Herbert Eugene Bolton_Historian of the American Borderlands

by Albert L. Hurtado

46. Johnson to Skinner, 10/19/1919, CLSP.

  47. Johnson to HEB, 1/5/1920, BP In.

  48. Johnson to HEB, 3/7/1920, BP In.

  49. Ibid.

  50. HEB to Johnson, 3/18/1920, BP Out.

  51. HEB to Johnson, 4/2/1920, BP Out.

  52. HEB to Glasgow, 5/19/1920, BP Out.

  53. Johnson to Skinner, 6/3/1920, CLSP.

  54. The Spanish Borderlands, x.

  55. Ibid., vii.

  56. George Parmly Day to Bolton, 1/6/1922, BP In.

  57. Bolton, History of the Americas, xx.

  58. For an appraisal Bolton's racial views, see Hurtado, “Bolton, Racism, and American History,” 127 – 142. For an example of how Bolton's promotion of missionary heroes could lead him astray, see Sandos, “Junípero Serra's Canonization.”

  59. Turner to HEB, 8/12/1925, BP In.

  60. Turner to HEB, 8/12/1925, BP In; Bolton, Arredondo's Proof.

  61. Turner to HEB, 8/31/1925, BP In. The word “truly” is crossed out, but there is no way to know if Bolton or Turner made the change. Other marks on the letter indicate that Bolton was selecting quotes for blurbs, so it is likely that he struck the objectionable word “truly” for that purpose.

  Turner referred to Bolton's Arredondo's Proof. I have not found a direct reference to The Spanish Borderlands in the Turner correspondence at the Bancroft or Huntington libraries.

  62. Turner, The Significance of Sections in American History.

  63. Steiner, “Frederick Jackson Turner and Western Regionalism,” 103 – 135.

  64. Turner, “The Development of American Society,” 180 – 183.

  65. Turner, The Significance of Sections and American History, 252, 315 – 316.

  66. New York: Henry Holt, 1935.

  67. Turner, The United States, 352, 354.

  68. HEB to Turner, 9/15/1926, TU: 38. The “imitative disciple” term is in HEB to Turner, 12/27/1910, BP Out, and TU: 20. Bolton was commenting on Turner's “Geographic Sectionalism in America,” reprinted in The Significance of Sections in American History, 193 – 206.

  69. The Significance of Sections in American History, 193, 206.

  70. Turner to HEB, 8/21/1930, BP In.

  CHAPTER 8

  1. AHA, Annual Report, 1920, 18.

  2. Thomas Maitland Marshall to HEB, 8/22/1921, BP In.

  3. Meany, “New York,” www.nysm.nysed.gov/services/meanydoc.html.

  4. HEB to Hodder, 10/8/1921, BP Out.

  5. Hodder to Louis Paetow, 10/17/1921, BP In, Hodder. Professor Paetow evidently passed the letter to Bolton, who kept it in his file of letters from Hodder. AHA, Annual Report, 1921, 82. Bannon, in Bolton, 182n, reported that Bolton “had been considered” for the second vice presidency but deferred to Wilson. There is nothing in the official record of the nominating committee to indicate how seriously it was considering Bolton, but records for that year are sparse. AHA-LC, Box 451, Committee on Nominations.

  6. HEB to Hodder, 12/2/1921, BP Out. Adams did not receive the nomination. Hodder to HEB 12/7/1921, BP In.

  7. Teggart, “As to University Presidents,” Christian Science Monitor (August 1, 1919), reprinted in Dangberg, Teggart, 245 – 247.

  8. Dangberg, Teggart, 46 – 49.

  9. Wheeler to HEB, 5/17/1919, BP In, California, University, President.

  10. Nisbet, Teachers and Scholars, 154 – 155; Dangberg, Teggart, 48 – 52.

  11. HEB to Barrows, 6/6/1921, BP Out.

  12. Nisbet, Teachers and Scholars, 188 – 193; Ferrier, University of California, 511, 522; Kerr, The Gold and the Blue, 1:144.

