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Herbert Eugene Bolton. Albert L. Hurtado
Читать онлайн.Название Herbert Eugene Bolton
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780520952515
Автор произведения Albert L. Hurtado
Издательство Ingram
Secretary of State Root's visit to Mexico in October precipitated a telegram and letter to Bolton from Jameson. Root sat on the Carnegie Institution executive committee. “I thought it would be advantageous if Secretary Root could be given a more vivid idea of what sort of work the ‘foreign missionaries’ [such as Bolton] are doing when they have a rich field of virtually virgin soil to work in.” However, Jameson warned, Root was “not a person easily kindled about such objects.”46 Bolton did not need to be prompted to meet the secretary of state. by the time Jameson's telegram reached Bolton, he had already finagled an interview with Root, who appeared to be interested in his work. Root “ventured particularly, a hope that I might run across some of the missing [Zebulon Montgomery] Pike papers.”47
Root was no doubt thinking about Pike because it was the centennial year of the American lieutenant's arrest in Mexico. Pike had been released, but his papers had been confiscated. Within a month Bolton found the papers except for a few that had been lost. When opportunity knocked, Bolton answered the door, and then pulled it wide open. Perhaps Jameson might consider publishing the recovered documents along with Bolton's introduction in the American Historical Review? The irresistible conjunction of personal ambition, professional accomplishment, public relations, and scholarship was not lost on Jameson, who published the documents with Bolton's introduction and gave Bolton a place on the upcoming AHA conference program.48 The news of Bolton's discovery was no doubt met with general acclaim in Austin, except perhaps for one man. Bolton's Pike triumph was carved from the heart of the field that George Pierce garrison had wished to reserve for himself.
We can only imagine Bolton's exhilaration when he unearthed the Pike papers. This feat was the beginning of a long career marked by impressive discoveries of important documents and historical sites that had been unknown or given up for lost. Such finds came to define the sort of history Bolton did. He was as much an explorer-detective as a historian. For Bolton these discoveries were the big emotional payoff for his unstinting labor in airless rooms. Here was a primary difference between Bolton and Turner as scholars. For Turner, satisfaction came with intellectual inquiry and explanation—his history lived in the mind. But Bolton found his rewards in the discovery of the physical thing itself, whether it be artifact, document, or place. Both men were alive to the physical and metaphysical aspects of history, but the difference in emphasis placed them at different spots on the philosophical spectrum. Turner was quick, intuitive, intellectual, willing to write hypothetically, theoretically. He was very much a modern historian and as such was ahead of his time. Bolton, despite his studies with Turner, was at heart a Rankean historian who labored to construct the documentary edifice of history. His work—find the documents, publish the documents, write the history from the documents—was the very definition of scientific history, as that term was commonly understood in the late nineteenth century. There seemed little room for individual interpretation in this scheme. This was a point of view that likely came from his early work with Haskins. Yet Bolton was a romantic who thrilled to the tangible remains of the past that fired his imagination. His approach to history and enthusiasm for discovery would bring him great rewards; in time it would lead him into error.
In December 1907 the AHA met in Madison. The anticipation of returning to his alma mater with the announcement of his great discovery of the Pike papers must have been sweet indeed.49 Bolton was a comer in the historical profession. Haskins, who was now on the Harvard faculty, approvingly told his colleagues about Bolton's paper.50 Bolton's accomplishments were undeniable, but it is equally true that he had useful connections with the men who operated the levers of power in the historical profession. Bolton returned to Mexico sure of that.
Back in Mexico Bolton continued to survey the archives at a sprintlike pace. Even so, he was willing to take on additional work for a Dallas law firm.51 This small job was the start of a lifetime of litigation support for attorneys in the Southwest.52 The legal research took longer than expected because of the lack of finding aids and uncooperative archivists. Bolton often faced such difficulties. Hoping to see the archives in a Catholic cathedral, he presented a letter of introduction from the archbishop of Mexico to the local vicar, who asked Bolton to return the following day at noon. When he returned, a subordinate official met him and asked him to return the next day. And so it went for twelve days. “Finally they capitulated and then I was given the courtesy of the place,” Bolton recalled. “Of course they thought I was ill mannered.” He told many similar stories in later years. In time he “learned to play [his] fish,” as he put it.53
In San Luis Potosi Bolton sought records about the Mexican-American War, or Guerra de Tejas, as his Mexican hosts called it. The old clerk said that Benito Juárez had taken them when he was president of Mexico in the 1860s. Bolton doubted the story, so he stayed in the clerk's office for three hours making small talk. When the clerk complained of a bad cough, Bolton told him about the fine climate for consumptive patients in New Mexico. This information interested the clerk. “I told him all I knew about how to cure consumption.” Pretty soon he took Bolton through a door with the date 1565 carved above and into the archives, “the best I saw in Mexico.” As they perused the shelves, Bolton stopped. “Senor,” Bolton said, “here is a whole bundle labeled La Guerra de Tejas.” The clerk replied, “Of course.”
One by one Bolton overcame the resistance of suspicious and cynical officials. In Monterey he looked for the missionary archives of Zacatecas, which were thought to be lost. The local bishop told him about a great fire that had destroyed the records. “You must have had a very fine archive here,” Bolton mused. “Sí, magnifico,” the bishop replied. “It must have occupied a large place.” “Sí, señor, mucho” “Just out of curiosity I would like to see the room where the documents used to be kept.” The bishop obliged, and there were the “lost” Zacatecas records.
Sometimes Bolton dealt with cooperative people who did not know what they had in their libraries. At Querêtaro Bolton searched the archive of the College of the Holy Cross for missionary records concerning Sonora and Pimería Alta. The friars were helpful, but the library contained only books that Bolton had seen before. Sensing that there might be more than met his eye, Bolton remained at the college admiring the library and browsing its contents. After two days he noticed a trap door in the ceiling. In the attic he found “a great trunk…packed nearly full with missing records,” plus a complete list of the documents that existed in 1772. Two-thirds of the records were there. Bolton spent two weeks putting them back in their original order.
Perseverance usually won the day for Bolton, but he sometimes had raw political power behind him, as in the case of his survey of the Secretaría de Gobernación, which was under the control of the vice president of Mexico, Ramon Corral, an unpopular man with a reputation for ruthlessness.54 Bolton described him as “one of those hard fisted soldier like men from Sonora.” “Everybody feared him,” he continued, “and because of that they hated him.” Bolton wanted to look at the Gobernación papers, so he asked to meet Vice President Corral in order to smooth the way. When Bolton made the request to see Corral, one official “pretty nearly turned pale at the mention of the ‘hombre terrible.’” Corral frowned at Bolton but gave him “all the privileges in the world” and a pleasant office off the main patio.55 The vice president held no terrors for Bolton, but as the Diaz regime began to collapse, the unpopular Corral would become one of the main targets of critics, reformers, and revolutionaries. The Mexican Revolution was only a few months in the future when Bolton got his room at the Gobernación.
Bolton's personal acquaintance with Mexican politicians, priests, librarians, clerks, archivists, diplomats, and scholars broadened and deepened his knowledge of Mexican culture and people. And they began to accept, like, and even to admire Bolton and his single-minded pursuit of the materials of Mexican history. Friars, who had at first been reluctant to cooperate, gave him bed and board in their monasteries. Those times “were very pleasant indeed,” he reminisced,