Julie McCown - On the Plains, and Among the Peaks: or, How Mrs. Maxwell Made Her Natural History Collection: by Mary Dartt

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On the Plains, and Among the Peaks; or, How Mrs. Maxwell Made Her Natural History Collection

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Mary Dartt

E DITED, AND WITH AN I NTRODUCTION BY J ULIE M C C OWN

U NIVERSITY P RESS OF C OLORADO

Louisville

2021 by University Press of Colorado

Published by University Press of Colorado

245 Century Circle, Suite 202

Louisville, Colorado 80027

All rights reserved

The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of University Presses.

The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Colorado, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University.

ISBN: 978-1-64642-196-1 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64642-197-8 (ebook)

https://doi.org/10.5876/9781646421978

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thompson, Mary Emma Dartt, 18421940, author. | McCown, Julie, editor, writer of introduction.

Title: On the plains, and among the peaks : or, how Mrs. Maxwell made her natural history collection / Mary Dartt ; edited, and with an introduction by Julie McCown.

Other titles: How Mrs. Maxwell made her natural history collection

Description: Louisville : University Press of Colorado, [2021] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021034797 (print) | LCCN 2021034798 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646421961 (paperback) | ISBN 9781646421978 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Maxwell, Martha, 18311881. | TaxidermistsColoradoBiography. | TaxidermyColorado19th century. | Natural historyCatalogs and collectionsColorado. | Women naturalistsColoradoBiography.

Classification: LCC QH31.M36 T48 2021 (print) | LCC QH31.M36 (ebook) | DDC 508.788dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034797

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034798

The University Press of Colorado gratefully acknowledges the support of Southern Utah University toward the publication of this volume.

Cover image credits: courtesy, History Colorado Center, Denver (front); courtesy, Boulder Historical Society / Museum of Boulder (back).

Steve Leonard

Stephen J. Leonard

Martha Dartt Maxwell (18311881), the Colorado Huntress, ranked high among the most famous Colorado women in 1876, the year Colorado became a state. Many of the eras other well-known women shone in part by virtue of light reflected from their prominent husbands. James Maxwell, Marthas husband, a widower twenty years her senior, dutifully supported her unorthodox pursuits for years but by 1876 was obscured by her. A naturalist, hunter, and taxidermist, Martha generated her own light and made her own fame.

Invited by Colorado to stage part of its exhibit at the 1876 Centennial International Exposition, she trundled hundreds of dead birds and other stuffed animalsmany of which she had shot or poisonedto Philadelphia. There, thousands of visitors learned about Colorado wildlife and got to meet the diminutive taxidermist, a rifle-toting, buckskin-clad, deer slayer who her half-sister, Mary Dartt, portrayed as a wee, modest, tender-hearted woman.

Two years later, Mary Dartt recounted Maxwells accomplishments in On the Plains, and Among the Peaks. Although it received good reviews, the book did not sell well enough to repair Maxwells sagging fortunes. Beset by marital, financial, and health problems, she died at age fifty in 1881. Her huge stuffed collection, an albatross in many ways, outlived her by some years until it, too, was gradually tossed into to the dustbin of time.

As her birds lost their feathers, as her mammals shed their hair, Martha Maxwells fame shriveled into a small, nearly dead ember. In 1949, when LeRoy R. Hafen, executive director of the State Historical Society of Colorado, published his four-volume Colorado and Its People, its chapter on Women in Colorado, written by Eudochia Bell Smith, did not mention Maxwell. Fortunately, a few people kept her memory alive. In 1981, Maxine Benson, then the Colorado State Historian, penned a chapter on Maxwell in A Taste of the West (1981), a festschrift honoring historian Robert G. Athearn. In 1985, Maxwell became one of the original inductees into the Colorado Womens Hall of Fame, and in 1986 Benson published a biography of Maxwell. Her place in history, albeit less exalted than those of some other Colorado womensuch as the flamboyant, buoyant Titanic survivor Margaret (Molly) Tobin Brownwas secure, especially among fans of Colorados past.

Marthas half-sister, Mary, despite outliving Martha by nearly sixty years, was likewise nearly forgotten until Marthas accomplishments were again recognized. Even then, Mary Dartts 1878 book was usually simply regarded as an account of Marthas story, not as a considerable accomplishment in its own right.

Fortunately, Julie McCown, steeped in literature and contemporary scholarship and blessed with multidisciplinary insights, has taken up Marys cause by producing this book. In her engaging introduction, McCown ponders important questions. How did Dartt view womens roles and how did she tailor her portrayal of Martha, a defier of stereotypes, to fit nineteenth-century gender expectations? What does her text indicate about then current views of Native Americans? How are animals, the supporting cast in the saga, portrayed?