REVIEWS
John McLoughlin, Patriarch of the Northwest, by Robert C. Johnson, Metropolitan Press, Portland, 1935, 302 pages, $2.50.
By Claire Warner Churchill
In the book, John McLoughlin, Patriarch of the Northwest, Robert C. Johnson has presented not a single portrait of an unusual man, but a whole gallery of delightful pictures, each complete to the minutest
detail. This passion for detail, with which the author fills his pages, is particularly appropriate for a discussion of Dr. John McLoughlin. The venerable factor of the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Vancouver concerned himself not only with the larger matters of business and governmental policy, but devoted himself to the smallest detail of life at Vancouver and at the many posts throughout the northwest.
Mr. Johnson does not add to our conception of Dr. John McLoughlin. He does not discover new source material, but he does fill in the detail of background which makes his biography of the patriarch vital and sentient. He shows that the enmity which existed between McLoughlin and Governor Simpson grew out of basic differences in personality as well as to disagreements about policy. His treatment of the Oregon City land claim controversy is a direct presentation of facts without judgment or bias. Not the least pleasing of the chapters is his description of travel over the overland trail, which was adapted from Jesse Applegate's “Day with a Cow Column.”
The grotesque and the beautiful in British and American costume of the period, the comic adaptation of elements from each in native dress are faithfully presented. Picturesque ceremonials of the two nations as they competed for possession of the Oregon territory, the grandeur of Chinook chieftains treading a pathway lined with beaver pelts, the simplicity of natural beauty, the unrestraint of the regales with which men home from winter in the wilderness relieved their loneliness,—all these are woven into a narrative which is characterized by a straightforward journalistic style.
McLoughlin is more than the central figure in this concise history of the Oregon territory; he is the fabric upon which a hundred patterns of primitive life are embroidered, details which heretofore have been found in widely separated sources.
The book is illustrated with portraits and prints, with decorative chapter headings by Constance Cole. It adds another volume to the growing list of Metropolitan Press publications.
Joab Powell, Homespun Missionary, by M. Leona Nichols. Metropolitan Press, Portland, 1935, 116 pages, $1.50.
By E. Ruth Rockwood
That picturesque pioneer circuit-rider, Joab Powell, is the subject of Mrs. Nichol's new book which incidentally includes considerable material on the early history of the Baptist Church in Oregon. Numerous anecdotes of his peculiarities can be found in various places, such as Mattoon's Baptist Annals of Oregon, Down's History of the Silverton Country, Kennedy's Pioneer Campfire and in newspaper articles. From all this scattered material, as well as from personal interviews and correspondence, Mrs. Nichols has produced a popular and interesting biography. She has not minimized Powell's eccentricities; indeed, she has related all the entertaining stories about him, but nevertheless she has made clear the power he had over his audiences and the esteem
