Herbert Eugene Bolton_Historian of the American Borderlands

by Albert L. Hurtado

  Turner's delaying tactics with Stanford gave Stephens time to address Berkeley's library problem. Like Stanford, Berkeley lacked a library that could support serious research in history. Stephens was a European historian, but he recognized the immense value of the Bancroft for the study of history on the Pacific Coast. He convinced President Benjamin Ide Wheeler that acquisition of the Bancroft was crucial to the future of the university. Wheeler then won over the regents, but money stood in the way, for Bancroft wanted a quarter of a million dollars for his library. Bancroft himself helped to overcome financial obstacles by agreeing to “donate” $100,000 toward the purchase while agreeing that the balance could be paid him in three $50,000 installments. On September 15 Stephens and Bancroft reached an agreement that Stephens sealed, in his decorous way, by kissing Mrs. Bancroft's hand.18

  The regents feared a public outcry because Bancroft was portrayed in the press as a self-promoter who was prying money from the public treasury for a worthless lot of old books and papers, mere “rubbish” as some people thought.19 To mute criticism, the regents called for an expert appraisal. The choice of appraisers was especially shrewd considering Stephens's cherished desire to recruit Turner. The call went out to Reuben gold Thwaites, Turner's colleague and friend and the superintendent of historical collections for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. His praise was unstinting. Bancroft's library was “astonishingly large and complete, easily first in its own field, and taking high rank among the famous general collections of Americana, such as exist at Harvard University, the Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, the New York State Library, and the Wisconsin Historical Library.” The library would “at once attract to the University a body of graduate students in American and Spanish-American history and allied studies, who are to find here a practically unique collection of material of the highest order of excellence.”20

  Thwaites recommended creating at Berkeley a repository of material for all of Spanish America. Nor was Anglo-American history to be forgotten. Bancroft had amassed a huge collection of newspapers, books, documents, reminiscences, business records, and other materials bearing on the Anglo-American phase of California and the West. The opportunities for research were “quite unexampled elsewhere in America.” As to its monetary value, the Bancroft Library was “a bargain” worth far more than the price that Bancroft had put on it.21 Thwaites made one additional suggestion: that Frederick J. Teggart, librarian of the fine Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco, be put in charge of moving the library to Berkeley. Teggart had been working in the library for some time and was already a University of California extension lecturer.22 Accordingly he organized the move and eventually became curator of the Bancroft in Berkeley.

  Bancroft's splendid rubbish now belonged to the university, but it remained in San Francisco until the University completed the Doe Library, which was still on the drawing board. In the meantime the newest building on campus, California Hall, was made ready to house the collections until Doe Library was on its footings. President Wheeler quickly used the library to good effect by inviting Turner to teach in the summer of 1906. “The presence of the Bancroft Library…might add to the attraction.” Turner accepted.23

  President Jordan continued to work on Turner. In March he obtained an agreement from the Stanford trustees to give Turner an annual two months’ leave of absence to enable his research in other libraries “until such time as our library becomes adequate.”24 In early April Jordan went to Madison and made Stanford's best offer to Turner: $5,000 per year, plus two months’ annual leave for research until a library suitable for Turner's purposes had been gathered at Stanford. On April 17 the Wisconsin regents countered Stanford's offer. They did not advance Turner's salary, but freed him from teaching for one semester per year to carry on his research and writing.25

  Had the world continued to turn on its axis as usual, Turner might have waited to hear something from Cal before giving an answer to Wisconsin or Stanford, but the earth quaked. Early in the morning of April 18 the San Andreas Fault gave way, causing catastrophic damage in San Francisco and the surrounding area. Jordan was in bed at his Stanford home. “We were all awakened by tremendous jolts, after which the house was shaken with great violence as a rat might be shaken by a dog, and objects began to fly through the air.”26 Devastation from the quake was terrific. Ceilings collapsed, buildings toppled, roads buckled, and the earth yawned. Fire soon added to the destruction in San Francisco, which burned for three days. Perhaps three thousand people died during the cataclysm.27

