maps of the Missouri

and Mississippi rivers. Reproduced apparently from photostat copies of the

originals, they are not too satisfactory.

The documents have been assembled from archives and collections both

European and American. In the case of foreign language texts, only English

translations are printed. The editor has confined editorial remarks generally

to cross-references and indications of the sources of the documents. Although

some have appeared in print elsewhere, they are included in the present

collection if deemed important to the continuity of the story. Editorial

license has been kept to a minimum, and this does not detract from the

usefulness of the items. One index for both volumes at the end of the second,

although very adequate, makes its use a bit awkward. Aside from these ob-

servations and the content of the volumes themselves, a word of praise should

be given to the publishers for an attractive format. Before Lewis and Clark

could well serve as a model for other similar ventures.

Another phase of De Voto's story is concerned with the Indian-British

attempt to keep the Americans from pushing into and taking the Old

Northwest during the Revolution. "The decisive stay to that effort was

provided by one of the suddenly disclosed geniuses shaped to the need

and the hour," George Rogers Clark (p. 267). Professor Havighurst has

chosen this man as the subject of his most recent book.

Because of the pleasing literary style of this hero study, the book should

sell well. It is in keeping with the current trend of a number of similarly

written juveniles upon important historical men. Readability is one thing;

accuracy, however, is another. A combination of the two is of prime

necessity in any historical work, regardless of the level on which it is

produced.

A surprising number of factual errors and inaccurate generalizations

appear in this small volume. For example, control of the British posts

in the Old Northwest would not mean control of all of the Ohio and

Mississippi valleys (p. 99); Clark did not give to the new nation "half

the territory it possessed" (p. 174); Vincennes was not the territorial

capital of the Old Northwest (p. 194); and, the Treaty of Greene Ville

did not cede to the United States "all the land that drains into the Ohio"

(p. 184). Also, the famous Logan speech and the Henry Hamilton "hair-

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312      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

buyer" stories are propagated. And it would be difficult to support his

thesis that "without his [Clark's] campaigns . . . the Ohio River would mark

the northern boundary of the United States" (p. vi). These items will

suffice to illustrate the unreliableness of George Rogers Clark: Soldier

in the West. Consultation of recent literature on Clark and general histories

of the Old Northwest would have prevented these pitfalls and a much more

valuable and reliable literary-style biography would have resulted.

Miami University                                 DWIGHT L. SMITH

 

Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record. By Ernest J. King and Walter Muir

Whitehill. (New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1952. xv+674p.,

illustrations, maps and charts, and index. $6.75.)

These memoirs add another volume to the swelling list of reminiscences

of those who guided American military and political policy during World

War II. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King served both as commander in chief,

United States Fleet, and chief of naval operations throughout most of the

war, and represented the navy on both the joint and combined chiefs of

staff. It was his initial intention upon his retirement in December 1945

to write an account of the international conferences he attended as a member

of the combined chiefs. Commander Walter M. Whitehill, an officer on

his staff from 1943 to 1945, persuaded him to enlarge the scope to a full-

scale autobiography. The views expressed, the personal recollections are

King's; the research in public and private files, the interviews with the

admiral's associates, and the text are the work of Whitehill.

A native of Ohio, King was born in Lorain in 1878, the son of a Cornish

mother and a Scottish father, who had once been a fresh-water sailor. The

chance reading of an article on the naval academy was the genesis of his

interest in a naval career, which he entered upon in 1897 as an Annapolis

plebe. As he traces the history of his next twenty years in various junior

commands at sea and ashore, a picture emerges of a man of small foibles

and great strengths. Outstanding are his probing, absorbent mind, keel

interest in theory combined with Scottish common sense, confidence in hi

own abilities and opinions, and a driving initiative. His faults are those

common to strong characters--a streak of stubbornness, a frosty exterior, and

egocentricity.

During the First World War King served on the staff of Admira

Henry T. Mayo, who confirmed some of King's own convictions concerning

the manner in which a high command should operate, especially the necessit

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Book Reviews                           313

 

and wisdom of delegating authority. To broaden the scope of initiative

allowed subordinates became one of his crusades. His high praise for Mayo

did not, however, extend to some of his other superiors, whom he criticizes

with unhesitating frankness.

