Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 6, No. 2
June, 1928
BOOK REVIEW
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252
The address of Dr. Charles N. Gould, as the retiring president of the Oklahoma Academy of Science, delivered at the annual
meeting, at Norman, November 25, 1927, entitled “Oklahoma, the Geologist’s Laboratory,” has been published in the form of
a sixteen-page pamphlet, as Circular No. 16 of the Oklahoma Geological Survey. Like all of Dr. Gould’s writings, the layman
can not only read it understandingly but find it of instructive interest as well. It is well illustrated. While the remarkable
variety of geological structures available for examination in Oklahoma is such that it has possibly been subject to as much
intensive investigation and study as that of any other area of equal size in the world, Doctor Gould, who became its first
publicity exponent, in 1900, still remains its
most efficient and enthusiastic protagonist.
—J. B. T.
“Campaigning with Custer and the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry in the Washita Campaign, 1868-69,” by David L. Spotts; edited and arranged for publication by E. A. Brininstool. 8vo, 215 pp.; map and 14 illustrations. (Limited edition, each
copy numbered and signed by the author). Los Angeles, the Wetzel Publishing Company, 1928. Price, $10.00.
With General Custer’s “Wild Life on the Plains,” Governor Samuel J. Crawford’s “Kansas in the ‘Sixties” and the contributions
of
Colonel Horace L. Moore and James Albert Hadley, published in the “Collections” of the Kansas State Historical Society, already
furnishing fairly voluminous material pertaining to the Washita Campaign, in Western Oklahoma in 1868-9, it was scarcely to
be hoped or expected that much more important material would come to light. In this newly published book, however, the material
assumed a different form from previous publications relating to this notable campaign, since it is a reproduction of diary
or journal kept from day to day by a lad who was the company clerk of Troop L, of the 19th Kansas Cavalry. Naturally, it contains
a wealth of detail that does not appear in any of the previously published writings concerning the incidents of the Washita
Campaign. One noticeable error appears in the
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map, which locates the site of the Battle of the Washita in Custer County, near the present county-seat town of Arapaho, instead
of near the site of Cheyenne, county-seat of Roger Mills County, where that action really occurred. Taken as a whole, this
book is a valuable contribution to the source material for the history of Western Oklahoma of the period to which it relates.
—J. B. T.
A FORTHCOMING OKLAHOMA BOOK
Mr. Hubert E. Collins, of Utica, New York, who has been a corresponding member of the Oklahoma Historical Society for a
number of years past, is the author of a volume entitled “Warpath and Cattle Trails,” which is to be published next fall,
by the William Morrow Company, of New York City. This book will contain about 320 pages, and is to be illustrated with reproductions
of drawings made by Paul Brown. The introduction is by Hamlin Garland, who always manifests a personal interest in matters
pertaining to Oklahoma.
The author’s parents made their home at old Darlington, where they were connected with the U. S. Indian Agency for the
Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, during the late ’seventies and early ’eighties of the last century, just as he was emerging from
boyhood into youth. During the latter part of that period (1881-4), much of his time was spent at Red Fork Ranch, which was
located on the site of the present town of Dover, in Kingfisher County, and of which his brother, Ralph Collins, was one of
the owners. This establ-
ishment was not only a range but a road store on the Chisholm Trail. His personal contact with the cowboys who were driving
road herds to the shipping station at Caldwell, with Indians, stage drivers, freighters and soldiers, as he met or saw them
passing up and down on the historic old trail and that at a period of life when such impressions and memories were formed
to last a life time, should abundantly qualify him to write some very entertaining and instructive reminiscences.
Mr. Collins left the Indian Territory to go east and enter college, in 1884, and has never been back to the scene of these
early associations. He has had a long and successful career in the engineering profession, to the technical literature of
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which he has been a more or less frequent contributor. It is only within the past four or five years that the memories of
the years long gone have stirred him to undertake a series of short stories to be entitled “Indian Tales.” His most important
undertaking in this line, however, is to be a history of Darlington and of the Indian Agency at that place, the latter to
be profusely illustrated from a series of rare old photographs, which have been secured from the relatives of various people
who, at one time or another, were connected with or employed at the Agency, at Darlington. He has spent a number of years
in gathering not only these photographs but also much documentary material which will be utilized or embodied in the contents
of the projected historical work.
The publication of the material which Mr. Collins has in preparation should result in throwing much additional light, not
only upon the local history of the Darlington and other points along the Chisholm Trail, but also upon the life and activities
of the period and region concerning which he writes. Moreover, it may be expected to cover a field concerning which not much
has hitherto been available to students of local history, so its appearance will be awaited with unusual interest.
—JOSEPH B. THOBURN.
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