Jacob Hamblin: Mormon Apostle to the Indians by Juanita Brooks, and Sixshooters and Sagebrush: Cowboy Stories of the Southwest by Rowland W. Rider (review)

Reviews 59 These and other questions need to be asked, and it is to Etulain’s great credit that he both offers and answers them. I personally find his conclu­ sions as impeccable as his research and editing. Certainly, he provides enough textual evidence for us to make a reasoned and informed judgment about London’s failure to create a memorable fictional tramp. Given the book’s modest price, its attractive cover (of a railroad track curving into the distance), the fact that it establishes for the first time the canon of London’s road writing, and that both its contents and editorial comments are a valuable resource, Jack London on the Road is a truly original and indispensable addition to the shelf of essential Londoniana. Etulain is to be congratulated for the fine detective work which has enabled him to solve one of the most puzzling riddles of Jack London’s writing career. HOWARD LACHTMAN University of the Pacific Jacob Hamblin: Mormon Apostle to the Indians. By Juanita Brooks. (Salt Lake City: Westwater Press, 1980.) Sixshooters and Sagebrush: Cowboy Stories of the Southwest. By Rowland W. Rider. Told to Deirdre Paulsen. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young Uni­ versity Press, 1979.) One long postponed and the other misnamed, these books deal with the southern frontiers of Mormon country. Despite their common regional focus they differ sharply. One book deals with a classic story of Mormondom, the other about a cowboy connection little recognized in the lore of northern Arizona and southern Utah. Both deserve the attention of people interested in the literature of the West. Juanita Brooks is the foremost of what might be called Utah’s Dixie school of writers (LeRoy Hafen, Nels Anderson, Karl Larson, William Palmer, and Maurine Whipple have roots in southwestern Utah’s Dixie). In this role Brooks pioneered in Mormon studies, making contributions that have set the direction for later work but which in honesty and restraint, as well as importance, have not been superseded. A some-time college teacher with an advanced degree in literature from Columbia University, Mrs. Brooks has written the definitive study of the Mountain Meadows Massacre as well as many biographies, and has edited a number of important diaries. Now she turns to Jacob Hamblin, completing a study initiated long ago, even before work began on the Mountain Meadows project. In the interim Hamblin has been the object of several books and numerous articles by other historians, and the lore about him has spread. Jacob Hamblin is short and closely controlled, written with simple eloquence and unmatched as a vehicle for portraying Hamblin’s character. The man himself, his faith and 60 Western American Literature commitment to cause, are foremost. Other themes are the dignity and worth of native Americans and the heroic stature of wives and families who fol­ lowed Hamblin from one frontier to another. Especially moving are accounts of his own death in 1886 at Pleasanton, New Mexico, and of the restraint he exhibited when an Indian killed young Maria Haskell, wife of Hamblin’s missionary colleague. This book is story as well as history. To her knowledge of the Mormon frontier Mrs. Brooks applies imagination, providing details that go beyond specific facts to make truth more complete. To the rare kind of intimacy thus achieved she occasionally adds points of restrained interpretation. One point that carries conviction far beyond the few words allotted it is her statement that Brigham Young looked at the empty spaces on maps of the desert country and pitted pioneers, including Hamblin, against odds that were beyond human capacity (pp. 125-26). Like the book itself, Brooks’ epitaph for Hamblin is fraught with meaning but devoid of extravagance: “Time only added to the stature of this man. Of all the early ones who moved among the desert wastes of the Southwest, the imprint of his personality is most permanent. He worked for peace with the tools of peace — with understanding and tolerance and love. His theories could well be considered in any attempt to establish peace among nations” (p. 136). It is the tribute of one pioneer to another. As a reader I was moved by the book’s truth and touched...