  13. Ferrier, University of California, 522 – 526.

  14. HEB to Barrows, 4/6/1923, BP Out.

  15. HEB to A. O. Leuschner, n.d. [1923?] [draft]; 10/31/1923, BP Out.

  16. HEB to Frederick Bolton, 5/2/1920, BFP.

  17. Woodrow Borah, interview with author, 8/13/1992 (transcript in author's possession).

  18. Marshall to HEB, 8/22/1921, BP In.

  19. Rippy to HEB, 10/14/1920, BP In.

  20. Marshall to HEB, 5/24/1921, BP In; Mecham to HEB, 3/27/1922, BP In, Thomas Maitland Marshall.

  21. Marshall to HEB, 5/24/1921, 6/2/1921, 6/28/1921, BP In.

  22. This and the following quotations are from Bolton, “On Wisdom's Trail,” 6 – 8, 54.

  23. HEB to Frederick Bolton, 4/14/1912, BFP.

  24. Jeanne Weir to HEB, 8/25/1914, BFP.

  25. Frederick Bolton to HEB, 9/18/1923, BP In.

  26. Hackett to HEB, 9/28/1923, BP In.

  27. Ford to HEB, 9/28/1923; Hackett to HEB, 9/28/1923, BP In.

  28. HEB quoted in Bannon, Bolton, 154.

  29. Grace Mildred Bolton to HEB, 12/9/1923, BP In.

  30. Pool, Barker, 124.

  31. Barker to HEB, 3/15/1923, 11/14/1923, 5/18/1924, BP In.

  32. Barker to HEB, 5/26/1923, BP In.

  33. Barker to Goodwin, 6/18/1923, BP In, Eugene C. Barker; Bannon, Bolton, 156.

  34. Hackett to HEB, 6/12/1923, BP In.

  35. Hackett to HEB, 11/26/1923, BP In.

  36. Hackett to HEB, 1/30/1924, BP In.

  37. Barker to HEB, 11/14/1923, 2/26/1924, BP In.

  38. Bolton had tried to hire Ford to replace Stephens. Ford to HEB, 7/12/1920, 4/26/1921, BP In.

  39. Barker to Ford, 5/17/1924, BP In, Guy Stanton Ford.

  40. Barker to HEB, 5/18/1924, BP In.

  41. Barker to HEB, 5/31/1924; Hackett to HEB, 6/2/1924, BP In.

  42. Barker [1924], BP In.

  43. Great Register, Alameda County, California Room, State Library, Sacramento.

  44. Frederick Bolton to HEB, 6/6/1924, BP In.

  45. Engelhardt to HEB, 7/29/1924, BP In.

  46. Barrows to HEB, 6/7/1924, BP In. Barrows's letter was written on campus. He was so anxious to get it to Bolton that he sent him the draft—perhaps hand-delivered it, though this is uncertain.

  47. Resolution dated 6/7/1924, BP In, Native Sons of the Golden West.

  48. Bannon, Bolton, 165.

  49. “To the Alumni and Regents,” June 1924, BP Out. Scribbled on fifteen telegram blanks, there appear to be three drafts, but it is impossible to know if Bolton combined parts of one draft with another. After making the notes to organize his thinking, he may have spoken off the cuff.

  50. Hackett to HEB, 6/2/1924, BP In.

  51. Bannon, Bolton, 167.

  52. Hackett to HEB, 6/15/1924, BP In.

  53. Hackett to HEB, 6/25/1924, BP In.

  54. Hackett to HEB, 6/18/1924; Barker to HEB, 6/23/1924, BP In.

  55. Moore to HEB, 6/15/1924, BP In, Texas, University.

  56. Quoted in Pool, Barker, 129.

  57. Barker sent his speech to Bolton (1925, BP In) and other professors around the country. Most of the address is in Pool, Barker, 131 – 133.

  58. Pool, Barker, 134 – 135, 136.

  59. Wallace Notestein et al., “To the Members of the American Historical Association,” 7/1/1924, AHA-LC, Box 451, Nominating Committee Report, 1924; Notestein to Members of the Nominating Committee, 10/25/1924, 7/1/1924, AHA-LC, Box 451, Nominating Committee, 1923 – 1926; AHA, Annual Report, 1925, 28.

  CHAPTER 9

  1. Stern, Eugenic Nation, 21, 57 – 81, 123.

  2. All quotations are from HEB, “Free Negro in the South” (BP, Part III, Articles and Essays, Carton 1), an unpublished synopsis of his dissertation.