The years between the wars were the period of final preparation for his

supreme task. His choice of duty is of interest because it shows his pre-

science in anticipating the trend of naval warfare. He did not seek out

cruiser and battleship commands or identify himself with the so-called

"Gun Club" clique, who monopolized top positions in the navy. Instead

he spent four years in submarine duty, fourteen in naval aviation, and a

year (1931-32) in the senior course at the naval war college, Newport,

Rhode Island, where he studied the influence of national policy and economic

pressure on the strategy of war and the relationship of naval strategy, tactics,

and command; and where, by something less than coincidence, he worked

out a war-game problem to recover the Philippines, which it was assumed the

Japanese had captured. Later he was able to put to use his own solution

with some modifications.

King has detailed his activities in the last war so fully that one can only

touch upon the high points. He describes his relationship with President

Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of respect and understanding, yet stiff and

impersonal principally through his own choice. His associations with his

opposite numbers on the joint chiefs of staff were similarly reserved.

Though at pains to point out differences which occurred and to reiterate

the soundness of his own principles the admiral does not fail to suggest

the mutual confidence which existed among that body. He defends his in-

sistence that General Dwight Eisenhower rather than the "indispensable"

General George Marshall be chosen to head the allied landings in France,

a view that finally prevailed.

King admired the British counterparts on the combined chiefs of staff,

but he had little respect for the stiff prima donna, Charles de Gaulle; the

naively trusting, "political general," Chiang Kai-shek; and the Russian top

commanders who had to run to Stalin for their instructions. The admiral's

comments on the controversial Yalta Conference will not please either

defenders or detractors of Roosevelt's actions. King makes it clear that

he, together with the joint chiefs, wanted Russian entry into the war against

Japan, but they thought the price asked by Stalin too high. In their opinion

concession to the Russians of the Japanese-held half of Sakhalin and all of

the Kurile Islands was enough "sweetening" (p. 591).

Although the style is modeled upon the bare-bones succinctness of an

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314      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

operation order, these memoirs are unduly lengthened by King's efforts to

salvage too much scrap trivia in his life. There is minute detail of whom

he met or dined with and where, which could profitably be jettisoned. While

these intrusions slow the pace of the narrative, they do not obscure the

portrait of this great commander, who represents the highest ideals of the

naval service and whose career justifies the rigorous, variegated training

the navy imposes.

Kenyon College                                      LANDON WARNER

 

The Great Railroad Conspiracy: The Social History of a Railroad War.

By Charles Hirschfeld. (East Lansing, Michigan State College Press,

1953. vi+128p., maps. $2.50.)

Since railroad companies were among our first large-scale corporate enter-

prises, problems confronting the early lines are of real interest. The troubles

of the Michigan Central Railroad which came to a head in the Great

Conspiracy (1850-51) had three aspects which provide comparisons with

what Ohio roads were facing at the same time.

First, the Michigan line's monopolistic charter had no parallel in the

state to the south. Ohio's constitutional convention (1850-51) approved

the creation of new railroad companies by a general incorporation law.

Almost simultaneously the Michigan constitutional convention rejected such

a provision. Second, liability for cattle killed by trains while "trespassing"

on railroad tracks, the issue which culminated in the conspiracy, was fixed

on the carriers by the Michigan legislature in 1855. In Ohio in that year

the same result was achieved by court ruling.

Third, anti-railroad sentiment had such deep roots in Michigan, even as

early as 1851, that the Michigan Central's later policy of conciliation

could not eradicate them. "These early struggles . . . formed the tradition

out of which the agitation of the 'seventies grew," is the author's con-

servative opinion. In Ohio there was much less sentiment of that sort,

and what there was existed mainly among the Democrats. In the other state,

that party was generally favorable to the carriers.

Bitter feeling against the Michigan Central in Jackson and adjoining

counties led to many lawless deeds. Obstructions were put on the tracks,

stones were thrown at the cars, switches were tampered with, firewood stocks

were set ablaze, and the company was thoroughly bedeviled. Destruction

by fire of its freight house in Detroit in November 1850 was the last

• 30
 

Book Reviews                           315

 

straw. The company caused forty-four persons to be indicted for conspiracy

to burn the building, hoping thus to crush the leaders of the opposition.

