The Pictorial Record of the Old West, 1

I. Frenzeny and Tavernier

by Robert Taft

February 1946 (Vol. 14 No. 1), pages 1 to 35.
Transcribed by lhn;
digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

IN beginning this series, it seems advisable to consider how we can determine the value of a picture as a document or a record of the past. Doubtless no one will question that pictorial records are important, although professional historians in general have not often made them a matter of serious study. In fact, the most surprising circumstance is that many historians, professionals and amateurs alike, who are most meticulous about documenting their written manuscripts with source notes and arguments, use illustrations without the least attempt at documenting the source or the authenticity of the illustrations used. This practice is so common that it seems invidious to single out any one case for criticism.

Of the various types of illustrations available in modern times for the historian's use, the photograph is regarded by the author as the most important and I have treated it at length elsewhere. [1] This series of articles deals with the work of the artist, i. e., the illustrator or painter, as he has left us a pictorial record of the past. The past which is here re-presented is chiefly that of the plains and the Rocky Mountain area, although an occasional excursion will be made to the region still farther west. Further, the time period considered will be restricted to the nineteenth century, a century which saw the development and the disappearance of our Western frontier. The type of hand-executed picture with which we shall concern ourselves is that which is of interest to the social historianrealistic scenes from everyday life of the past and usually called by the artistic profession "genre" drawings or paintings, as distinguished from purely portrait, still life, or landscape work.

(1)

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From the standpoint of merit these pictures portraying the life and growth of the old West, may be divided into several groups according to the standard of evaluation used:

(1) Illustrations, sketches, drawings, paintings, made by eyewitnesses of a given scene; (2) illustrations that are imaginary but which have been made by contemporary artists who have observed and studied the environment, the characters, and the incidents depicted; (3) illustrations made by modern artists who have based their work on study of contemporary literature and pictures, either hand executed or photographic (this group lies outside the present study) ; (4) and lastly, illustrations made by contemporary artists which are purely imaginary with little utilization of fact or study. All of these various types may have value but for present purposes they are ranked in importance in the order given. Of course, it should be realized that the artist, unlike the photographer, frequently selects, excludes, and introduces detail at his discretion for the purpose of giving unity and emphasis to the subject depicted. Such artists, chiefly those included in the second of the above groups, can produce pictorial records of very real value if they convey the impressions of the place and time that are the contemporary prevailing ones. Thomas Moran, well known for his landscapes of the West in the period we are considering, has discussed this point and it is worth repeating here:

I place no value upon literal transcripts from Nature. My general scope is not realistic; all my tendencies are toward idealization. Of course, all art must come through Nature: I do not mean to depreciate Nature or naturalism; but I believe that a place, as a place, has no value in itself for the artist only so far as it furnishes the material from which to construct a picture. Topography in art is valueless. The motive or incentive of my Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was the gorgeous display of color that impressed itself upon me. Probably no scenery in the world presents such a combination. The forms are extremely wonderful and pictorial, and, while I desired to tell truly of Nature, I did not wish to realize the scene literally but to preserve and to convey its true impression. Every form introduced into the picture is within view from a given point, but the relation of the separate parts to one another are not always preserved. For instance, the precipitous rocks on the right were really at my back when I stood at that point, yet in their present position they are strictly true to pictorial Nature; and so correct is the whole representation that every member of the expedition with which I was connected declared that he know the exact spot which had been reproduced. My aim was to bring before the public the character of that region. The rocks in the foreground are so carefully drawn that a geologist could determine their precise nature. I treated them so in order to serve my purpose. [2]

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Or, to quote another artist, the philosophical Kurtz, who spent several years in the frontier trading posts of the upper Missouri river during the early 1850's:

The artist's task is to improve nature's forms, make perfect her imperfections, strive not only to emulate but to excel her in the creation of beauty. Nature achieves nothing in ideal perfection, but the artist's mind can conceive of ideal beauty and clothe his ideas with correspondingly lovely forms, i. e., idealize them. [3]

The psychological effect of the attitudes expressed by Moran and by Kurtz upon the historian interested in precision of fact is to produce skepticism of the pictorial record as a document of history. The work of such artists, however, does have value and frequently it is of higher artistic merit than that of the literal transcribers included in the first group. Possibly our judgment can best be expressed by stating that if the subject depicted is of an actual event, the historian prefers as literal a transcript as the artist can render. For general impressions of behavior and of place the second group listed above does have important value. In either case it should be remembered that we are seeing, or attempting to see, past life through other skills and from a different viewpoint than that of the written record.

This discussion may have suggested to the reader that still another set of criteria should be made in judging these pictures of the past. In any one class, differences between artists are to be observed and such questions, especially in the first class, as "Was the artist a careful and honest observer (or student)?" and "Was he a competent and satisfactory draughtsman?" must be answered to our satisfaction. The knowledge necessary to answer the first question can be secured by seeking information concerning the artist, his training, his method of work (water color, pencil sketch, etc.), [4] the judgment of his contemporaries, especially those who witnessed an original incident or scene, and were able to compare it with the artist's record of the event.

It is, of course, recognized that different artists in viewing the same scene will reproduce their impressions in different styles and manners. As Audubon philosophically (and resignedly) remarked on comparing George Catlin's paintings of the upper Missouri river with Audubon's own observations as he proceeded up the same river in 1843 "different travelers have different eyes." [5]

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In answering the second question, even the least artistically trained individual can distinguish between a crude drawing and a well-finished one and certainly the well-finished one is to be preferred to the cruder drawing. Even crude drawings, it should be pointed out, can, at times, be tremendously important, as witness the Bruff sketches. [6] These drawings, crudely done and with little sense of perspective, were executed with meticulous attention to detail and portray one pioneer's experience on the overland route to California in 1849. Their importance lies in the fact that they were drawn in detail and are practically the only direct pictorial record extant of this most important and dramatic migration in American history.

Unfortunately, seldom is there available all the information which we would desire in forming a complete and competent judgment on any artist's work so far as its value to the social historian goes. The same comment, of course, can be made on the written record upon which our present histories are based. The same procedures, therefore, in passing judgment on the pictorial record must then be employed as is employed in the examination of the written record, namely, to utilize the information that is available to the best of our ability and intelligence.

The question of passing final judgment in the case of pictorial records, too, is complicated by the fact that many times the original work of the artist is not available if the only record of the artist is a reproduction in the form of a lithograph, a woodcut print, or an engraving. These and other forms of reproduction necessitated the hand of at least one intermediary (and usually more) who reproduced the original drawing (or painting) on stone, wood, or metal, and the faithfulness to the original must often be taken into account. Our problem is, therefore, a complex one and we can only make an attempt to open up the field and leave to future historians a more complete judgment as additional data and sources of information are added to our store of knowledge.