  3. Quotations in this paragraph are from Bolton, “On Wisdom's Trail,” 15, 16, 19.

  4. Bolton, “Mission as a Frontier Institution,” in Bannon, Bolton and the Borderlands, 205 – 206.

  5. Bolton to Ellison, 9/5/1916, BP Out.

  6. Anderson v. Mathews, 174 Cal. 537, 163 Pac. 902. See also Castillo, “Twentieth- Century Secular Movements,” 714 – 715; Forbes, Native Americans of California and Nevada, 92 – 93; Fernandez, “Except a California Indian”; Goodrich, “The Legal Status of the California Indian,” 163 – 166.

  7. No correspondence directly connects Bolton with the Anders
on case. However, Bolton wrote a two-thousand-word report on the question of Indian citizenship (“The Status of California Indians as Citizens,” BP Out), and the “Brief of the Petitioner” (Ethan Anderson v. Shafter Mathews, Case Files, Records of the Supreme Court of California, Case no. 8035, WPA no. 22955, Bin no. 2236, State Archives, Sacramento, California [hereinafter cited as Case File]) closely follows Bolton's rationale. Most persuasively, approximately four hundred of Bolton's words are quoted in extenso, but without attribution, in Case File, 22 – 23.

  8. “The Status of California Indians as Citizens,” BP Out.

  9. For a more detailed and sophisticated analysis of the problem of California Indian citizenship, see Akins, “Lines on the Land.”

  10. “Brief of the Petitioner,” Case File; Anderson v. Mathews, 174 Cal. 537, 163 Pac. 902.

  11. Nichols, “Civilization over Savage,” 390 passim.

  12. HEB to Gertrude, 6/6/1922, BP Out.

  13. Calloway, “My Grandfather's Axe.”

  14. Prucha, The Great Father, 2:798 – 800.

  15. HEB to Hewett, 12/4/1922, BP Out. Bolton learned of the Bursum Bill through an article in the New Republic: Henderson, “The Death of the Pueblos.”

  16. Ogden, Sluiter, and Crampton, Greater America, a festschrift, includes a complete list of HEB's graduate students and their theses, dissertations, and publications.

  17. Davis to HEB, 1/27/1914, 2/4/1914, 2/6/1914, BP In.

  18. Lummis, Spanish Pioneers, 2.

  19. Davis to HEB, 5/18/1914, BP In.

  20. Novick, That Noble Dream, 15, 172 – 174, 338 – 341, 365 – 366; Norwood, Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, 36 – 74 passim.

  21. HEB to Frederick Bolton, 2/26/1904, BFP.

  22. Banduragga, “One Hundred Years of History in Nevada,” 3 – 14; Stensvaag, “ ‘The Life of My Child,’ ” 3 – 20; HEB to Miss Weir, 6/20/1917, BP Out.

  23. HEB to Marshall, 4/4/1922, BP Out; HEB to W. T. Root, 7/2/1926, BP Out.

  24. Marshall to HEB, 7/15/1925, BP In; HEB to Marshall, 7/17/1925, BP Out.

  25. HEB to W. T. Root, 7/2/1926, BP Out.

  26. Whitaker to HEB, 7/3/1927, BP In; HEB to Whitaker, 7/14/1927, BP Out.

  27. Leonard to HEB, 6/4/1927, BP In; HEB to E. L. Hardy, 6/8/1927, BP Out; HEB to DuFour, 7/11/1927; BP Out; HEB to E. L. Hardy, 11/29/1927, BP Out.

  28. Synnott, “Anti-Semitism and American Universities,” 233 – 234; Yeomans, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, 209 – 216.

  29. Becker to HEB, 11/13/1935, BP In.

  30. Published as Bolton, ed., Historical Memoirs of New California.

  31. Transcript [1923], BP In, Native Sons of the Golden West.

  32. See BP In, Ehrman; Bannon, Bolton, 171 – 174.

  33. Transcript [1922], BP In, Native Sons of the Golden West.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Transcript [1923], BP In, Native Sons of the Golden West.

  37. For positive assessments, see Royce, California, from the Conquest, 437 – 465; Bancroft, History of California, 6:745 – 754. Modern views of vigilantism are more negative: Brown, Strain of Violence; Caughey, Their Majesties the Mob; Senkewicz, Vigilantes in Gold Rush San Francisco.