  Stanford University, whose impressive stone buildings had only recently been completed, was in ruins. On the day of the quake President Jordan found a typewriter and someone who could work it. He sent a heartbreaking letter to Turner. “All of the beautiful buildings are gone, the loss being about $2,800,000.” Who could even imagine such stupendous losses, much less their replacement? He asked Turner to “let our matter rest in abeyance for the present until we can know just where we are.”28 Jordan's letter to Farrand in Ithaca was more specific: the losses included the new library.29 Still, two days later Jordan wrote encouragingly to Turner, “Better come to us in 1907 as you have [previously] suggested.”30 It was too late. As soon as Stanford toppled and San Francisco burned, the game was over. In April it was impossible to know the long-term impact of the earthquake on the California economy. Jordan had told Turner that the damage to San Francisco alone was more than a billion dollars. It was reasonable to assume that the disaster would adversely affect the University of California's future as well as Stanford's. Turner folded his hand, accepted Wisconsin's counteroffer, and informed his Stanford friends. He claimed that he had made up his mind the day before the earthquake, but this was probably a white lie intended to make Farrand and Jordan feel better.31

  Quite by chance, when the San Andreas Fault gave way, President Wheeler was in Austin for the inauguration of University of Texas president Houston. Bolton had heard about Cal's acquisition of the Bancroft and asked Wheeler about it, probably before news of the earthquake reached Austin. “We mean to exploit it ourselves,” Wheeler said, a response that seemed to indicate that it might be closed to outsiders.32 Whatever restrictions Wheeler might place on the use of the library, Bolton had his eye on it and the man who would control its fate.

  But there might not be a library to exploit. While Bolton and Wheeler spoke, the fire raced through the streets of San Francisco. Two great libraries stood in the path of catastrophe, California's Bancroft and the Sutro. In Berkeley Stephens anxiously wondered if California's newly acquired library would be lost. After three days of fire the Bancroft was unscathed, though the building “was a little racked by the earthquake,” as Stephens said.33 Although legend has it that Stephens sent students to man bucket brigades to save the Bancroft, Cal was just lucky. Bancroft's building was outside the fire zone. Sutro's library was not so fortunate. More than half of it was lost in the flames, including nearly all of the priceless incunabula.34

  Stephens was practically giddy with relief when he informed Turner that the library was safe. He hoped to move it to California Hall on the Berkeley campus as soon as possible.35 Summer school would go ahead as planned, Stephens explained. by the end of May the books were in California Hall, ready for Turner's inspection in the summer. Teggart oversaw the transfer of the collection and also managed to effect his own transfer to Berkeley as curator of the Bancroft and history instructor.36

  Despite the earthquake and attendant damage, Stephens and Jordan still hoped to appoint Turner. In early August Turner joined President Jordan in a visit to the renowned botanist Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa, which was near the earthquake's epicenter.37 From Santa Rosa the Turners went to the bohemian grove campground, the famous resort of the bohemian Club, an important gathering of influential Californians.38 Jordan, Wheeler, and Stephens belonged to the club and were probably there. After seeing the Jinx, an annual play put on by the members, the Turners returned briefly to Berke
ley and then went to Lake Tahoe for a month.39 The California competition for Turner was not over.

  It is impossible to read about Turner's leisurely summer gambols without recalling Bolton, who meanwhile labored without surcease. Turner knew that he was on top of the world and could afford to take long vacations without fear of losing reputation. However, one must conclude that he did not advance his research and writing in the summer of 1906. Turner was a brilliant man who perhaps believed that there was time enough for him to do his work, and that it would be best if he did it under the most pleasant of circumstances. Bolton was driven to work from daylight to dark and into the night if he could find a candle.