We should again keep clearly in mind that our chief concern is not with the artistic merit of any picture in which we are interested but rather with its value as an authentic record of our past life. As Isham has so pertinently pointed out in connection with his discussion of artists of the old West: "The subject is more [important] . . . than the purely artistic qualities displayed in its representation." [7] In fact, many of the artists we shall consider are so obscure

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and their work so poor (from an artistic point of view) that modern artists and art historians daintily hold their nose by thumb and forefinger when these "artists" are mentioned or their work examined. [8]

The series, of which this article is the first, will be followed by studies of other Western artists-from the standpoint of the social historian. The work of collecting data in this field was begun nearly 20 years ago and has been followed more or less persistently ever since. As a result, thousands of notes, letters, photographic copies of Western "pictures" have been accumulated from a group of nearly 200 artists.

As not all of these artists are of equal importance and as a few have been dealt with individually in biographic form, some selection will be made of the remaining individuals. The only plan followed in making the selection will be that of the author's convenience. It is hoped eventually to publish the material given in this series in monographic form and with a more logical order of presentation. The first artists selected for consideration are Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier.

FRENZENY AND TAVERNIER

In the fall of 1873 Harper's Weekly commissioned two artists, Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier, to make a series of sketches on an expedition that took them from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Their Western trip probably began early in September, 1873, in New York City and was finished in San Francisco sometime in the summer of 1874. Illustrations made on the expedition, however, are found in the Weekly for the years 1873, 1874, 1875, and 1876. The Weekly, modestly subtitled A [not The] Journal of Civilization, announced the expedition by stating:

. . . our artists, Messrs. Frenzeny and Tavernier, will tell the story of an extensive tour, commencing at New York and intended to include the most interesting and picturesque regions of the Western and Southwestern portions of this country. These gentlemen will not restrict themselves to the ordinary routes of travel. They will make long excursions on horseback into regions where railroads have not yet penetrated, where even the hardy squatter, the pioneer of civilization, has not yet erected his rude log-cabin; and the pictorial record of their journeyings will be a most valuable and entertaining series of sketches. [9]

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The Weekly was correct, for the illustrations are still "a most valuable and entertaining series of sketches" and give us pictorial records of the West-towns, living conditions, transportation, industries of plain and mountain, emigrant life, Indian troubles and affairs, and minor but revealing incidents of Western life-that are nowhere else available. It is true that most of them are crudely rendered because of the medium employed for reproduction (the woodcut) ; one original pencil sketch, however, signed by Tavernier alone, has been found and will be discussed later. Sufficient evidence has been assembled to show that most, if not all, of the illustrations are authentic and were made from direct observations of the scenes depicted.

Jules Tavernier at the time of the overland expedition was a young French artist of 29. Born in Paris in 1844, he was for a time a student of Felix Barrias and had achieved some artistic reputation in France before the Franco-Prussian war in which he fought. One account has it that he was Communist and was exiled from France a few months after the conclusion of the war. [10]

Tavernier came to this country in 1871 and soon was illustrating for the newly-established New York Graphic and for Harper's Weekly. [11]>

Of Paul Frenzeny less biographical information is available save that deducible from his published illustrations and a few scattered newspaper references. [12]

Presumably Frenzeny was, like Tavernier, a Frenchman. Presumably, too, he was a comparatively young man, if we may judge by his willingness to undergo the long and arduous Western trip. Frenzeny had been in this country longer than Tavernier for his first published sketches in Harper's Weekly appeared in 1868. [13] Between this date and 1873, about 20 Frenzeny sketches appeared in the Weekly, and were of varied character but included a number of

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New York City views and sketches made in the Pennsylvania coal belt. [14] One of these illustrations (Harper's Weekly, 1869, p. 4) is titled "A Curious Custom Observed by the Greek Church in Russia," which might suggest that Frenzeny was a Russian or at least lead visited Russia.

Frenzeny's partnership with Tavernier began before the Western trip, for there are two illustrations with their joint signatures in the Weekly prior to September, 1873. One was a double-page and fanciful group of drawings devoted to "Spring" and the other a fullpage illustration, "Circus Coming to Town." [15]

The division of labor in this partnership can only be guessed at. Comparison of the sketches by the individuals with those bearing the joint signatures is of little aid as the wood engraver reduced nearly all illustrations to the same level. The work of Winslow Homer, C. S. Reinhart, T. S. Church, Sol Eytinge, Jr., and many others whose illustrations appeared in the same years as those of Frenzeny and Tavernier might all have come from the same pencil as far as the draftsmanship was concerned, after the engraver was through with them. Only the bold lines and grotesque figures of man and animal in the cartoons of Thomas Nast bear any individuality during this period. The magnificent wood engravings that appeared in the 1880's had few counterparts in the middle 1870's.

As the woodcut reproductions of the work of Frenzeny and Tavernier are of little aid, other information must be sought. It is known that Frenzeny was an excellent pencil artist and Tavernier a "colorist" interested in large masses, abilities which suggest that Tavernier was responsible for background and composition and Frenzeny for the foreground detail. [16] It is probable, too, that many of the illustrations used by the Weekly were drawn directly on the wood block by the artists before being sent to New York. In fact, one Denver paper reported "The artists draw their sketches on wood before sending them to the engraver." [17] If this procedure was the one followed, probably Frenzeny with his skill with the pencil drew the major portion of the sketch on wood, using a mirror as an aid

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to transpose the necessary reversed sketch on wood. The usual signature that appears in many of their reproductions is "Frenzeny & Tavernier," although at times the signature is reversed or changed in other ways. That the artists redrew their Sketches on wood is borne out by an examination of their Signatures, for rather frequently a letter, either n or z, is reversed. [18] The reversal would be one more readily made by artists unaccustomed to drawing in reverse than by professionals trained for such work in the wood engraving plant. For their combined efforts the Harper brothers are said to have paid the two artists $75 for a full-page illustration and $150 for a double-page one. [19] As we shall see, they sold sketches to other concerns and to individuals as they traveled westward.

