Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 5/Reviews
REVIEWS.
The Yamhills. An Indian Romance. By J. C. Cooper, author and publisher. (McMinnville, Oregon: 1904. pp. 187.)
This is an indigenous production. It matters not whether or not the author is a native son he draws his thought and sentiment direct from the soil, the woods, the streams, and the mountains of Oregon. He finds all the elements of a home here and lives his life here in wholeness.
This book is a gem. (I am not speaking of its formal literary character, though that is creditable.) It is calculated to make the thoughtful reader orient himself, as it were, in the Oregon environment. Having read it he will plant his feet more firmly on Oregon soil and be here at home. The sympathetic reader laying aside this book will find thenceforth that all things Oregonian assume not quite so bare, bleak, and somewhat forbidding an aspect as of yore, but that all will develop background and halo of color and sentiment.
It seemed a comparatively easy matter for the first generation of Oregonians to load themselves up in canvas-covered wagons and bear the trip across the plains and become fixed and prosperous on their donation claims; but it seems decidedly difficult for the second generation of Oregonians to nourish their thought and sentiment in this new home. It is probably inevitable that generations should come and go, maintaining but a weak and flabby spirit of local patriotism, before their social mind and heart attain deeply rooted strength and vigor drawn from their native haunt. With the help of a book like this, however, we shall soon have our own "Quest for the Holy Grail" and our own "Niebelungen treasure" as themes for our future literary masterpieces. This modest little book of Mr. Cooper's reminds us pleasantly that the land we occupy has been the scene of real human interests for aeons before our day of traffic and trouble. Other and greater books notably those of Professor Thomas Condon and Superintendent Horace S. Lyman have done the same. Yet Mr. Cooper's does it in a unique way.
The title and sub-title sufficiently indicate its scope.
Such an account of the Lewis and Clark exploration as will avail to get the spirit and salient incidents of that achievement into the consciousness of this generation of Americans was greatly desired. Mr. Wheeler's work has in it the qualities that promise much toward the accomplishment of that end. Considerable previous experience with surveying parties in the far west gave him acquaintance with the plains, mountains, and cañons and gave him also zest for just the line of investigation that the preparation of these volumes demanded. Because of his long connection with the Northern Pacific Railway he had unusual facilities for thorough field work.
Passages from the texts of the Lewis and Clark Journals and from the literature of the later exploration and development of the region traversed by the expedition are most skilfully chosen to bring out pictures of the scenes and the development of the important and critical incidents in the progress of the exploration. The author's narrative giving the setting and connection of the events upon which the attention is arrested is lively and effective. The text is strongly reinforced with a wealth of fine illustrations, including facsimiles of manuscript documents, reproductions of old cuts and drawings, and maps and photographs of the sites of incidents as they appear at the present time. The reader is thus enabled to see the successive stages of the historical process through which present-day conditions along the line of the trail were developed. The historical pilgrim or tourist with these books in his hands can with equal facility trace conditions back and see the difficulties encountered by Lewis and Clark and their party. We are made to see not only the topography of the country, but also the Indian life, and the animals and plants upon which the party depended for subsistence. This thoroughness of treatment is, however, confined to the part from Fort Mandan to the Pacific. Mr. Wheeler makes us not only see the party as it moves along its toilsome and sometimes dangerous route, but also enter into their life. This be accomplishes by going carefully into the organization and personnel of the expedition. In this manner he contributes much new material to sources of the history of the exploration. Having acquainted us with the characteristics of the separate individuals, he is easily able to take us into their daily struggles and privations because of having had experiences himself somewhat similar to those of the explorers. Although the author is on the whole sympathetic with the conduct of the expedition, he is independent, and he comments with practical judgment upon the tactics and every-day conduct of the explorers.
There is an introductory chapter of twenty-six pages on "The Louisiana Purchase." This brings out correctly the priority of the inception of the exploration, but as an attempt at a review of the diplomatic history affecting this western country the chapter is a positive blemish. It should be either rewritten or omitted. It must have been an afterthought. The following excerpts will serve as evidence: "Spain had held the island of New Orleans on both sides of the stream to its mouth" (p. 3): "This [the claim of the United States under the Louisiana Purchase] included the greater part of Texas—to which the claim of the United States would seem to have been a righteous one—west of the Great River; . . . the treaty of 1819, in which Spain ceded all of East and West Florida, and all country west of the Mississippi north of the forty-second degree of latitude "and westward to the Pacific, to which she claimed ownership" (p. 15). The author also gets into trouble when, out of his province, he remarks that Meares sailed into Baker's Bay (II, 232). It is true that the British commission on England's claims to the Oregon country in 1826 made this claim, and that Travers Twiss contends for it as a fact, yet the log-book of Meares does not admit of that interpretation. The blemishes are virtually confined to the preliminary chapter. The work as a whole is well done and is readable.
F. G. Young
- ↑ From the American Historical Review, January, 1905.