Charles Fletcher Lummis was a United States journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and Indian activist; he is also acclaimed as a historian, photographer, poet and librarian.

Early life and career

Lummis lost his mother at age 2 and was homeschooled by his father, who was a schoolmaster. Lummis enrolled in Harvard and was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

, but dropped out during his senior year. While at Harvard he worked during the summer as a printer and published his first work, Birch Bark Poems, a small volume of his works printed on paper thin sheets of birch bark, winning him acclaim from Life

Life (magazine)

Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

magazine and recognition from some of the day's leading poets. He sold the books by subscription and used the money to pay for school. His best poem from the work, "My Cigarette", highlighted one of his life's obsessions, tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

, the other being women. Lummis married Dorothea Rhodes of Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati, Ohio

Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...

 in 1880.

Transcontinental walk

In 1884, Lummis was working for a newspaper in Cincinnati when he was offered a job with the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

. At that time, Los Angeles had a population of only 12,000. Lummis decided to make the 3,500-mile journey from Cincinnati to Los Angeles on foot, taking 143 days, all the while sending weekly dispatches to the paper chronicling his trip. The trip began in September and lasted through the winter. He suffered a broken arm and the heavy snows of New Mexico, yet the trip left him enamored with the Southwest and its Spanish and Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 inhabitants. In 1892, his writings during the trip were published as a book, A Tramp Across the Continent.

Editor at the Los Angeles Times

Upon his arrival, Lummis was offered the job of the first City Editor. There was no lack of work as he covered a multitude of interesting stories from the new and growing community. Work was hard and demanding under the hard-driving pace set by publisher Harrison Otis. However, Lummis was happy until he suffered from a mild stroke

Stroke

A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...

 that left his left side paralyzed.

New Mexico

In 1888, Lummis moved to San Mateo, New Mexico to recuperate from his paralysis

Paralysis

Paralysis is loss of muscle function for one or more muscles. Paralysis can be accompanied by a loss of feeling in the affected area if there is sensory damage as well as motor. A study conducted by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, suggests that about 1 in 50 people have been diagnosed...

. He rode about the plains holding a rifle in one good hand while shooting wild jack rabbits. Here he began a new career as a prolific freelance writer, writing on everything that was particularly special about the Southwest and Indian cultures. However, some of his remarks written about corrupt bosses committing murders in San Mateo drew threats on his life, so he moved to a new location in the Pueblo Indian village of Isleta, New Mexico on the Rio Grande

Rio Grande

The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...

.

Indians of Isleta

Somewhat recovered from his paralysis, Lummis was able to win over the confidence of the Pueblo Indians by his outgoing and generous nature. But a hit man from San Mateo was sent up to Isleta to hunt him down, shooting him with a load of buckshot, but failing to kill him. In Isleta, Lummis divorced his first wife and married Eva Douglas, the sister-in-law of an English trader, who lived in the village. Somehow he convinced Eva to stay with Dorothea in Los Angeles until the divorce went through. In the meantime, Lummis entangled himself in fights with the U.S. government agents in charge of Indian education, who would remove the children from their homes and parents, sequestered for years at a time, not even allowing them to go home during holidays or vacation periods. He persuaded the government to allow 36 children from the Albuquerque Indian School to leave.

While he was in Isleta , he met his long term friends Father Anton Docher

Anton Docher

Anton Docher was a French Roman Catholic priest, missionary and defender of the Indians. He was born in 1852 in Le Crest, a small wine growing village of Puy de Dôme in Auvergne. He lived in the pueblo of Isleta in the state of New Mexico for 34 years...

, the Padre of Isleta and Adolph Bandelier.When he lived in Isleta, he lived in Pablo Abeita

Pablo Abeita

Pablo Abeita was the governor of Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico, United States, during the long serving period of his long term friend, Anton Docher, "The Padre of Isleta"....

's house.

Magazine editor

In 1892, Lummis released another book, Some Strange Corners of Our Country. Between 1893 and 1894, Lummis spent 10 months in Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 with Adolph Bandelier before returning to Los Angeles with his wife, Eva, and their year old daughter, Turbese. Unemployed and out of money, he finally landed the position of editor of a regional magazine, Land of Sunshine. The magazine was renamed Out West in 1901, and published works by famous authors such as John Muir

John Muir

John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...

 and Jack London

Jack London

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

. Over his 11 years as editor, Lummis wrote more than 500 pieces for the magazine himself, as well as a popular monthly commentary called "In the Lion's Den". He also built a remarkable home out of stone which he named El Alisal for the sycamore

Sycamore

Sycamore is a name which is applied at various times and places to three very different types of trees, but with somewhat similar leaf forms....

 tree that grew just outside. As president of the "Landmarks Club of Southern California" (an all-volunteer, privately funded group dedicated the preservation of California's deteriorating Spanish missions

Spanish missions in California

The Spanish missions in California comprise a series of religious and military outposts established by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order between 1769 and 1823 to spread the Christian faith among the local Native Americans. The missions represented the first major effort by Europeans to...

), Lummis noted that the historic structures "...were falling to ruin with frightful rapidity, their roofs being breached or gone, the adobe walls melting under the winter rains."  Lummis wrote in 1895 "In ten years from now—unless our intelligence shall awaken at once—"there will remain of these noble piles nothing but a few indeterminable heaps of adobe. We shall deserve and shall have the contempt of all thoughtful people if we suffer our noble missions to fall."  At about the same time, Lummis also established a new Indian rights group called the "Sequoya League."

