Arizona in fiction Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Curry, Raymond William, 1912- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 05/10/2021 07:30:06 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/551087 ARIZONA IN FICTION by Raymond W. Curry A Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Department of English v in partial fulfillment of. ....:::: . the requirements/for the degrees ^f in the Graduate College University of Arizona 1941 Approved: Iri c:^d’ Vr/iX'/J d T e £ c £ 9 V 9 / TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER EASE I. INraODUCTKW. * . » . , . * » . , . 1 II. AMERICAN OCCBPA13BOW AND INDIAN WARS . 6 III. TWENTY YEARS AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY . 45 IV. ARIZONA FICTION DURING THE YEARS OF.THE FIRST WORLD WAR . , . 87 V. THE BOOM YEARS. v . .... 112 VI. THE YEARS OF DISILLUSIONMENT, 1929-1841 . 142 V VII. CONCLUSION...... ... • » • • • 180 BIBLIOGRAPHY. • 191 CHECK LIST OF ADDITIONAL ARIZONA FICTION. 210 14 9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The pletwreeque qualities of Arizona have long appealed to writers of fiction. The wide ea^ansea of desert country, rugged Mountains, deep, mysterious canons, burning heat, desert sand-storms, and violent rainstorms which fill dry washes with muddy, swift running floods have all been part of this appeal. Nor has Arizona lacked variety In character types, for in this area has been found priest and Conquistador, cowboy and miner, sheep-man and farmer, Indian and outlaw, bad man and good. And to these characteristics may be added the mystery of Arizona. Since the first Spaniard entered this area in search for seven oitlea of fabulous richness, Arizona has been a land of mysterious appeal. Oh the cliffs stand cities deserted for untold years, and on the hill tops and in the valleys stand the ruins of others as bid or older, and hidden in her valleys are legendary mines and treasures of incredible richness. All of these have found their way into the fiction of Arizona. ' " But the extent to which the Arizona scene has been uqed in fiction has not been determined, nor has the im­ portance of the Arizona scene to the fiction of Arizona •S' b«en determined, in t M a work a wide range of Arizona fiction will be considered In order to draw conclusions as to the amount and type# of fiction written about . ■. ■ Arizona, the iroortance of the Arizona scene in this - m.._ -I. - .... ^' ' rT' - fiction, and the types of and development of characters, The works considered will be chiefly novels and * W r t stories; but imaginative essays, travel sketches, «ad biographies, as troll as other works of non-fiction Wkich can be shewn to have Influenced the fiction of Arizona will be used# Arizona fiction in this work means fiction which uses the region making up the present state of Arizona in some way. Juvenile fiction, narra­ tive in verse, dime novels, and pulp magazine stories will not be considered. This work is divided into five periods % 1845-1890, 1890-1910, 1910-1918, 1918-1989, and 1929-1941. Eighteen- hundred and forty-five was selected as the opening date because the real history of Arizona did not begin until " 1 1846. Early Spanish penetration into Arizona took the form of exploring expeditions which entered from the south and east. The only real foothold of Spain in Arizona was a narrow atrip of precariously held settlements along 1 Bancroft, Hubert Hows, Hew Mexico (vol. XVII, The Works 59 vole; San Francisco,file History 1889), p# 545. 3 th» valley of the Santa Opus south of Tucson. The Republic of Mexico was able to expand this area very little. This state of affairs continued until the Mexican War broke out in 1846. This first period, 1845-1890, takes in the litera­ ture written during the time of our Acquisition of the Southwest from Mexico and covers the time of the Indian ware. The second period covers the years 1890-1910, a great period of change and restlessness. This period takes in the "gay nineties* or the "mauve decade". The third period covers the time of the First World War with its attendant chaotic social conditions. The fourth division, 1918*1989, ; . ■ : ; , ' ■ . • ' - -*/- ■■ '■ - covers the great optimistic "boom years* • The fifth period, which I have not at all originally chosen to call "the years of disillusionment", takes up the literature of Arizona pro­ duced after the great financial upheaval of the late nineteen twenties and continues it up to the time of the Second World Any choice of a large number of works of Arizona fiction is made difficult by the lack of adequate biblio­ graphies. The most complete seems to be the bibliography of the Munk collection of Arlxoniana in the Southwest Museum 3 of Los Angeles. 