In many ways, Frenzeny and Tavernier were alike. Volatile and excitable, susceptible to their surroundings, imaginative and extravagant, they were a queer pair to send on a westward journey to a country about as foreign to Paris and New York as could be imagined. Frenzeny soon after he reached the plains, acquired a pointers Judy, by name. He became greatly attached to the dog and although she was not particularly intelligent, she had a valiant defender in her owner. One can but wish that a good observer and reporter had been in the background as these two eccentric characters and their dog traveled by train, by stage coach and by horse over the plains and mountains of the West and in localities where it was still wild and woolly. Despite their highly individual personalities, their pictorial reporting is surprisingly complete. The commonplace in the West was unusual to them and they recorded it as they saw it. It might also be pointed out that they possessed an unusual sympathy for the humbler class of individuals seen on their trips; workers, emigrants, pilgrims of the plains in search of new homes, were all treated pictorially with kindness and understanding. [20]

The first two illustrations in the Frenzeny and Tavernier series were made in New York City itself but dealt with Western emigration which was then rapidly increasing. "An Emigrants' Boarding House in New York," a double-page illustration of one of "the

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better class" houses, and "The Emigrant Wagon-On the Way To the Railway Station," a single-page illustration depicting the transportation of emigrants from the boarding house to the cars for the Western migration, were the Subjects treated: [21] It was the custom of the Weekly to make comment on its illustrations, the citation to such a comment being included with the legend beneath the illustration. Occasionally the comment gives useful additional information concerning the subject of the Sketch, especially when it is apparent that the information was supplied by the artists themselves.

The two initial views were followed by illustrations in and around Pittsburgh dealing with the manufacture of iron [22] Included in this same series was an illustration depicting a secret meeting of coal miners-the locality not specifically stated, other than "in Pennsylvania." [23]

The first of the trans-Mississippi sketches appears in the issue of Harper's Weekly for November 8, 1873, but to aid in understanding the work of the artists, their general route west from the Mississippi should be traced before giving consideration to the individual illustrations. They apparently crossed the Mississippi river at Hannibal, Mo. From Hannibal, the pair traveled on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway across Missouri to Fort Scott and Parsons, Kan. They proceeded on the ame railroad across Indian territory to Denison, Tex., the terminus of the railroad. Construction of the line to Denison had been completed only a few months before the arrival of Frenzeny and Tavernier. After their visit at Denison, the artists turned northward across the Indian territory and eventually reached Wichita-probably accompanying a cattle drive at least part of the way. From Wichita the general route was west along the Santa Fe railroad through southern and western Kansas to the railroad terminus at Granada, Colo. By stage they then traveled to Pueblo, Colo., and then by rail to Denver. They remained in Denver during the winter of 1873-1874, then visited Fort Laramie in Wyoming territory, the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska and finally returned to the Union Pacific railroad traveling west to San Francisco, after a side trip to Salt Lake City [24] The sketches for the November 8 issue of the Weekly include eight

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illustrations, one of them being a left-over from the iron manufacturing scenes at Pittsburgh, previously mentioned. The seven remaining views are obviously scenes in southeastern Kansas, "A Sunny Home on the Neosho River," "Herding with Comfort" (depicts a settler with an umbrella herding a few cattle on the prairie), a street scene entitled "A Market Day in Parsons City-18 Months Old," "Taking Water in the Prairie" (locomotive and train on a treeless plain), "Prairie Chickens for Sale," "A Surprise Party," and "Going to Church"-the last three illustrations depicting various incidents of settler life. Unfortunately there are no Parsons' newspapers available for this period as newspaper comment is one of the valuable methods for checking on the accuracy of the scenes depicted. The next group of sketches (four on one page) belong geographically to the above group of seven. [25] They include "In the Emigrant Train," "Switched Off," "Building the Log-Cabin," and "Laying the Fences." The first two are emigrant scenes and were probably made along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway. The first shows the interior of a passenger car at night filled with emigrants and their belongings; the second, "Switched Off," depicts a group of emigrants "sketched from an actual scene," the text tells us, huddled about a closed depot waiting in the rain for their connecting train. "In this case," the description reads, "the emigrant party, which included old people, delicate women, and children, were compelled to remain all night exposed to a cold, drenching rain." The pictured plight of the distressed travelers may have been due to the lack of coordination in the recently organized M. K. & T. (a combination of many smaller systems) or to the fact that "emigrant cars" were frequently attached to freight trains and the emigrant cars switched off at way stations so that additional freight could be added to the trains; emigrant travel apparently being regarded as a third or fourth-class mode of transportation. [26]

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The Frenzeny and Tavernier sketches listed below are those found in the Weekly showing scenes in Indian territory and Texas and secured as the artists traveled by the M. K. & T. to Denison, Tex. [27] As can be seen, they are not arranged according to the chronological order of their appearance in the Weekly but are grouped geographically. The appearance of the sketches in the Weekly undoubtedly would be determined solely by the availability of the sketches (dependent upon the promptness of the artists in sending them to New York), and the needs of the individual issues of the Weekly.

1. "United States Signal Service-Watching the Storm," Fort Gibson, I. T. (about 2/3 p.), Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (March 21, 1874), p. 267.
2. "In the Indian Territory," seven outline sketches on one page, including Fort Gibson, ibid., v. 19 (May 15, 1875), p. 396. The sketches are not signed but p. 406 of the text credits them to Frenzeny and Tavernier.
3. "Vigilance Court in Session" (full page), ibid, v. 18 (April 11, 1874), p. 326.
4. "An Oasis Along the Track" (the cover page), ibid., v. 18 (March 21, 1874), p. 249.
5. "Arkansas Pilgrims," from Arkansas to Texas through Indian territory (about 1/2 p.), ibid., v. 18 (April 4, 1874), p. 306.
6. "Arkansas Pilgrims in Camp" (about 1/2 p.), ibid., v. 18 (April 25, 1874), p. 361.
7. "A Freshet in the Red River, Texas" (about 1/2 p.), ibid, v. 18 (April 25, 1874), p. 361.
8. "Sugar-Making in Texas" (about 1/2 p.), ibid., v. 18 (April 4, 1874), p. 307.
9. "A Deer Drive in the Texas 'Cross-Timber"' (double page), ibid., v. 18 (February 28, 1874), pp. 206, 207.
10. "A Saturday Noon in a Southwestern Town" (the cover page), ibid., v. 18 (July 25, 1874), p. 613.
11. "The Texas Cattle Trade-Guarding the Herd" (about 1/2 p.), ibid., v. 18 (March 28, 1874), p. 272.
12. "Calling the Night Guard," interior of bunk house (about 1/2 page), ibid., v. 18 (March 28, 1874), p. 272.

The M. K. & T. ran in a line southwesterly across eastern Indian territory, Fort Gibson being nearly half-way to the Texas line. [28] The U. S. army, then in charge of weather reports and surveys through its signal service, maintained a weather station at Fort Gibson, the only one in the southern plains region until Santa Fe,

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N. M., was reached. The first illustration on the list depicted observers on the tower of the station watching the approach of a storm; a small vignette showed the interior of the station.

"An Oasis Along the Track," probably also sketched in Indian territory, shows a mule-powered pump at a lone way station, storing water in a reservoir for future train use.