The trial became a cause celebre, conducted nearly as much in the press

and on street corners as in the courtroom. The case was seen either as a

public-spirited company trying to put "a lawless gang of monsters" behind

bars, or an "insolent and overgrown monopoly" persecuting citizens assert-

ing their rights. During nearly four hot summer months in Detroit the trial

dragged on. Almost five hundred witnesses were heard, two defendants died

in jail (impossibly high bail had been set), and the defense brought the

great Senator William H. Seward from New York to offset the luminaries

of the Michigan bar employed by the railroad.

Twelve defendants were convicted, the rest freed. Public opinion there-

after grew so steadily in the "conspirators' " favor that in a few years

the railroad was paying indemnities to some of those acquitted and joining

in pleas to pardon the imprisoned.

The author fully appreciates the dramatic elements in this affair and

has told the story very well. While observing every canon of scholarship,

he has brought out the essentially "whodunit" nature of the events and

maintained the suspense as to guilt or innocence almost to the last. His

agreeable style of writing, restrained and with a light touch, well fits the

subject.

The publishers did less well. Two maps (books about railroads must have

maps) are placed almost at the end, without mention of them in the front

matter. There is no index or bibliography, the text is divided merely into

two parts, without chapters, and the typography is unattractive. The low

price, however, may be the explanation.

Columbus, Ohio                             WALTER RUMSEY MARVIN

 

Out of the Midwest: More Chapters in the Ohio Story. By Frank Siedel.

(Cleveland and New York, World Publishing Co., 1953. 240p. $2.50.)

Unquestionably one of the most difficult types of books to review is that

which possesses no central theme or continuity but consists, rather, of a

succession of short stories or anecdotes each entirely unrelated to all the

rest. Such a book is Frank Siedel's Out of the Midwest. Containing thirty-

one human interest tales drawn from his popular radio program "The Ohio

Story," Siedel's latest volume should be well received here in Ohio in

sesquicentennial year. Yet, as the title suggests, the book is aimed at a far

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316      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

wider market than merely the Buckeye State. The stories have been selected

with a view to their national as well as state-wide appeal, and care has been

taken to vary them so as to attract a wide range of reader interest. Patriotism,

humor, pathos, sports, invention, law, industry, transportation, politics,

medicine, slavery, philanthropy, pioneer life, music, education, military

history, writing--all find expression in one or more of the chapters of Siedel's

volume.

In reading Out of the Midwest I found myself caught between two con-

flicting reactions. On the one hand, my "literary self" responded most

favorably to his excellent portrayal of fascinating people and events of Ohio's

past. Frank Siedel is truly a "prince" among storytellers!

On the other hand, as a professional historian, I found myself objecting

to certain aspects of these stories. According to the publisher's jacket these

tales have been "drawn from legend and historical accounts," to which I

might add, "and the author's very fertile imagination." Quite obviously

much of the dialog together with a large portion of the descriptive material

stems from the latter source. Starting with a historical fact (or a legend)

as a nucleus, Siedel has apparently built up each story from there. Thus, like

the popular biographies of Catherine Drinker Bowen, many of Siedel's

tales should be properly regarded as fictionalized history.

It is regrettable that in Out of the Midwest a number of careless errors

were included which more careful proofreading would have weeded out. For

example, on the dust jacket above the title we read, "Archie Fields & 'The

Spirit of 1776.' " The painter's name, of course, was Archie Willard. On

page 61, fourth line, the cognomen "Brown" was inadvertently left off the

name of the runaway slave. On page 107, Aaron Putnam, then a man of

close to forty years, is repeatedly referred to as "lad." The town of Minerva,

Ohio, is described as forty miles east of the Pennsylvania line on page 120.

In the first sentence of the tale, "Report from the Field," on page 177, the

year is identified as 1785. The rest of the story then concerns President

George Washington, while Secretary of War Henry Knox is mentioned on

page 178. The year and the offices should be reconciled.

While the book gives evidence of hasty preparation, and the omission

of an index proves bothersome, nonetheless it is worthy of inclusion in the

libraries of all who are interested in the history and folklore of our great

state.

Kent State University                               PHILLIP R. SHRIVER

• 32
 

Book Reviews                         317

 

This Is America, My Country. Edited by Donald H. Sheehan. Two volumes.

([New York], Veterans' Historical Book Service, Inc. [Wm. H. Wise &

Co., Inc.], 1952. xi+vii+1004p., illustrations and index. $9.90.)

