Blog Comment

This week I commented on Diane's post, "California and Reconstruction".

The Evolution of Race Relations in Antebellum California

D. Michael Bottoms’ book, An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West, 1850-1890, makes me angry. It is an interesting look at the evolution of race relations in 19^th century California, engagingly written, in which Bottoms delves into social, legal and legislative analysis, demonstrating their importance to the evolution of racial constructs both separate of and in relation to each other. Despite Bottoms’ careful study, though, I'm angry at the injustices that my 21^st century sensibility finds in this otherworld. With both hands quickly held up in supplication, I say that I know I am not to judge people then based on modern values. From the historian’s perspective, I understand that is a no-no. But from the human perspective, the one that feels the slings, humiliations and privations of the persecuted, I assert my right to fume. I shall now descend from my soapbox.

Bottoms is fuming too – it is easily discernible in his tone. That does not detract, however, from the success of his work. Rather, it lends to it a fellow-feeling of compassion with which his reader can identify. We feel the mortification of African Americans whose children the state repeatedly abuses with regard to their education. We are livid at the inhumanity of the treatment of the Chinese. His conclusion that California’s handling of the extensive racial diversity that made it unique in the antebellum era foreshadowed the way that the nation as a whole would handle the same challenges in the late 19^th century and well into the 20^th is well argued and worth considering.

Yet An Aristocracy of Color is not without its problems. Although California was a Mexican state until mid-century, Bottoms gives little more than lip service to the Hispanic population’s shifting position among the various races. His whole focus is almost exclusively on African Americans and the Chinese. Yet despite this laser focus, he periodically fails to provide details that would underscore his points. For example, he mentions the queue, that long pigtail that Chinese men wore, noting that white tormenters were encouraged to shave them off in an act that caused serious distress to their victims. Yet he does not explain why the queues are worn or why their loss is so emotionally destructive.

Similarly, while he notes several times that Chinese emigrants continue arriving in California, he does not pause to explain why they continue coming despite outright American hostility, few legal protections, and the degrading living conditions that await them. Surely those already in California, who clearly traveled back to China periodically and conducted business with their home country, surely they must have written letters home that conveyed the reality of their lives in California? So what was the situation in China that made America attractive despite all that? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Ultimately, however, these are minor dissatisfactions. In toto, Bottoms’s work is a remarkable look into Californians’ increasingly contortive efforts to maintain white supremacy in the face of a rapidly changing nation.

Bottoms, D. Michael, An Aristocracy of Color: Race and Reconstruction in California and the West, 1850-1890, Race and Culture in the American West, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.

Armadillos: An Unusual Mammal Links the Histories of Texas and the German Immigrant Experience

There are several iconic images that people the world over associate with Texas, several of them promoted by the state itself: longhorn cattle, the Lone Star, cowboys, the Alamo, “Don’t Mess with Texas”. Natives, though, know there is a little critter that has become a beloved state totem unlike any other: the humble armadillo.

Texans love these little guys, at least the idea of them. Austin’s annual run, the Capitol 10K, has prominently featured a running armadillo in sneakers in its logo since the 1980s, and you can find armadillos – or “dillies”, as my grandmother used to call them – everywhere if you pay attention, on t-shirts, advertisements, neon signs in bars, you name it. The drunken dilly has always been a favorite of mine.

Charming graphics and tchotchkes aside, Texans most often come into contact with armadillos as roadkill on the highway. Ranchers generally consider them pests: the tunnels armadillos dig can be dangerous for livestock, for whom a broken leg, the result of blindly stepping into a tunnel entrance in the ground, has no remedy.

Armadillos and my family go way back. To the 19^th century, as a matter of fact: the Apelt Armadillo Farm was opened by German immigrant Charles Apelt, my great-grandfather, in 1898 in Comfort, Texas, today about 45 miles northwest of San Antonio. Articles have appeared from time to time in newspapers and magazines, and it is striking how they tend to follow a similar structure: marvel at the novelty and variety of the product, recount the story of how Charles lit on the idea to make baskets out of armadillos, then discuss what makes Texas armadillos unique.