  38. Williams, History of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851, 436 – 437.

  39. John F. Davis to HEB, 9/22/1919, BP In.

  40. HEB to Dean Lipman, 2/11/1927, BP Out.

  41. Mitchell, “Joaquín Murieta”; Ogden, Sluiter, and Crampton, Greater America, 636.

  42. Ogden, Sluiter, and Crampton, Greater America, 636.

  43. HEB to Adams, 3/16/1920, BP Out.

  44. This and following quotations are from Bolton and Adams, California's Story, 119, 135, 137, 190 – 210.

  45. Campbell to HEB, 1/22/1926, BP In, California, University, President, W. W. Campbell.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Campbell to HEB, 11/10/1926, BP In, California, University, President, W. W. Campbell.

  48. HEB to Campbell, 5/12/1927, BP Out.

  49. HEB to William J. Hayes, 5/3/1927, BP Out.

  50. HEB to Campbell, 5/12/1927, BP Out.

  51. HEB to Young, 5/16/1927, BP Out.

  52. HEB to Ellison, 5/5/1927, BP Out.

  53. Ellison to HEB, 5/14/1927, BP In; HEB to Ellison, 5/16/1927, BP Out.

  54. BP, Part III, Professional Activities, Cartons 2 – 5.

  CHAPTER 10

  1. Earl Pomeroy to author, 8/22/1990 (letter in author's possession). Pomeroy, who was a graduate student at Berkeley in the late 1930s, was quoting another graduate student. Pomeroy relished the story.

  2. Bolton, Anza's California Expeditions.

  3. HEB to Lockwood, 12/9/1927, BP Out.

  4. Thompson, El Maestro, 45 – 53.

  5. With Padre Kino on the Trail; The Apache Indians.

  6. Lockwood quoted in Thompson, El Maestro, 1.

  7. Ibid., 113 – 116.

  8. HEB to Lockwood, 1/19/1928, BP Out.

  9. 3:xv.

  10. HEB Jr., “My Most Unforgettable Character.”

  11. “Map of Anza's Routes through Pimería Alta, 1774 – 1776,” in Bolton, Outpost of Empire, facing p. 332.

  12. HEB to Lipman, 2/4/1927, BP Out.

  13. Bannon, Bolton, 283 – 286.

  14. HEB to Lipman, 2/4/1927, BP Out.

  15. HEB to Charles B. Lipman, 2/18/1928, BP Out.

  16. Frank C. Lockwood, “Correspondence Concerning Herbert E. Bolton,” MSS C-D 5064, Bancroft Library. Lockwood queried Bolton's students in order to write a biographical introduction to a festschrift, Hammond, New Spain and the Anglo-American West. Lockwood's essay was not included in the volume but was published as “Adventurous Scholarship.”

  17. Pomeroy to author, 9/10/1990 (letter in author's possession).

  18. Leonard, interview with author, 8/8/1994 (notes in author's possession).

  19. HEB to Rippy, 3/12/1929; HEB to Ellison, 3/9/1929, BP Out.

  20. By “placement” I mean a full-time, permanent position in a college or university. A few of his students changed jobs. Thomas, for example, taught at Oklahoma and Alabama, so his career accounted for two “placements” of Bolton students. I compiled the placement record from “A Bibliography of the Historical Writings of the Students of Herbert Eugene Bolton,” in Ogden, Sluiter, and Crampton, Greater America, 549 – 672, and from items I found in BP In and BP Out.

  21. Pomeroy to author, 9/10/1990.

  22. Ogden, Sluiter, and Crampton, Greater America, 549 – 672.

  23. HEB, “Address of Professor H. E. Bolton before the Junior College Section of the California High School Teachers’ Association, Berkeley, July 18, 1917,” BP Out; HEB, “High School Class Visitations, May 20 – 24, 1918,” BP Out.

  24. I learned this from historian Iris Wilson Engstrand, who heard it from one of Bolton's women graduate students.

  25. Angie Debo is perhaps the best-known example of gender discrimination in hiring between the wars. Leckie, Angie Debo; Wolff and Schrems, “Politics and Libel”; Lowitt, “ ‘Dear Miss Debo,’ ” 372 – 405.