8 Bancroft, loo, olt. 5 Hector Alllot, Bibliography of Arizona. Los Aneelem. Southwest Museum, 1914, 458 p p . ------ — This bibliography has two faults; it does not cover fiction written since 1914, and the classifications are not ac­ curate . Travel sketches such as W. J. McGee's "Papagueria" 4 in the National Geographic Magazine for August, 1898, des­ criptions of Indian ceremonies such as Ernest L« B lumens chain' 5 "San Geronimo” in Harper's Weekly for December 10, 1898; and personal travel and autobiographical sketches such as 6 Joseph A. Munk's Arizona Sketches, 1905, are listed as fiction. The University of Arizona Library, which should have one of the best collections of Arizoniana, is handicapped by having an Incomplete collection, an out-of-date blblio- 7 graphy, and incomplete cross references in the card catalog. The bibliography of this paper and the check list are not intended as a complete list of Arizona fiction. The bibliography represents only an extensive sample of the fiction of the state, and the check list gives some fifty representative selections which are not discussed in the body of the thesis. Most of the selections 4 Hector Alllot, oju cit., p. 302. 5 Ibid., p. 295. 6 Ibid., p • 303. _ 7 Estelle Lutrell, A Bibliographical List of Books, Pamphlets, and Articles on Arizona In the University o]T Arizona Library, Tucson, Arizona; Press of the Arizona Daily Star.1§13. 60 pp. ------- 5- mentioned In the check list are not available at the University of Arizona Library. AMERICAN OCCUPATION AND INDIAN WARS When the Mexican WAr ended in 1848 the united States acquired some 520,000 square miles of territory which new Includes Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and California, a little known region of desert and mountain, of eaotas and pine. The customs of this land were those of Spain and Mexico, but the land was still controlled by the Indians. Then in 1853 the Gadsden Purchase added lands south of the Gila River, some 36,000 additional square miles of terri­ tory, and the new Southwest was completed. .. ■■ . ... " ' . • " Until the end of the Civil War little fiction was written In or concerning Arizona. In the Bast, where such fiction might have been written, there were other Interests; the rising tides of conflicting social and economic systems, the conflict over Slavery, held the interest of the people— there was little time for thinking of a far-away and almost unknown land. In 1848 came one of the most Important events of the-period— James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's 1 David Savill# Muszey, History of the American People. (Boston; Ginn and Company, 1^2977 P* 3d8. 2 Ibid., p. 307. 7 3 saw mill on the American River of Salifomia. The follow­ ing year saw the great California gold rush. By ship around Cape Horn; by ship to Panama, across the isthmus by land, and by ship up the California coast; and by the great over­ land routes the adventurous and the gullible flocked to the land of gold. This great movement was responsible for the first considerable travel into Arisons, for, though the Oregon Trail and the Salt Lake Trail were the more popular, many Immigrants travelled through southern Arizona. A few journals of their experiences were almost the only contri- button# of this group to the literature of Arizona. So it would seem that by turning attention to other places, the gold rush w#s partly responsible for the small amount of Arizona fiction during this period. The rush to California had scarcely begun to die away when gold and silver were discovered in Nevada, and the 4 • - - period 1853-1859 saw a steadily rising mining boom in that state, While this boom was still growing, gold was die- covered in 1869 at Boulder Creek and Cripple Creek, Colorado. Then in 1S61 the Civil War began, and for four years this strife held the attention of the entire toilted States* 3 Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The M a e of jgerlcan Civilization. (New York; The MacMillan Company, 4 Charlo T. Lewis, editor. Harper*a Book of Facts (leu York and London; Harper & Brothers, 1906), no page numbers, see Nevada, 5 Ibid., Colorado. # Thus from 1848 to 1868 these other places and events, the California gold rush, the levada gold rush, the Colorado gold rush, the Overland Trail, and the Civil War, were of far greater Interest to the people than the unknom land of Arizona. lor were conditions In Arizona favorable to the production of fiction within the Territory during this time.