The end of the M. K. & T. track, as already has been pointed out, was in Denison, Tex., when Frenzeny and Tavernier traveled west in 1873. Denison was four or five miles south of the Red river, the boundary between Indian territory (Oklahoma) and Texas, and on the Old Texas road that came down from Fort Gibson. Before the coming of the railroad, the Old Texas road was the highway of travel for southern-bound emigrants and still earlier for the Forty-niners. [29] These facts, together with the Denison illustration previously noted (Footnote 26), indicate that several of the remaining sketches listed above were made in or near the vicinity of Denison. There is no precise information now available, save that furnished by the Weekly illustration themselves, how much farther into Texas the artists traveled than the border town of Denison. They apparently spent little time in the town of Denison itself as Mr. E. R. Dabney of the University of Texas library has searched for me the files of the Denison News for 1873 and 1874 without finding any mention of the names of Frenzeny and Tavernier.

"A Freshet in the Red River, Texas," the two "Arkansas Pilgrims," the "Vigilance Court in Session" (locality stated as near the Indian territory-Texas boundary)-all, it is reasonable to assume, fall in such a group. Denison, too, or the nearby country, marked the beginning of some of the important northward cattle trails, [30] and the two sketches of the Texas cattle trade may have been sketched not far from Denison. "Calling the Night Guard" is more than faintly suggestive of Remington's illustrations made many years later. "A Saturday Noon in a Southwestern Town" is not identified save that it was "a border town" but the watermelons and the negroes in the sketch fix its locality as Texas without much doubt. It possibly may be a view of Denison itself. Unfortunately the store signs do not yield a positive method of identification.

The most impressive illustration of this group is the double-page "A Deer Drive in the Texas 'Cross-Timber'." As Denison is near the western edge of the Eastern Cross Timbers, this sketch also

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could have been based on the artists' impressions of the vicinity near Denison. An exceptionally good word description of the Cross Timbers and of deer hunting accompanies the illustration which strongly suggests that part of the material was a report of the artists' own experience.

"The camps at night," the report reads in describing a deer hunt of several days, "present a very picturesque appearance. Bright fires illuminate the scene, the horses are picketed in the rich grass, hunters and hounds gather in groups about the fires, and songs and stories and feasting are kept up till late in the night. Then, rolled in blankets, the men lie down to sleep, and silence reigns in the great forest."

Upon the completion of the Texas part of the Frenzeny-Tavernier "expedition," the artists turned north again and returned to Kansas. Their first sketches on their return were probably made in and near Wichita, then the cattle-shipping center of this Western industry. The complete list of Kansas sketches, with the exception of those described on page 10, and again arranged geographically, include

1. Nine sketches on pages 386 and 387, Wichita and the cattle trade, Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (May 2, 1874). [Several in this group are reproduced in the picture supplement accompanying this article which will be found between pp. 32 and 33.]
2. "A Kansas Land-Office" (cover page), ibid., v. 18 (July 11, 1874), p. 573. [Reproduced in the picture supplement.]
3. "Fighting the Fire" (about 1/2 page), ibid., v. 18 (February 28, 1874), p. 192.
4. "A Prairie Wind-Storm" (full page), ibid., v. 18 (May 30, 1874), p. 460. 5. "Limestone in Kansas" (about 1/2 page), ibid., v. 18 (September 12, 1874), p. 760.
6. " `Busted 1'-A Deserted Railroad Town in Kansas" (about 1/2 page), ibid., v. 18 (February 28, 1874), p. 192. [Reproduced in the picture supplement.] 7. "Curing Hides and Bones" (about 1/2 page), ibid., v. 18 (April 4, 1874), p. 307. [Reproduced in the picture supplement.]
8. "Slaughtered For the Hide" (cover page), ibid., v. 18 (December 12, 1874), p. 1013.
9. "An Under-Ground Village" (about 1/2 page), ibid, v. 18 (April 4, 1874), p. 306. [Reproduced on the cover of this issue.]

Fortunately, for the first group of sketches listed above, we have valuable contemporary comment which appeared in the Wichita Eagle for April 30, 1874 (p. 3, col. 2). The comment reads:

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Wichita and her trade has been immortalized by illustration. For some months past Harper's Weekly has contained pictorial sketches of the west and southwest, drawn by Frenzeny and Tavernier. Many of these delineations were of scenes connected with the life of the cowboy and the hunter. The supplement of that paper for May 2nd contains nine pictures, all relating to the cattle trade. No. 1 shows the process of branding with a hot iron the initials or the monogram of the owner. No. 2 represents a long winding herd enroute for Wichita. No. 3 represents Clear Water on the Ninnescah, in this county, with John Dunscomb's store in the foreground, and Ward, McKee and Co's grocery store in the back, with a lot of boys scattered around in conversation, while their horses are feeding out of a trough in front of the awning of John's place. No. 4 represents the milling process, or a "rodeo" in which thousands of head of cattle are rounded up and circled around and around,-so often witnessed here. No. 5 shows the process of "cutting out" cattle from the main herd. No. 6 shows a camp of cattle men out on the herd grounds, west of Wichita. The sun is just rising as the boys are taking their breakfast. In the dim distance is the herd. Two are coming off the night-watch, and others in camp are preparing to take their place through the day. No. 7 shows the cars, pens, and the way the cattle are loaded for eastern markets. No. 8 is a view of Main street, Wichita, from its intersection with Douglas avenue looking north. While it does not do that street justice it is nevertheless recognizable. The last cut represents a party of drovers who have sold out their cattle, bought a Moser wagon, loaded in their outfit and are bidding the Wichita boys good bye until another season. The illustrations are vivid and true to life and to the character of the scenes represented, showing that the artists had studied their subjects.

Comment on this group of pictures, possibly the most important set of the entire series, also was made in the Weekly which called Wichita "the grand central station for the cattle trade" and pointed out that the drive from Texas through Indian territory took four to five months.

The second of the Kansas sketches, the "Land Office," is a most interesting one as it represents a typical "industry." It also was made at Wichita, for the map in the background bears the legend "Sedgewick [sic] County." Wichita, it should be remarked for non-Kansans, is located in Sedgwick county. It will be noted that it was published much later than the other Wichita sketches, a fact supporting our argument on page 11.

It has been possible to determine with considerable exactness from two sources when these Wichita illustrations were actually sketched. The Emporia News of October 17, 1873 (p. 3, col. 2), reported on that day:

Paul Frenzeny, and Jules Tavernier, representing Harper's Weekly, are here for the purpose of making sketches of the scenery here for the pages of the great illustrated paper. They have been to Wichita for some days taking

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 15

various views of that city, and of droves of Texas cattle, etc. We trust every favor will be shown the talented artists during their stay with us. The enterprise of the Harpers in sending artists this far into the west to make sketches for their great favorite illustrated paper is worthy of special note, and we are glad that the Weekly is well patronized here.