  26. Paxson to HEB, 2/2/1923, BP In.

  27. See, for example, Edward J. Lynch to HEB, 9/27/1934, BP In, NSGW.

  28. Bannon, Bolton, 179n.

  29. HEB to Ross, 7/22/1920, BP Out.

  30. Ogden, Sluiter, and Crampton, Greater America, 653; Mendelson and Ellingson, Mary Leticia Ross Papers, 156.

  31. Bolton, Rim of Christendom, xxi.

  32. HEB to Ralph Kuykendall, 8/23/1932, BP Out; HEB to A. J. Cloud, 5/29/ 1935, BP Out.

  33. HEB to H. A. Spindt, 3/20/1934 (with attachment), BP Out.

  34. HEB to A. J. Cloud, 5/29/1935, BP Out; HEB to Guy Stanton Ford, 11/19/ 1935, BP Out.

  35. Bolton, History of the Americas.

  36. Turner to HEB, 2/4/1929, BP In.

  37. HEB to Turner, 2/7/1929, BP Out.

  38. HEB to Turner, 1/17/1928, TU:45.

  39. Hackett to Bolton, 11/14/1928, BP In.

  40. HEB to James
F. Willard, 11/2/1928, BP Out.

  41. Bogue, Turner, 429.

  42. HEB to Willard, 12/11/1928, BP Out.

  43. Willard to Turner, 6/22/1929, TU:42.

  44. This and following quotations are from “Defensive Spanish Expansion and the Significance of the Borderlands,” in Bannon, Bolton and the Spanish Borderlands, 59, 62, 64.

  45. Willard to Turner, 6/22/1929, TU:42.

  46. 4 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1926), 1:vii.

  47. Bolton, “Introduction,” in Historical Memoirs, 1:xxix, xc.

  48. Bolton, Fray Juan Crespi, iii, iv.

  49. Ibid., 50.

  50. Bolton acknowledged Edward J. Hanna, archbishop of San Francisco, as a “constant source of inspiration.” Kino's Historical Memoir, 1:26.

  CHAPTER 11

  1 Kerr, The Gold and the Blue, 1:17.

  2 HEB to Ehrman, 4/2/1931, BP Out.

  3 “Ehrman Replaces Foster as U.C. Regent,” clipping, n.d.; Sidney M. Ehrman to HEB, 2/25/1930, BP In.

  4 HEB to C. C. Young, 5/6/1930, BP Out.

  5 Engelhardt to HEB, 11/20/1930, HEB In.

  6 For example, Bolton, A Pacific Coast Pioneer, is a reprint of his introduction to Fray Juan Crespi, xiii – lxi. See also Bolton, Arredondo's Historical Proof of Spain's Title to Georgia, 1 – 110, and Bolton, with Ross, The Debatable Land, which is a reprint of the introduction to Arredondo.

  7 This and the following quotations are from Bolton, Outpost of Empire, viii, 15, 326 – 332.

  8 Jacobs, Historian as Hero, 57 – 67.

  9 Skinner, “The Lure of the Golden Gate,” 3.

  10 Bolton, Outpost of Empire, after p. 332.

  11 HEB, Outpost of Empire, 333 – 334.

  12 Adams to HEB, 5/10/1930, BP In; HEB, memo announcing Adams's death, 9/2/1930, BP Out.

  13 HEB to Dexter Perkins, 1/19/1931, BP Out.

  14 HEB to T. J. Wertenbaker, 2/10/1932, BP Out.

  15 HEB to W. W. Campbell, 6/21/1930, BP Out.

  16 “History” [January 1930]; HEB to Robert Gordon Sproul, 11/25/1933, BP Out.

  17 Douglass, The California Idea, 140.

  18 Bannon, Bolton, 189.

  19 William J. Hayes to Robert Sproul, 5/9/1931, BP In, Native Sons of the Golden West; Bannon, Bolton, 178 – 179.

  20 Bannon, Bolton, 179 – 180.

  21 Bolton, Rim of Christendom, xx.

  22 HEB to Sproul, 11/2/1931, BP Out.

  23 Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924.

  24 Paxson, The Independence of the South American Republics.