  Bolton regarded his year in Mexico funded by Carnegie as a unique, careermaking opportunity. He worked accordingly. “I was hunting materials, not pleasure,” he told Fred, “and found both.” In Mexico City Bolton rented a furnished two-story house for about $60 a month, which was more than he had ever paid anywhere. It was in the American quarter and had all the modern conveniences—electric lights and indoor plumbing. He hired a Mexican woman who cooked and cleaned. The large house and servant were necessary: the Boltons now had a fifth daughter, Gertrude. The family especially liked the cool summer weather in Mexico City. “So far,” he reported, “all are delighted.”40

  The presence of Gertrude and the children must have been a great consolation for Bolton, who was in the libraries and archives six days a week. “I am over my ears in work,” he remarked. He arrived at the Archivo General at 7:30 each morning and worked there until 1:30, when it closed. Every other afternoon he went to the Museo Nacional, which was open until 6:00, or to the Biblioteca Nacional, which closed at 8:00. On the other afternoons he stayed home to arrange his notes. Nights and weekends he worked on the articles for the American Indian handbook and his own book on Texas Indians.41 “Besides, I have to keep preparing the way for future work in the archives.”42 He seemed able to keep up this pace indefinitely.

  Hard work was nothing new to Bolton, but he had to learn how to apply his energy in a way consonant with Mexican social and political conditions. The short hours and unhelpful officials in the Archivo General aggravated him. The records custodians thought Bolton was a rude Yankee—worse, a Texan—who made demands on them. It was up to Bolton to adapt to local conditions. At first he did this grudgingly; it would take him many years to develop sincere appreciation for Mexican culture and gratitude for the assistance that many Mexicans had given to him and his students. Decades later Bolton reminisced that “there were numerous occasions on which the Mexicans concluded that the American [Bolton] didn't know good manners.”43 That sort of self-awareness did not exist in the Bolton of the first decade of the twentieth century.

  Bolton was ethnocentric, but he was able to succeed in Mexico because he would not take no for an answer and because he did business with a smile on his face, his complaining letters notwithstanding. He also understood that letters of introduction from high U.S., Mexican, and church officials were needed to unlock doors. Accordingly, before going to Mexico, he asked Jameson to provide him with letters from a Roman Catholic cardinal, Secretary of State Elihu Root, and other important people.

  He also contacted Father Zephyrin Engelhardt, a German-born Franciscan priest who was writing the history of California missions. Engelhardt gave Bolton detailed information about the Church's archival holdings in Mexico and wrote a letter of introduction to the father president of the Franciscan Colegio de Guadalupe in Zacatecas.44 A grateful Bolton sent Engelhardt a cache of copied documents from Mexican archives.45 This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Engelhardt and other Franciscan historians.

  Secretary of State Root's visit to Mexico in October precipitated a telegram and letter to Bolton from Jameson. Root sat on the Carnegie Institution executive committee. “I thought it would be advantageous if Secretary Root could be given a more vivid idea of what sort of work the ‘foreign missionaries’ [such as Bolton] are doing when they have a rich field of virtually virgin soil to work in.” However, Jameson warned, Root was “not a person easily kindled about such objects.”46 Bolton did not need to be prompted to meet the secretary of state. by the time Jameson's telegram reached Bolton, he had already finagled an interview with Root, who appeared to be interested in his work. Root “ventured particularly, a hope that I might run across some of the missing [Zebulon Montgomery] Pike papers.”47

  Root was no doubt thinking about Pike because it was the centennial year of the American lieutenant's arrest in Mexico. Pike had been released, but his papers had been confiscated. Within a month Bolton found the papers except for a few that had been lost. When opportunity knocked, Bolton answered the door, and then pulled it wide open. Perhaps Jameson might consider publishing the recovered documents along with Bolton's introduction in the American Historical Review? The irresistible conjunction of personal ambition, professional accomplishment, public relations, and scholarship was not lost on Jameson, who published the documents with Bolton's introduction and gave Bolton a place on the upcoming AHA conference program.48 The news of Bolton's discovery was no doubt met with general acclaim in Austin, except perhaps for one man. Bolton's Pike triumph was carved from the heart of the field that George Pierce garrison had wished to reserve for himself.