From this comment, it appears that Frenzeny and Tavernier were in Wichita during the first few weeks in October, 1873, but we can be more precise about the date than "the first few weeks." The Wichita Public Museum possesses an original pencil sketch signed only by Jules Tavernier in the lower right corner of the sketch; dated in the upper left corner "Oct. 6, 1873"; and in script on the lower left corner is the notation "Maine [sic] Street from Eagle Bloc [sic]." The view is of Wichita and is the only original sketch included in the Frenzeny-Tavernier portfolio of 1873-1874 which has been located; a portfolio which must have contained hundreds of sketches which would now be priceless. [31]

This Wichita sketch was probably bought by some interested citizen of Wichita as there is additional evidence that the artists sold sketches locally as they made'their way West. The existence of the lone Wichita sketch and the fact that no Emporia sketches appeared in Harper's, although the News comment indicates that the artists were at work in that town, shows this fact quite clearly.

Although no sketches of Emporia appeared in the Weekly it is quite possible that sketches three and four of our Kansas list were made near Emporia. Prairie fires were of common experience in the days when much of the open country was unplowed and grass-covered. Autumn fires when the grass was tall and dry at times reached magnificent and terrifying proportions. Indeed, the Emporia News reports prairie fires in nearly every issue during October and November in 1873 and on November 14 reported, "Prairie fires have blackened the prairies almost all around us. . . ."

"A Prairie Wind-Storm," depicting a pioneer woman in a horsedrawn wagon, her husband attempting to calm the terror-stricken horses at the approach of a dark and violent storm, is again an incident that was common in the fall on the open prairies. The illustration recalls the far from easy life that our early settlers experienced.

The locality of "Limestone in Kansas" I have not been able to identify with certainty but I believe that it must be either Fort Scott or Florence. The illustration shows a row of huge lime kilns

16 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

where "was made two-thirds of all the lime used in the state." Statistical data is lacking that would enable us to determine which of the two towns was meant but more probably it was Fort Scott. [32]

The next four sketches on our Kansas list (Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 9) are to my mind the most interesting of the entire Frenzeny and Tavernier series. They were made as the artists traveled west from Emporia on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (which as all Westerners know, does not start from Phil-i-del-fee-aye, as the current popular tune has it). Our evidence for this statement must be proved as no localities are given in the Weekly for these illustrations. In the first place the scenes are those of southwest Kansas through which the Santa Fe, in local parlance, made its way. In the second place, the Denver papers, in noting their arrival in that city, state that the artists came from southern Colorado, [33] as they would if they traveled the Santa Fe. The only other route to Denver would be by way of the Kansas Pacific which would have brought them into Denver directly from the east. Emporia was on the main line of the Santa Fe and not the Kansas Pacific. The trip west from Emporia would mean retracing their "steps" as far as Newton, [34] for we have seen that Emporia was reached after the artists had been in Wichita. To clinch our argument, that the trip was made through southwest Kansas on the Santa Fe, we can point out that the two artists registered at the American House in West Las Animas, Colorado territory, early in November, 1873. [35]

West Las Animas was on the stage route from the end of the Santa Fe rail (which in the fall of 1873 was at Granada, C. T., 12 miles west of the Kansas-Colorado line) and Pueblo (133 miles west of Granada), in southern Colorado, where rail connections could again be made on the Denver and Rio Grande to Denver, [36]

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 17

some 100 miles or more north of Pueblo. Therefore, there can be little doubt that the Santa Fe was the route traveled by the artists to railhead.

"Busted," I am assuming, was the first of these sketches made on the westward trip from Emporia. As can be seen (see picture supplement) it is at least partly imaginative but the sense of haunting forsakenness created by the illustration makes it one not easily for gotten. I first saw the picture over 15 years ago and its image has frequently flashed across my memory in the intervening years. It was in fact, the illustration that started my first work on these artists. Goldsmith in nearly 400 lines was not able to produce the feeling of utter desolation that can be obtained by a single glance at this illustration of the Great Plains' version of "The Deserted Village."

The deserted town may be a composite view based on several such towns seen by the artists-for Kansas has had its share of "busted" towns-but there is record of a town whose description fits surprisingly well with the illustration. In July, 1872, the town of Zarah, Barton county, was quite a little village and the first town in the county. It was about a mile east of a military reservation on which was located Fort Zarah. [37] The Santa Fe railroad reached Great Bend, about three miles west of Zarah, on August 5, 1872, [38] but missed Zarah by about a mile and Zarah disappeared within a year or so.

"Curing Hides and Bones," I am reasonably sure, was drawn at Dodge City late in October, 1573, for it compares with considerable exactness to the description given by Robert M. Wright, one of the founders of Dodge City and the author of Dodge City, The Cowboy Capital (Wichita, 1913, p. 156), which reads:

One of Dodge City's great industries was the bone trade. It certainly was immense. There were great stacks of bones, piled up by the railroad trackhundreds of tons of them. It was a great sight to see them. They were stacked up way above the tops of the box cars, and often there were not sufficient cars to move them. Dodge excelled in bones, like she did in buffalo hides, for there were then ten times the number of carloads shipped out of Dodge, than out of any other town in the state, and that is saying a great deal, for there was a vast amount shipped from every little town in western Kansas.

The fall and winter of 1872-1873 saw professional buffalo hunting reaching its height,[39] and in the fall of 1873, Col. R. I. Dodge,

18 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

after riding out from Fort Dodge, some four or five miles from Dodge City, wrote:

Where there were myriads of buffalo the year before, there were now myriads of carcasses. The air was foul with sickening stench, and the vast plain, which only a short twelvemonth before teemed with animal life, was a dead, solitary, putrid desert. [40]

The buffalo were not yet gone in the fall of 1873 but they were farther removed from the lines of the railroads; and the illustration, "Slaughtered for the Hide," shows a scene of wholesale slaughter of the buffalo almost as bad as that suggested by Colonel Dodge. "Our artists spoke with hunters on the plains, who boasted of having killed two thousand head of buffalo apiece in one season. At this rate of slaughter, the buffalo must soon become extinct," read the description accompanying "Slaughtered for the Hide." [41]

The last of the group of Kansas sketches, "An Under-Ground Village," is unique. I know of no other illustration by any artist which depicts this aspect of town life on the Great Plains. At first glance, one might think that the illustration was the result of the fantastic imagination of the artists but evidence is available which shows that the illustration was probably based on fact. The dugouts which constitute the underground village, were common habitations of the early settlers on the plains. Illustrations of individual dugouts are fairly common; it is the collection of a number of these dugouts together that constitute the uniqueness of the illustration in question. [42]

In a country devoid of timber, yet supplied with an endless quantity of "moving" air, the dugout at first was almost a necessity. If the reader wonders about the nature of a dugout, the following description by a traveler, who made a Western trip but a short time before Frenzeny and Tavernier, can be quoted. The dugout, he reports, "is simply a burrow with a pitched roof of sod, seldom having a window, the door answering this purpose, however inelegant in appearance, is truly a snug place in which to spend the blustery winter days. There your plainsman can lie back at his ease on his bed of robes, and think it a bed of roses and hear with philosophic

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 19

calmness the peltings of the rude storm without." [43] The plainsman's philosophic calmness was no doubt rudely interrupted from time to time as he scratched vigorously, for dugouts soon became the habitation of insect as well as human population. "The land of the free" went the ditty of the dugout dwellers of the 1870's:

The land of the bedbug, grasshopper and flea,
I'll sing of its praises, I'll tell of its fame
While starving to death on my government claim.