Readings in American History. Volume One: 1492 to 1865; Volume Two:

1865 to the Present. Edited by Rudolph L. Biesele, Robert C. Cotner,

John S. Ezell, and Gilbert C. Fite. (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company,

1952. xi+361, xii+403p. Each volume, $2.50.)

 

This Is America is an interesting and extensive effort to provide students

and other readers of American history with important original accounts

and documents to supplement their general study. The two volumes carry

the reader chronologically through the history of the United States from a

report of the Viking contact on North America to a statement of American

foreign policy, communicated in 1948 by Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith

to Russia's Premier Molotov. The selections are presented in eight sections,

the first covering the years 1000 to 1750; the second, 1751-1789; the third,

1790-1828; the fourth, 1829-1865; the fifth, 1865-1890; the sixth, 1891-

1914; the seventh, 1915-1929; the eighth, 1930-1951. Within these sections

the selections are presented under subject headings such as these: "Before

Columbus," "Spain in America," "France in America," "Puritan New

England," "The French and Indian War," "Steps to Independence," "The

Problems of Independence and the Framing of the Constitution," "The

Cotton Culture of the South," "National Politics in the Reconstruction Era,"

"The Last North American Frontiers," "Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive

Movement in Politics," "America at War--The Home Front," "The Golden

Twenties," "The Coming of the New Deal," "The Hopes and Tensions

of the Post-War World."

Here the reader may enjoy the words of Columbus, Vespucci, Champlain,

Father Marquette, Captain John Smith, William Bradford, Roger Williams,

and numerous Americans, famous or relatively unknown, down to and in-

cluding Woodrow Wilson, Henry Ford, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover,

David Lilienthal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Wendell Willkie.

A feature of the book is its 32 color plates and 530 prints and photographs

of persons, scenes, and events in American life and history.

Readings in American History is an experiment of a similar nature. In it,

however, the purpose is to provide important secondary writings as well as

a number of documents and accounts from original sources. The first volume

begins with Columbus' letter to Luis de Santangel, who helped finance the

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318      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

voyage of 1492, and continues chronologically through the Civil War. The

selections presented are divided into sixteen chapters. Volume II begins with

Reconstruction and, in sixteen chapters, continues to 1951.

The set is aimed to provide collateral readings for freshmen and sophomore

college classes in American history, and offer the young people an oppor-

tunity, through interesting selections, to become acquainted with such great

historians as George M. Wrong, Reuben G. Thwaites, Herbert L. Osgood,

Moses C. Tyler, Edward Channing, Claude H. Van Tyne, John Fiske,

Andrew C. McLaughlin, Frederick J. Turner, and Charles and Mary Beard,

as well as many prominent historians of the present day. Among the original

narrative accounts the student may read William Bradford on Plymouth;

Thomas Jefferson on industry and agriculture; Elizabeth Cady Stanton on

the woman's rights movement; Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel

Webster in speeches before the senate; Stephen A. Douglas on popular

sovereignty in the territories; diary excerpts on actions in the Civil War;

reflections of Abram Hewitt on the election of 1876; Mark Twain on mining

in Nevada; Eugene V. Debs on socialism; Franklin D. Roosevelt's "quar-

antine speech"; Walter Reuther on the aims of American labor; and other

selections.

Either or both of these sets would be of value in the homes of American

citizens interested in their national history. They would be especially

valuable in homes where children are seeking ready references for their

school work.

Ohio State Archaeological                     JAMES H. RODABAUGH

and Historical Society

 

COMMUNICATIONS

To THE EDITOR OF THE QUARTERLY:

In the January 1953 issue of the Ohio State Archaeological and His-

torical Quarterly, Mr. Alfred A. Skerpan expressed his remarks about my

recently published treatise: The Crisis of the Polish-Swedish War 1655-1660.

His remarks are literally one unbroken attack on the thesis of my treatise.

Unfortunately he confined himself to merely arbitrary and empty state-

ments, without taking the slightest effort to undermine or put in doubt

either the authenticity or veracity of the original sources on which my thesis

is based. In doing so the critic seems to forget that also he is bound to

respect the basic principle of scientific honesty.

In order to exhibit Mr. Skerpan's complete baselessness and emptiness of

his remarks, it is necessary at first to give here a brief statement of my

scientific thesis which may be summed up as follows: Contrary to all the

• 34