  We can only imagine Bolton's exhilaration when he unearthed the Pike papers. This feat was the beginning of a long career marked by impressive discoveries of important documents and historical sites that had been unknown or given up for lost. Such finds came to define the sort of history Bolton did. He was as much an explorer-detective as a historian. For Bolton these discoveries were the big emotional payoff for his unstinting labor in airless rooms. Here was a primary difference between Bolton and Turner as scholars. For Turner, satisfaction came with intellectual inquiry and explanation—his history lived in the mind. But Bolton found his rewards in the discovery of the physical thing itself, whether it be artifact, document, or place. Both men were alive to the physical and metaphysical aspects of history, but the difference in emphasis placed them at different spots on the philosophical spectrum. Turner was quick, intuitive, intellectual, willing to write hypothetically, theoretically. He was very much a modern historian and as such was ahead of his time. Bolton, despite his studies with Turner, was at heart a Rankean historian who labored to construct the documentary edifice of history. His work—find the documents, publish the documents, write the history from the documents—was the very definition of scientific history, as that term was commonly understood in the late nineteenth century. There seemed little room for individual interpretation in this scheme. This was a point of view that likely came from his early work with Haskins. Yet Bolton was a romantic who thrilled to the tangible remains of the past that fired his imagination. His approach to history and enthusiasm for discovery would bring him great rewards; in time it would lead him into error.

  In December 1907 the AHA met in Madison. The anticipation of returning to his alma mater with the announcement of his great discovery of the Pike papers must have been sweet indeed.49 Bolton was a comer in the historical profession. Haskins, who was now on the Harvard faculty, approvingly told his colleagues about Bolton's paper.50 Bolton's accomplishments were undeniable, but it is equally true that he had useful connections with the men who operated the levers of power in the historical profession. Bolton returned to Mexico sure of that.

  Back in Mexico Bolton continued to survey the archives at a sprintlike pace. Even so, he was willing to take on additional work for a Dallas law firm.51 This small job was the start of a lifetime of litigation support for attorneys in the Southwest.52 The legal research took longer than expected because of the lack of finding aids and uncooperative archivists. Bolton often faced such difficulties. Hoping to see the archives in a Catholic cathedral, he presented a letter of introduction from the archbishop of Mexico to the local vicar, who asked Bolton to return the following day at noon. When he returned, a subordinate official met him and asked him to r
eturn the next day. And so it went for twelve days. “Finally they capitulated and then I was given the courtesy of the place,” Bolton recalled. “Of course they thought I was ill mannered.” He told many similar stories in later years. In time he “learned to play [his] fish,” as he put it.53

  In San Luis Potosi Bolton sought records about the Mexican-American War, or Guerra de Tejas, as his Mexican hosts called it. The old clerk said that Benito Juárez had taken them when he was president of Mexico in the 1860s. Bolton doubted the story, so he stayed in the clerk's office for three hours making small talk. When the clerk complained of a bad cough, Bolton told him about the fine climate for consumptive patients in New Mexico. This information interested the clerk. “I told him all I knew about how to cure consumption.” Pretty soon he took Bolton through a door with the date 1565 carved above and into the archives, “the best I saw in Mexico.” As they perused the shelves, Bolton stopped. “Senor,” Bolton said, “here is a whole bundle labeled La Guerra de Tejas.” The clerk replied, “Of course.”

  One by one Bolton overcame the resistance of suspicious and cynical officials. In Monterey he looked for the missionary archives of Zacatecas, which were thought to be lost. The local bishop told him about a great fire that had destroyed the records. “You must have had a very fine archive here,” Bolton mused. “Sí, magnifico,” the bishop replied. “It must have occupied a large place.” “Sí, señor, mucho” “Just out of curiosity I would like to see the room where the documents used to be kept.” The bishop obliged, and there were the “lost” Zacatecas records.