Galen Clark: Yosemite Guardian by Shirley Sargent (review)

Reviews 277 At the climax, Sylvia paints Tim’s and the narrator’s faces to resemble the Nez Perce of 1877 — from whose sayings the title comes. They must be properly designated to blow the dam and enable the steelhead to return freely to their home stream. How does it end? “Two dead and two missing,” reports the narrator. GLENN E. SELANDER Boise State University Galen Clark: Yosemite Guardian. By Shirley Sargent. (Yosemite: Flying Spur Press, 1981. 88 pages, $12.50 hardcover, $6.95 paper.) It is probably just as well that this biography of Galen Clark is sketchy about his early years, since he met with depressing failure in every personal and business venture. When his wife died he sent his five children to relatives and left the East at the age of thirty-nine; he headed for California’s goldfields and saw neither children nor family for many years. Clark settled in the Sierras and provided services to Yosemite-bound tourists for eighteen years until he lost his hotel business to creditors. Clark was also the official Guardian of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove for twenty-two years while these areas were under Cali­ fornia’s jurisdiction. It was a demanding job, as early white settlers had, in less than a decade, replaced the Valley’s wildness with an active tourist trade. The Guardian controlled fires, floods, and grazing; he made decisions which permanently altered the landscape, such as blasting the glacial mo­ raine, cutting trees, and dredging Mirror Lake. Clark’s long residence in Yosemite Valley and his intimacy with its natural and political life made him an influential figure. He published letters and newspaper articles about Yosemite’s landscape and management and, in his nineties, wrote three small books on the region. This biography will be useful to historians of Valley tourism. It docu­ ments the building of access roads, hotels, and the “range wars” between rival businessmen. There are numerous fascinating photographs. The chap­ ter which will most interest the general reader is about Clark’s son Alonzo, who came west in 1871 and found health and joy in the mountains, but fell ill in the city and died at twenty-six; Alonzo’s letters home provide the book’s most lively passages. Elsewhere, however, Sargent’s modest writing is colorless and occasion­ ally awkward. One needs prior knowledge of Yosemite history to evaluate 278 Western American Literature Clark’s policies, for the book offers no larger view of how his Guardianship affected the present facade of Yosemite National Park. In her Foreword Sargent states her intention to rescue Clark from “undeserved obscurity” and make him as much a “folk hero” as John Muir. She tells us often that Clark was “handsome,” a “paragon,” that “integrity radiated from him,” and that he was a “conservationist” . . . but we end up with no firm notion of what he really thought, and I remain unconvinced. VALERIE P. COHEN, Cedar City, Utah This is the Year. By Frederick Manfred. Introduction by Max Westbrook. (Boston: Gregg Press, 1979. vii + 623 pages, $14.95.) Conquering Horse. By Frederick Manfred. Introduction by John R. Milton. (Boston: Gregg Press, 1980. xii + 355 pages, $15.95.) Lord Grizzly. By Frederick Manfred. Introduction byJoseph M. Flora. (Boston: Gregg Press, 1980. xix + 281 pages, $14.95.) Scarlet Plume. By Frederick Manfred. Introduction byTedN. Weissbuch. (Boston: Gregg Press, 1980. xii + 365 pages, $15.95.) King of Spades. By Frederick Manfred. Introduction by Frederick Man­ fred. (Boston: Gregg Press, 1980. xi + 304 pages, $14.95.) Riders of Judgment. By Frederick Manfred. Introduction by Priscilla Oaks, General Editor. (Boston: Gregg Press, 1980. xiii + 368 pages, $15.95.) Everyone who reads Western American Literature already knows that Frederick Manfred is six feet nine inches tall, that he’s of Frisian descent, and that his name, before he changed it, was Feike Feikema. And everyone who attends the Western Literature Association meetings at all regularly — or even irregularly — knows that Frederick Manfred is always at the center of things and that he has a special affinity for scholars of western American literature. They understand him, and he understands them. And everyone who has taught western American literature and has had...