Another observer who traveled west from Dodge City on the Santa Fe also saw dugouts along the line of the railroad. "On the morning after my arrival in Dodge City," he wrote late in 1872, "I got into a caboose car and went eighty miles further, within a very short distance of Fort Aubrey. [44] . . . Twenty miles apart, out in this wild country, there are stations, consisting of a water-tank and a dugout. The dugouts are simply holes in the ground, or cellars with roofs over them. They are the most convenient houses for this windy country that can be built, and are exceedingly warm; they are used as boarding houses for the section hands, and at present for eating houses for those who may travel on construction trains." [45]

Subsequent newspaper accounts, written a few years later, report dugouts at Dodge City, Larned and Kendall; the last two towns being west of Dodge City on the Santa Fe. [46]

There is thus ample evidence that dugouts existed along the line of the Santa Fe westward from Dodge City and the question naturally arises as to whether the illustration depicted any of the towns along the railroad. If it does, the town must be one of three: Dodge City, Sargent (now Coolidge), Kan., or Granada, Colo., the

20 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

end of rail. Our reason for this conclusion is that the illustration, as can be seen, depicts a depot and these three towns were the only ones that possessed, at the time of the artists' visit, frame buildings as depots. [47] I do not believe that the underground town could be Dodge City as Dodge had a hotel and dance hall by 1873 (see Footnote 45), and these were probably above ground. It is possible, of course, that more of the town than is actually depicted in the illustration existed but did not appear in the viewpoint that the artists selected.

I believe, too, that the illustration was probably not Granada for a contemporary newspaper account states that the town contained in August, 1873, "about fifty buildings, [48] built mainly in a row about 80 feet north of the railroad track." [49] If the artists did not purposely foreshorten the foreground, the illustration could not represent Granada as the distance from tracks to "town" in the illustration is quite obviously less than 80 feet.

The only remaining alternative then is that the illustration shows the town of Sargent and we will therefore tentatively assign the illustration to this locality. [50] Some reader, I trust, will be able to produce evidence that will establish the locality of the "UnderGround Village" with certainty.

COLORADO TERRITORY

The Frenzeny-Tavernier sketches made in the centennial state, as these artists continued on from Kansas, can be listed as follows:

1. "Staging in the Far West."-Four illustrations on one page entitled: "Throwing Out the Mail"; "Taking the Morning `Slumgullion"'; "Calling For the Relays," and "Home Station on the Plains," Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (July 4, 1874), p. 556.

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 21

2. Mining in Blackhawk, Colo. (nine illustrations on two pages), ibid., v. 18 (May 30, 1874), pp. 456, 457.
3. "Gold and Silver Mining, Colorado-A Honey-Combed Mountain" (about 1/3 page), ibid., v. 18 (July 18, 1874), p. 597.
4. "On the Way To New Diggings-Halt in a Rough Pass of the Rocky Mountains" (double-page), ibid, v. 19 (May 1, 1875), pp. 360, 361. [Reproduced in the picture supplement.]
5. "Irrigation in Colorado-Letting Water Into a Side Sluice-Way" (cover page), ibid., v. 18 (June 20, 1874), p. 509.
6. "Trout-Hatching in Colorado" (about 1/3 page), ibid, v. 18 (July 4, 1874), p. 565.
7. "A Bear Hunt in the Rocky Mountains" (January 15, 1876), p. 45.
8. "Returning To Camp From a Bear-Hunt" (about 1/3 page), ibid, v. 19 (May 29, 1875), p. 444.
9. "Shooting Antelopes From a Railroad Train in Colorado" (full page), ibid, v. 19 (May 29, 1875), p. 441.
10. "A Bird Colony [Swallows] on Lake St. Mary" (about 1/3 page), ibid., v. 18 (July 18, 1874), p. 604. (about 1/3 page), ibid., v. 20

Although the individual sketches of "Staging in the Far West" are not identified as to locality I have assumed that they belong to the Colorado group. If I am correct, the originals were then made on the stage route between Granada, the railhead of the Santa Fe, and Pueblo. As we shall see, the two artists made at least one other stage trip (from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie) but the architecture of the building seen in "Throwing Out the Mail" is so distinctly of the Mexican type that southern Colorado seems surely indicated.

The stage route between Granada and Pueblo was well over 130 miles. [51] The trip between the two towns was made three times a week in both directions so that several days were required for the passage. [52] As is evident from Footnote 35, Las Animas or more exactly West Las Animas, was one of the way stations. Possibly the sketch "Home Station on the Plains" was that at Pueblo but the mountains in the background seem somewhat exaggerated if this is the case. The artists do not seem to have stopped at Pueblo (or at least no mention is made of them in the Pueblo Chieftain), but went directly to Denver on the narrow-gauge Denver and Rio Grande which had been completed in June, 1872. [53]

The artists were at West Las Animas sometime during the week of November 1-8, 1873, from the record in the Las Animas Leader,

22 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

but they arrived in Denver on November 5, 1873. [54] These dates would mean that, at the longest, four days were required to make the trip from West Las Animas to Denver, but the time of course might be less-depending on their arrival and stay at West Las Animas. Further, since they were at Emporia on October 17 and in Denver on November 5, the entire trip from Emporia was made in slightly less than three weeks. How much of this time was employed in stop-overs to make sketches and how much in traveling we do not know for certain but the travel alone could probably have been accomplished in a week or less.

The artists spent the winter in and around Denver, for there is frequent mention of them in the Denver press, the first notice appearing the day after their arrival and the last on March 20, 1874. They were in and out of Denver on numerous side excursions but rented a studio in "Schleier's block" for much of their work. [55]

All of the sketches which are included in the Colorado list, with the exception of the first group, were probably made on these side excursions. The second, "Mining in Colorado," is identified in the text as the works of the Boston and Colorado Smelting Company at Blackhawk, some 25 or 30 miles west of Denver. The text of nearly a column in the Weekly describes at some length the details of the smelting process. [56] The third illustration is not identified as to locality but shows many individual miners with their own shafts literally honeycombing the side of a mountain; a sight that the author saw repeated some dozen years ago when "the great depression" brought back again the individual "miner."