Indian rights activist

Lummis continued his fight against the U.S. Indian policy bureau and called on his classmate President Teddy Roosevelt to help change their manner of operating. He found a home for a small group of Indians who had been evicted from their property in the Palm Springs, California

Palm Springs, California

Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 37 miles east of San Bernardino, 111 miles east of Los Angeles and 136 miles northeast of San Diego...

 area. The Sequoya League began a battle against Indian Agent Charles Burton, accusing him of imposing a "reign of terror" on the Hopi

Hopi

The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...

 pueblo in Oraibi by implementing the forcible cutting of the long hair of the Indian men. Lummis was accused of overstating the case and lost his welcome at the White House. (However, subsequent social pressure on Burton did cause him to reverse the haircutting policy.)

El Alisal

In 1904, Lummis took the position as city librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library

Los Angeles Public Library

The Los Angeles Public Library system serves the residents of Los Angeles, California, United States. With over 6 million volumes, LAPL is one of the largest publicly funded library systems in the world. The system is overseen by a Board of Library Commissioners with five members appointed by the...

. At El Alisal, also known as Lummis House

Lummis House

Lummis House, also known as El Alisal, is a fanciful stone house built by Charles Fletcher Lummis in the late 19th Century in northeast Los Angeles, California, near the Arroyo Seco. It is operated by the Historical Society of Southern California as a historic house museum. The exterior of the...

, he held up a constant pace of entertaining with parties he called "noises" for various writers, local artists and other important dignitaries. The parties usually included a lavish Spanish dinner with dancing and music performed by his own private troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

. The extravaganzas also wore out a number of female assistants or "secretaries" conscripted into working on them. In 1907, Lummis established the Southwest Museum

Southwest Museum

The Southwest Museum of the American Indian is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington area of Los Angeles, California. It is part of the Autry National Center. Its collections deal mainly with the American Indian...

 of Los Angeles, California, continued to fund raise and saw the Southwest Museum building open in August 1914.

Bittersweet end

Between his drinking and his womanizing, Lummis began to face a series of personal setbacks and tribulations. He lost his job at the library for insisting on doing most of the work at home. Then Eva divorced him over his womanizing. He went blind from a "jungle fever" he claimed he contracted while in Guatemala, eventually regaining his sight after more than a year of blindness. Also, his book writing came to a complete stop. By 1918, he was destitute. The Southwest Museum Board named him founder emeritus in 1923 and gave him a small stipend. Lummis also decided to enlarge, revise and republish Some Strange Corners of Our Country as Mesa, Canyon and Pueblo in 1925. He also once again engaged in a civil rights crusade on behalf of the Pueblo Indians. Lummis died in 1928, leaving a legacy of Indian lore and photography, and his home El Alisal was preserved as the home for the Historical Society of Southern California.

Publications

• A New Mexico David and Other Stories & Sketches of The Southwest. Scribner's 1891.
• Some strange corners of our country: the wonderland of the Southwest. 1892.
• My Friend Will. 1894.
• The Gold Fish of Gran Chimu: A Novel. Lamson, Wolffe. 1896.
• The awakening of a nation: Mexico of to-day. 1902.
• The Enchanted Burro: Stories of New Mexico & South America. pre-1912.
• The King Of The Broncos and Other Stories of New Mexico. Scribner's. 1915.
• The Spanish pioneers. 1920.
• . The Prose of It (poem on Geronimo). c. 1926.
• A Bronco Pegasus: Poems. Houghton Mifflin. 1928.
• Flowers of Our Lost Romance. Houghton Mifflin. 1929.
• New Mexican Folk Songs. UNM Press. 1952.
• General Crook and the Apache Wars. 1966.
• Bullying The Moqui. 1968.
• Dateline Fort Bowie: Charles Fletcher Lummis Reports on an Apache War. 1979.
• A Tramp Across the Continent. University of Nebraska Press. 1982. ISBN 0803279086
• Letters From The Southwest: September 20, 1884 to March 14, 1885. 1989.
• Mesa, Cañon and Pueblo. University Press of the Pacific. 2004. ISBN 1-4101-1543-1
• Pueblo Indian Folk-Stories. Forgotten Books. 2008. ISBN 9780803279384
• The Land of Poco Tiempo. BiblioBazaar. 2009. ISBN 9781103731909
• The Man Who Married the Moon and Other Pueblo Indian Folk Tales.

External links

• Southwest Museum (est. 1907) official website
• Charles Fletcher Lummis Manuscript Collection at the Autry National Center
• Guide to the Charles F. Lummis Papers. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
• Charles F. Lummis Page at Spirit of America
• Charles F. Lummis Home and Garden - Historical Society of Southern California
• Lummis Day Festival
• "Charles F. Lummis" by Robert E. Fleming in the Western Writers Series Digital Editions at Boise State University
• Flowers Of Our Lost Romance (1909) Full book online at The Internet Archive
• The Spanish Pioneers And The California Missions (1936) Full book online at The Internet Archive
• Article, with archival photos, about Charles Fletcher Lummis - L.A. as Subject/KCET