First, the novelty and variety of products offered by the Farm: nose-to-tail baskets lined in satin, plain and beaded armadillo lampshades for floor, desk and bedside lamps, ashtrays, paperweights, and more. Catalogues were available to potential customers that showed all the various ways one might decorate one’s home with dilly products.

Need a lamp? (From the author's personal collection.)

From one of the Apelt Armadillo Farm catalogues. Unfortunately, the catalogues give no indication of their year(s) of publication. (From the author's personal collection.)

My great-grandmother Martha even made the dillies into handbags, items  difficult to find on the antique markets today.

To open the handbag, just flip the head back. (From the author's personal collection.)

Then comes the story of how such distinctive items came to be. The November 14, 1925, issue of the Miami News, featured a story on the Apelt Armadillo Farm. It is worth quoting at some length:

Charles Apelt…one day years ago was going to the house for the midday meal when a strange animal jumped from the tall grass and went hopping away. Picking up a rock, Mr. Apelt threw at [sic] the strange being and hit it on the head, whereupon, it rolled over, dead. He picked it up and examined it, his wonder growing. Never had he seen anything like it, with its long snout and jointed tail and a jointed house on its back.

He had been used to skinning every animal he killed, however, and preserving the hide, so he began to consider way and means to skin this one. But this was different. Finally he decided to take the animal out of the hide instead of taking the hide off the animal. This plan proved successful, but when he tried to nail the shell to the barn to dry he discovered it would not stretch out flat.

About that time his wife called him to lunch and he picked the shell up and carried it to the house, leaving it in the sun while he ate. When he came out the sun had so dried the shell that it began to cup up. “Basket!” instinctively thought Mr. Apelt his [sic] early training [as a basketmaker] prompting the thought, doubtlessly. So he brought the tail around and joined it to the snout and hung it up on the porch to finish drying.

One does not have to look hard to find elements of storytelling here. For example, armadillos are fast runners. That Apelt could have been startled by one as it began running away, then have the wherewithal to bend down, pick up a conveniently located rock and hurl it at the still rapidly moving creature with such precision that it knocks the animal on the head hard enough to kill it instantly seems unlikely. However, it is a story oft repeated, and one suspects that both the Apelt family and the journalists enjoyed the telling of it.

In addition to the armadillo products offered by the Farm, the Apelts also sold live animals to zoos and individuals desiring unique pets; they also sold them to scientists and laboratories wishing to study their odd reproductive qualities (they always give birth to four babies per litter that are either all male or all female) or the disease leprosy, which they can develop similar to humans. In fact, family records include this sheet of paper, the draft of a 1971 letter written by my mother at Kathryn’s request, which was to be typed up and sent to individuals in Geneva, Switzerland, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, that had inquired about armadillo ownership and shipping fees.

Draft of a letter replying to international inquiries about armadillos as pets, written by Kathleen Adams Apelt in 1971. (From the author's personal collection.)

Page 2. (From the author's personal collection.)

Old family photographs show plenty of activity and well maintained buildings at the Farm, as well a family seemingly well-to-do. I know little of those people or the operations in those days, but it appears that novelty items and farming in south-central Texas in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries could provide a comfortable living.

Charles Apelt. Year unknown. (From the Apelt Family's private collection.)

The showroom. (From the Apelt Family private collection.)

(From the Apelt Family private collection.)

This may be the most widely reproduced photograph of the Apelt Armadillo Farm. The author's grandfather, Kurt Charles, is not pictured here because he was not yet born. The two children shown are his older brothers, Armin (left) and Willie (right). (From the author's personal collection.)

I have a confession: I took the armadillos and the Farm for granted all my life. The old photographs show a lovely house with lots of people and buildings surrounding it, but after the Farm was closed in the early 1970s, the property was abandoned for decades. Growing up, I remember driving by it occasionally with my grandmother, Kathryn, or my parents and wondering why we always had to stop on the side of the highway, leave the air conditioned comfort of the car for the awful Texas heat, and go walk through the high grass and weeds, full of grasshoppers and goodness knew what else, to look at an old ruin. I have heard the stories from various members of my family for so long that I cannot keep straight from whom I learned what. Now, as I attempt to view the Farm through an historian’s eyes, I find it challenging to marry family lore with empirical fact. I suppose that makes the exercise all the more valuable, and I embrace the journey. I consider this post my first step along this familiar yet new yellow brick road.