"On the Way To New Diggings," a long mule train in the bend of a mountain road, is the best engraved of all the FrenzenyTavernier illustrations and is most realistic in its appearance. "Our artists," wrote Harper's Weekly in its comment, "traveled for several days with such a party, and the picture we give is an accurate transcript of an actual scene, both as regards the picturesque and romantic pass where the halt has taken place and the figures and costumes of the miners." [57]

That the artists recorded many phases of the life and activities through which they passed is shown again by the illustration, "Irrigation in Colorado." Again not identified as to locality it could

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 23

represent many of the irrigation projects of that day which directed water from the Front Range down into selected areas on the plains. The illustration, "Trout-Hatching in Colorado," is not signed nor is it credited to Frenzeny and Tavernier in the text of the Weekly. I have assigned it to these artists, however, not only because it fits naturally in the group but because an item from a Denver paper (Daily Times, March 20, 1874) reads:

A number of invited guests, making all together quite a good-sized party, among whom were Messrs. Paul Frenzeny and J. Tavernier, of Harper's Weekly, made a flying visit, yesterday, to Alderman James M. Broadwell's artificial trout ponds, situated some ten miles down the Platte.

The illustration, "Returning To Camp From a Bear-Hunt," identified as "a lake in the Rocky Mountains," possibly may depict one of the artists, for one of the three figures is arrayed in a costume quite obviously different from the other two. The action of "Shooting Antelopes From a Railroad Train" took place on the plains near Kit Carson, Colo., some 150 miles east of Denver on the Kansas Pacific. Incidentally, this full-page illustration is unique in that it is the only one with which I am familiar which shows the destruction (not hunting) of antelope from a train. There are many sketches and illustrations showing the destruction of buffalo from passenger trains of the Kansas Pacific, but no other one showing similar "sport" in the case of the antelope.

The last illustration on the Colorado list, No. 10, shows that the artists visited Estes Park during their stay in Colorado, for the text so locates the lake. [58]

A number of other sketches were made in Denver, according to newspaper accounts. A double-page illustration was actually prepared on the wood block, ready for the Weekly's engravers, but it never was published. The several views drawn on the block included a view of Denver, one in Clear creek canyon, a street scene showing "Larimer street from Sixteenth street west, with the distant foothills in the background" and lastly a view in the Garden of the Gods at Colorado Springs. [59] "The whole presents a fine grouping of views, and will do more to give easterners an intelligible idea of this section than would half the letters written upon them," comments the reporter for the Rocky Mountain News who saw the sketches.

24 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The view of Denver mentioned above was a reduction of a large water color prepared by the artists, a "view taken from near General Bearce's residence, and Cherry Creek, the water works, the full sweep of the city, the plains beyond, and the mountains-showing Pike's Peak and the Buffalo back to the left. The sketch is finely touched with water colors." [60] The water color was offered for sale at $250 and was on exhibition at "Richards and Co.'s." "The blue of the mountains is most artistically rendered, while Denver is given the air of a metropolis," reports another Denver paper. [61]

WYOMING AND NEBRASKA

In this group there are but three illustrations that were published in the Weekly. Records of other work of the artists, however, are available. The three in the Weekly are:

1. "Driven From Their Homes-Flying From an Indian Raid" (about page), Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (April 11, 1874), p. 321.
2. "An Indian Agency-Distributing Rations" (about 1/3 page), ibid, v. 19 (November 13, 1875), p. 924.
3. "Indian Sun Dance-Young Bucks Proving Their Endurance by SelfTorture" (double page), ibid., v. 19 (January 2, 1875), pp. 8, 9.

Although, aside from the illustrations themselves, there is no contemporary and direct evidence of the Wyoming-Nebraska excursion of the artists, there is considerable indirect evidence. "Driven From Their Homes" is described by the Weekly as an incident of the Indian troubles of early 1874 and depicts settlers in wintry weather seeking army aid on the road between Fort Russell (near Cheyenne, Wyoming territory) and Fort Laramie. The illustration appeared in the issue of April 11, 1874; the action shown occurred "a few weeks since." These statements agree with the known facts about the Indian troubles around Fort Laramie in February and early March of 1874. [62] However, if the scene depicted was an actual one,

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 25

it meant that the artists made the trip to Fort Laramie and then returned to Denver, for, as we have seen, they were in Denver on March 20. As there is evidence that the artists were in Fort Laramie and the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska in May and June of the same year, there may be some doubt whether the scene was actually witnessed by the artists. It is possible, of course, that the artists made the relatively short trip from Denver to Cheyenne by rail and were on the trail from Fort Russell to Fort Laramie for only a short distance and then returned to Denver, a second trip northward being made later in the year. The second and third of the illustrations listed above were made at the Red Cloud Agency, Nebraska, some 145 miles northeast of Cheyenne and 75 miles northeast of Fort Laramie. [63] Presumably they were drawn in May or June of 1874 and I believe were sketched on the spot. "The Indian Sun Dance," one of the earliest illustrations of this ceremonial I have seen, was that of the Oglala Sioux which in the early 1870's was held near the Red Cloud Agency. [64] The description and the illustration of the dance given in the Weekly corresponds in general with that given in the standard authorities. [65]

The self-torture, as part of the public ceremony, the large and roofless enclosure, the tall center pole and auxiliary side ones, the time of occurrence (June), and the earpiercing of children are all well-known facts of the ceremonial and are shown in the illustration or stated in the text of the Weekly. The great number of spectators of the dance is also in agreement with the fact that the Red Cloud Agency was one of the largest of its day. Its reported population in the middle 1870's ranged all the way from 9,000 to 16,000 individuals. [66] Schwatka who saw the sun dance the following year reported that it was "the grandest sun-dance within the memory of the oldest warrior" and that 15,000 to 20,000 spectators witnessed it.

26 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Schwatka also reported that the enclosure for the dance "looked not unlike a circus tent, the top of which had been ruthlessly torn away by a cyclone," certainly an apt description of the enclosure depicted by Frenzeny and Tavernier. [67]

The original sun dance sketch made by Frenzeny and Tavernier in 1874 was in the possession of "Deejay" Mackart of San Francisco as late as 1892. [68] Its present location, if still in existence, is unknown.

