Mark Thompson - American Character: The Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Rediscovery of the Southwest

I owe a special thanks to Kim Walters, director of the Braun Research Library of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, and to Michael Wagner, also of the library staff, for their help during the many weeks I spent there, just scratching the surface of the Lummis manuscript collection and other materials about the history of the Southwest in the librarys collections. And thanks also to Keith Lummis of San Francisco, Charles Lummiss youngest and last surviving child, for permission to quote from CharlesF.Lummis: The Man and His West, the book he and his sister wrote about their father. A lucid ninety-six years old at the start of the twenty-first century, he was no stranger to his fathers faults, but had immense respect for his legacy. He had only one request, which I have tried to fulfill: I hope youll give the old man a fair shake. I am grateful to my faithful agent, Eileen Cope, and my diligent editor at Arcade Publishing, Webster Younce, whose enthusiasm for Lum and unwavering support for my work helped immeasurably as I labored to see this project through to completion. My wife, Roya Mina, and my daughters, Sara and Amanda, learned first-hand about the effort involved in writing a biography, as I disappeared for long days in libraries and on jaunts through the Southwest. I owe them my thanks for their support as well.

A NOTE ABOUT ARCHIVAL HOLDINGS

The Braun Research Library of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles holds most of Lummiss personal papers and photographic archives. The collection includes tens of thousands of items of correspondence, thousands of negatives including hundreds of five-by-seven-inch glass negatives that Lummis made in the late nineteenth century, Lummiss diary and journals, the files of his various historical preservation and Indian rights crusades, and many of the scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and assorted ephemera that Lummis kept throughout his life.

Some material from the Lummis archives has been microfilmed. The CharlesF.Lummis Manuscript Collection Correspondence Series, MS. 1.1, consists of sixty-six rolls of film containing correspondence and other items from four thousand individuals. It has been thoroughly catalogued in the invaluable three-volume Finding Aid, edited by Kim Walters and Richard Buchen and published by the Southwest Museum.

I have also quoted extensively from letters, manuscripts, and other documents in the archives of the Braun Research Library that have not yet been individually catalogued. They are identified by the name of the file series where those items can be found.

Other libraries where I found useful material about the life and times of Charles Lummis, and received courteous treatment from the staff, include the New Mexico State Library in Santa Fe, the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the Department of Special Collections in the library at the University of California, Los Angeles. I found important holdings of newspapers from Lummiss era in the libraries mentioned above and also at the University of Southern California librarys Regional History Center, the Special Collections Branch of the Rio Grande Valley Library System in Albuquerque, the Arizona Historical Society library in Tucson, and the Santa Fe Public Library.

SELECTED ARTICLES BY CHARLES LUMMIS IN HIS MAGAZINES

The Spanish American Face. Land of Sunshine, January 1895.

Los Angeles: The Metropolis of the Southwest. Land of Sunshine, June 1895.

Just Climate. Land of Sunshine, October 1897.

My Real Brownies. Land of Sunshine, June 1897.

My Brothers Keeper. First of seven in a monthly series. Land of Sunshine, August 1899.

The White Indian. Land of Sunshine, June 1900.

A New Indian Policy. Land of Sunshine, December 1901.

The Right Hand of the Continent. First of six in a monthly series. Out West, July 1902.

Bullying the Quaker Indians. First of three in a monthly series. Out West, June 1903.

Catching Our Archaeology Alive. Out West, January 1905.

BOOKS BY CHARLES LUMMIS

Birch Bark Poems. Cambridge, Mass.: C. F. Lummis, 1879.

A New Mexico David. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1891.

The Man Who Married the Moon. New York: Century, 1892. Reprinted as Pueblo Indian Folk-Stories (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992).

Some Strange Corners of Our Country. New York: Century, 1892. Reprint, Tucson.-University of Arizona Press, 1989.

A Tramp Across the Continent. Charles Scribners Sons, 1892. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

The Land of Poco Tiempo. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1893. Reprint, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966.

The Spanish Pioneers. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1893. Reprinted as The Spanish Pioneers and the California Missions (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1929).

The Gold Fish of Gran Chimu. Boston: Lamson, Wolffe, 1896.

The Enchanted Burro. Chicago: Way and Williams, 1897.

The King of the Broncos and Other Stories of New Mexico. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1897.

The Awakening of a Nation: Mexico of Today. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1898.

The Landmarks Club Cook Book. Los Angeles: Out West, 1903.

My Friend Will. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1911.

Spanish Songs of Old Calfornia. Los Angeles: C. F. Lummis, 1923.

Mesa, Canon and Pueblo. New York: Century, 1925.

A Bronco Pegasus. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928.

Flowers of Our Lost Romance. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.

COMPILATIONS OF NEWSPAPER ARTICLES BY CHARLES LUMMIS

General Crook and the Apache Wars. Edited by Turbese Lummis Fiske. Flagstaff, Ariz.: Northland Press, 1966.

Dateline Fort Bowie. Edited by Dan L. Thrapp. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.

Letters from the Southwest. Edited by James Byrkit. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989.

OTHER BOOKS

Apostol, Jane. El Alisal Where History Lingers. Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 1994.

Austin, Mary Hunter. Earth Horizon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932.

Bandelier, Adolph. The Delight Makers. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1890. Reprint, with an introduction by Charles F. Lummis, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1918.

Bingham, Edwin R. CharlesF.Lummis: Editor of the Southwest. San Marino, Calif., Huntington Library, 1955.

Bourke, John G. An Apache Campaign in the Sierra Madre. Charles Scribners Sons, 1886. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

. On the Border with Crook. Charles Scribners Sons, 1891. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.

Bowman, Lynn. Los Angeles-. Epic of a City. Berkeley, Calif.: Howell-North Books, 1974.

Brands, H.W.T.R.: The Last Romantic. New York: Basic Books, 1997.

Collier, John. American Indian Ceremonial Dances. New York: Bounty Books, 1972.

. From Every Zenith. Denver: Sage Books, 1963.

Cushing, Frank Hamilton. Cushing at Zuni-. The Correspondence and Journals of Frank Hamilton Cushing,1879-1884. Edited by Jesse Green. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990.

. Zuni: Selected Writings of Frank Hamilton Cushing. Edited by Jesse Green. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

Dozier, Edward P. The Pueblo Indians of North America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Faulk, Odie B. The Geronimo Campaign. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.