The Apelt Armadillo Farm received some fresh attention in 2010, when Texas recognized its impact on the Comfort community with an historical roadside marker following the Farm’s painstaking restoration by antique enthusiast Harriette Gorman, who now owns and resides on the property. 

In its heyday, the Apelt Armadillo Farm employed local residents, both for armadillo production and for its non-dilly operations as well (it was a fully functional farm and ranch in addition to its novelty products).

The day before the historical marker dedication in 2010, my father, Kurt Apelt, Jr., and I visited Mrs. Gorman to tour the restored property. She loved to talk about the place, and about its history, and I remember she commented on how the Farm helped struggling locals during the Great Depression: the Farm would buy armadillos from the locals, providing needed income during that difficult time. That was new information to me, and it instilled a little nugget of pride that my family had been able and willing to help their community in such a way. I am excited to continue digging into the Farm’s past, a past that represents a small part of the history of the West, of Texas, and of the immigrant experience. It represents my past.

The main house in May, 2010. (From the author's personal collection.)

The restored novelty showroom building in May, 2010. (From the author's personal collection.)

Blog comment

This week I commented on Nick's post, "Now for Something Completely Different".

Love It or Hate It: Reviews of Nature's Metropolis

I received my undergraduate degree in the performing arts. When I decided to pursue a degree in history, I quickly realized I had entered a new and alien world. I had to learn to read historical works critically rather than for pleasure. It was an outright revelation when I grasped that bibliographies could have utility -- an entirely foreign concept!

One of my early lessons was the value not only of reading an historian’s work, but also of reading book reviews to see what other historians had to say about the work. I learn almost as much from the criticism as I do from the author him- or herself, especially when the critiques are not uniform.

Such is the case with William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, London. 1991. Pp. xxv, 530). The reviewers vary widely in their estimations of Cronon’s book. Lawrence H. Larsen, of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, reviewing Nature’s Metropolis for The Wisconsin Magazine of History (Vol. 76, No. 1, Autumn, 1992, pp. 54-55), foe example, chastises Cronon rather extensively for “pretentious phrasing” that adds nothing to what is otherwise a “useful monograph.” (55) With that out of his system, he then praises Cronon’s research and innovative use of sources, asserting that the book successfully achieves its author’s intent to explore the relationship between Chicago and the Great West.

Reviewing for The Journal of American History (Vol. 79, No. 2, Sep., 1992, pp. 612-613), Samuel P. Hays of the University of Pittsburgh provides a more careful, nuanced critique. He focuses his attention on the value each chapter brings to the whole, noting his satisfaction with 3-5, his approval of “subordinate but integral” chapters 6-7, and his befuddlement regarding the weakest chapters, 1, 2 and 8: “This mélange of collateral subjects seems to be held together, not by their inherent connection as historical subjects, but by Cronon’s own personal journey through the urbanization of modern American life.” (612) Hays concludes with praise for Cronon’s analysis of urban mercantilism and its shaping of hinterland commercial relationships, despite his “highly selective” approach and some important missing factors (e.g., population shifts between rural and urban communities during this time). (613)

