The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock. Historical accounts of the famous highwaymen and river pirates who operated in pioneer days upon the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and over the old Natchez trace by Otto A. Rothert (review)

Reviews i Otto A. Rothert. Tile Outlaws of Cavein Rock . Historical accoui? (. 9 of- ( he fai,ious high waymen and Tivel' pil-dle. who operated in pioneer day# upon the Ohio Land Mississippi river. x imci over the old Natchez trace. Foreword by Robert A. Clark. Carliondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. Originally published by A. H. Clark Co.,Cleveland, 1924. 364 PP. ISBN: 08093203417 ipaperl. $ I 2.95. Certain hooks retain their charm and interest over time, and th.inkfully the Shawnee Classics series has undertaken the task of reprinting a few such gems of midwestern history. One oi these reprinted classics, The Outlaws of Cave-inRock is a richly detailed exploration of the lives and times of some of the outlaws who made commerce and life perilous on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, as well:is t, n the Natchez Trace, during the late eighteenth and early ninctcenth centuries. Images of the notorious Harpc brcitlicrs, wh(, se twisted Calvinist logic apparently freed them of guilt for their outrages, or ot James Mason' s crude, infamcius " Lillic,r Vault and House for Entert,} inment"sign, with which he lured flatbo, it crews into his lair, will long linger in the minds of readers. Otto A. Rothert, then-secretary of the Filson Club of Louisville, Kentucky,captured well these legends of American folktore by carefully interweaving familiar tales with historical documents such as travel accounts, court records, newspaper i·eports, kind perst,na] letters and papers, from the peric, il 1795 ti) 1820. In st) ching lie provided a somewhat clearer picture cif the reil people behind these frontier myths and the roughand -tlimlile wc, ild in which they lived and operated . He tied his stories of several different groups of criminals together hy centering them on a particular place: the scenic natural hidet, ut kn,wn as Cavein Rock on the lc, wei Ohio in southern Illinois. Rothert: s work, while valuable and immensely entertaining , Icans heavily on Frederick jackson Turner' s frontier thesis, which contrasts the savage with the civilized, as well as on his generation's ideas regarding progress. The Outjaws of Cavein Rock , as such, provides an overly simplified description of crime along the Ohio . ind Mississippi rivers in the days before " the security of law and order" had been realized (9 31. For example, several of the outlaws whom Rothert descrihes sought to capitalize on the growing commercial activity along the rivers as well as on the Natchez T'race, the overland return route of riverboatmen north to the () bio Valley. One could argue that these (> utlaws , like many of those who rose to fame west of the Mississippi in later years, were both reacting to ani| taking advantage of changes wrought by the intrusion of a market economy into their region. This connection is clearly indiI cated by the intermittent use of Cavein Rock as a base of operations for makers of counterfeit coins, since spccie was both scarce and essential for particip. ition in the market economy. Thus some of the outlaws described hy Rothert were arguably products of a nascent market revolution, not savage holdouts, primitive survivals, or " bad seeds"from good eastern families. In recent years scholars have sought to move beyond dichotomics such as savage and civilized in an attempt to caliture the rich texture of life on the carly frontier. Stephen Aron' s How the West Was Lost 1 I 996) : lnd Elizabeth A. Perkins' s Border Life (I9981 nre excellent examples of more complex approaches. Alternative interpretatic )ns aside, h{) wever, Southern Illinots University Press is t<) 11 coiumended for reprintiiig this classic and thereby making it accessible to a new gener. tion (, f readers. Complete with an extensive bibliography, the Shawnee Classics reprint of The Outlaws of Cavein -Acick provides an excellent iumpingoff point for those interested in learning more about the history of outlaws in the Ohio Valley and beyond during the age of the flatboat. 1. Michael Rhyne University of Cincinnati Reed Browning. Cy Young: A Baseball Life. Amherst: University (, f Massachusetts Press, 2000. 304 PP. ISBN: 1 558492623 ( cli)th). $ 28.99. According to Reed Browning, Cy Young st: iticts alongside Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb as one of the baseball greats of the carly twentieth century who still live in the public minil as immortals. Of the three, hc, wever, Yt,ung iS the least known, surviving in memory mostly as the person who lends a nanic to the annual award for excellence in pitching. Thus, Browning's Cy Young: A Busebull Life is an atlempt to reburrect the alltinic wins leader for the fan of today who " is sc: ircely able to coniure up any ment, 11 pieture of this ancient worthy's career, or even t{) say whot skills made him dominant"lix). Unlike other baseball biographies, ( Specially the newest examinations of joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, Browning docs not have the benefit of reams of informatic,n on his subject. Instead, he is forced to reconstruct the life of Cy Yc,ung almost exclusively from the spcirting press, box scores, anti several ghostwritten autobiographics. Yet despite source limitations, Browning does a fine job (, f crlciting a detailed picture of Young's c. iree)·, pitching accoiiiplishments , and contributions to baseball legend. lir{, wning' s biography is comprised of fifteen short ch. ipters an1 three appendices, and he begins With nii acc,unt (, f Yt,ung: s family and prebaseball life in Turil Ohio. This unfortunately brief chapter, which creativity uses census data, gencalogical information, and other such sciurces relev: int to the Young family, estiiblishes the r u,· al values of honesty, hard work,and " pride allayed with realism "that became hallinarks of Young's character TIOI. But while demonstrating the author' s fine ability to weave dis parate bits of information into a coherent account of hio Valley History 38 ...