While Larsen and Hays identify some frustrations with Nature’s Metropolis but overall give Cronon props for his contribution to the historical canon, Peter A. Colcanis goes hard for the jugular in his review, “Urbs In Horto”, in Reviews in American History (Vol. 20, No. 1, Mar., 1992, pp. 14-20). Like Hays, Colcanis feels Cronon’s best work is found in the middle chapters (2-7), which he applauds for their “informative discussions”. (15) Having dispensed with the niceties, however, Colcanis then bares his fangs: his issues with the book arise from its “imbalance, and its author’s lack of empathy with man, his cities, and his desire for material gain.” He takes Cronon to task for indulging a self-important, smug tone, calling the book “vainglorious and preening”, “didactic” and “condescending”, and pointing out Cronon’s tendency to focus on himself, as Hays did in his review. (16) He observes that Cronon ignores other prominent Chicago industries that may counter his thesis, industries like textiles, steel, and machine-shop products. (17) Colcanis is clearly offended by Cronon’s starkly environmentalist tone and his lack of feeling for the pioneers and capitalists who felt the need to try to better their circumstances. “In pushing and pushing his green line, the author fundamentally distorts both the nature of capitalist development in the Great West and Chicago’s history.” He dissents from Larsen and Hays in the overall value of Cronon's work, deeming Nature’s Metropolis “disappointing”. (19) Of course, we must be mindful that Colcanis is not only an historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but that he explicitly notes in his byline that he is a card-carrying teamster, an affiliation that offers insight into his priorities.

Such wide differences among scholars gives me pause. Has the author inserted too much of himself into his work? Where is the line between editorial license and self-indulgence? Should we not as historians acknowledge the baggage we bring to a subject? I believe Colcanis is overly harsh in his polemic, yet I also think that Cronon’s narrative does feel as though it is trying too hard to ensure that we indict these 19^th century Americans as evil environmental rapists. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.

West's West

The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains by Elliott West (University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque. 1995. Pp. x, 244.) is enormously readable, entertaining and insightful. West approaches the history of the central plains through an inclusive methodology, masterfully incorporating environmental history, the zoological and botanical sciences, and anthropological scholarship into a concise narrative that feels both revolutionary and romantic: West cares deeply about his topic, an affection that shines through his prose, while simultaneously demonstrating that some of the “facts” we take for granted about the history of the west are in reality poorly informed and inaccurate.

Originally a series of lectures at the 1993 Calvin Horn Lectures on Western History and Culture at the University of New Mexico, West’s essays focus on four separate yet related aspects of the plains: Land, Animals, Families and Stories. Leading off with “Land”, West examines how Native Americans and westbound settlers each contributed to the deterioration of the plains ecosystems. Perhaps his strongest essay of the four, this is where West deploys environmental history and an understanding of plants and ecologies most effectively. Clearly having done his homework, he capably and deftly surveys the information before him, drawing convincing linkages and conclusions that appear difficult to dismiss, such as the assertion that Native Americans probably caused more harm to the land they depended on than the emigrants from the east, a sharp divergence from typical blame-the-white-people tropes.

His second essay, “Animals”, follows a similar approach to that employed in “Land”. West shows how the crowding of Native American tribes further and further west resulted in an increased reliance on the bison, the near-extinction of which is another tragedy often laid at the feet of westward bound Euro-Americans, and other fauna. He crunches the numbers, noting that there is no reasonable way that so many millions of bison could have died in so brief a period strictly from Indian and white hunting, offering an alternative scenario that plausibly explains the other forces likely at work. (One bone to pick: for all his thoroughness, West frequently refers to bison as “buffalo”. Diffen offers a side-by-side comparison of bison versus buffalo that is very helpful – for instance, buffalo do not have a hump and are only found in Africa and Asia – and that shows quite incontrovertibly that bison are not buffalo.)

West delves into the importance of families in his third essay, examining the relationships between families, community, society and survival in the west. West considers not only how one’s family influenced and shaped one throughout one’s lifetime, but also how families shaped the communities and towns western emigrants erected. He also considers how the plains and western culture reshaped some ideas of family, demonstrating that influence flows both ways.

West concludes with “Stories”, looking at the varied ways that the west is portrayed in films, literature, and even in our own memories. It is an essay quite different from the previous three, but a necessary one. I believe it is important that historians understand how we as humans, both individually and collectively, use history, how it affects and shapes us, and how our imperfect memories still give history meaning in our lives and culture. Concluding his book with such a discussion, West gives us a number of thought-provoking nuggets to chew on, including our assumptions that the west is devoid of history (never mind the thousands of years of aboriginal culture predating the European invasion) and free from eastern corruption and history (we simply brought that with us).

In all, a deceptively easy to read work with some hard-hitting, new evidence and assertions to offer the historiography of the west.