"Distribution of Rations" is another sketch not signed or credited, but since the Weekly stated that it was an occurrence at the Red Cloud Agency, I feel certain that it was drawn by Frenzeny and Tavernier. [69] There are several newspaper references in later years to Frenzeny and Tavernier's experiences in the Indian country of Wyoming and Nebraska, for apparently Tavernier was fond of recalling them. [70] Not only was he fond of recalling them but the material gathered in 1874 was later used by Tavernier in a number of paintings which include:

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 27

1. Store of Post Trader, Fort Laramie, 1874. [71]
2. Attacked by the Indians. [72] [Reproduced in the picture supplement. The portrait of Tavernier which appears as a vignette in this illustration was first published in the Annals of the Bohemian Club, 1898.]
3. Meeting Between Spotted Tail and Red Cloud [73]
4. Gathering of the Clans at Red Cloud Agency [74]
5. A Sioux Encampment [75]

UTAH AND CALIFORNIA

1. "Mormons at the Communion Table" (about 1/3 page), Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (September 26, 1874), p. 793.
2. "Brigham Young's Wives in the Great Mormon Tabernacle" (about 1/a page), ibid., v. 18 (September 26, 1874), p. 793.
3. "Quarrying Stone For the New Mormon Temple" (about 1/3 page), ibid, v. 18 (December 12, 1874), p. 1024.
4. "A Fresh Supply of Wives-Going Out to the Settlements" (full page), ibid, v. 19 (January 30, 1875), p. 97.
5. "Reading a Ukase in a Mormon Settlement" (about 1/3 page), ibid., v. 19 (February 6, 1875), p. 109.
6. "Indians Trading at a Frontier Town" (about 1/3 page), ibid., v. 19 (July 3, 1875), p. 537.
7. "Two Bits To See the Pappoose" (about 1/3 page), ibid., v. 18 (October 24, 1874), p. 880.
8. "Chinese Fishermen in San Francisco Bay" (1/2 page), ibid., v. 19 (March 20, 1875), p. 240.
9. "Sketches in 'China-Town,' San Francisco" (six illustrations on one page), ibid., v. 19 (May 22, 1875), p. 421.
10. "The Suburbs of San Francisco" (six illustrations on one page), ibid., v. 19 (May 29, 1875), p. 440.

"Two Bits To See the Pappoose" and the Mormon sketches give us the clue to the continued westward journey of the partners. The first sketch (the "pappobse" was a Shoshone) shows the "Union Pacific Hotel" in the background and suggests that possibly the stopping place was either Ogden or some point east of Ogden, as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific still had a junction at Ogden

28

in 1874. "Indians Trading at a Frontier Town" is in the same category as the above illustration, for the text indicates that it was drawn at a railroad town; the Indians depicted, however, are Utes and the locality of the scene may have been east of Ogden as the large Ute reservation in 1874 was in western Colorado. [76]

The first two of the Mormon sketches listed above are not signed nor are they credited in the text accompanying them to Frenzeny and Tavernier. Nevertheless, I am assuming that they belong to these artists as they fit naturally into the series both with respect to time and place. A side excursion from Ogden to Salt Lake City on the Utah Central Railway is obviously also indicated. Although the Mormon sketches themselves are not unsympathetic, the text accompanying the five illustrations is anti-Mormon; a reaction, of course, which was well nigh universal throughout the rest of the United States and which was very freely stated in the highly moral Harper's Weekly. It is possible that the first sketch, "Mormons at the Communion Table," was imaginary, for it is doubtful if the artists would be permitted to view such a religious ceremony. Possibly, too, this fact accounts for the lack of signature or of credit for the illustration, and for "Brigham Young's Wives in the Great Mormon Tabernacle" which appeared on the same page.

The three California sketches mark the illustrative conclusion of the transcontinental tour of Frenzeny and Tavernier. [77] Both artists obviously had arrived in San Francisco very considerably in advance of the publication date of even the last of the San Francisco sketches. Although no newspaper comment has been found as yet on their arrival in San Francisco, Frenzeny had been elected a member of the famed Bohemian Club of San Francisco on August 4, 1874, and Tavernier on October 6, 1874. [78] As the reputation of these artists, based on the extensive series of illustrations in the Weekly, was already established, I am inclined to think the difference in election dates means that Frenzeny arrived in San Francisco before Tavernier. At any rate, both were on the Pacific coast by the fall of 1874, and by spring of the following year mention of both artists' work, especially Tavernier's, was fairly common in the San Francisco press. [79]

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 29

UNCLASSIFIED ILLUSTRATIONS

Two of the Frenzeny-Tavernier series we have not discussed as yet. The first, "Temperance, Industry, and Happiness," is easily disposed of. [80] It is one of a pair of those contrasting "moral" illustrations in which the Weekly frequently indulged. It is possible that the subject, a farmer, his family and his homestead, was a topic suggested by the artists' Western trip. Its opposite, in case the reader is interested, was a scene in a tavern, "Intemperance, Idleness, and Misery." It was not drawn by Frenzeny and Tavernier.

The second illustration, "Watching For Montezuma," is said to have been based on a legend of the Moquis (Hopi) Indians. [81] As the scene depicts the pueblo-dwelling Hopi of northwestern New Mexico or northeastern Arizona, I doubt if it was based on actual observation. I have found, as yet, little evidence of a visit to this region by the artists. [82] It should be remembered, however, that the two men are known to have been in Denver nearly five months and possibly longer, and I have by no means accounted for all of their time while in that city. An excursion of two or three weeks from Denver would be a possibility. If such a trip occurred, the scenes of "Staging in the Far West" might be assigned to this suggested period. Tavernier, later in life, produced a painting of nearly the same title, "Waiting For Montezuma," [83] and still later, another one, "The Coming of Montezuma." [84] Both of these, however, were imaginative, as they depicted life of the ancient Aztecs. Photographs, without doubt, of the New Mexico-Arizona region were available in Denver and these may have served as the basis of the original illustration and the Tavernier paintings.

LATER LIFE OF THE ARTISTS

The Bohemian life of San Francisco and the California country itself held both artists in that region for some years; Tavernier for nearly the remainder of his life and Frenzeny for some five or six years.

30 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Tavernier soon became the boon companion of many California and San Francisco artists of note, including Julian Rix, Joe Strong (a brother-in-law of Robert Louis Stevenson), Amadee Joullin and others. He was, in fact, from the newspaper accounts of his day, the Bohemian of Bohemians and the tales of his behavior have been retold many times in more recent times but in many scattered sources. His most striking characteristic was a detestation of work. "He painted grand pictures in the air with his thumb and grew quite enthusiastic over their value, but it was not until the screws of material existence had tightened upon him to the last thread that he would put these inspirations on canvas," reported one of his friends. The sheriff was continually at his heels, for he was always in debt and to escape them he finally made his way to Hawaii in 1884. [85] Here he painted Mauna Loa and the colorful landscape of the islands but he again became so deeply in debt that he was not permitted to leave. He died in Honolulu on May 18, 1889, of alcoholism. [86]

"Poor Tavernier!" wrote one of his Bohemian Club friends. "The sheriff was continually taking possession of his studio so that he lived more or less in a state of siege. His friends had to go through mysterious rites, give certain knocks on the door and be inspected through peep holes before they could get in. Finally the sheriff made a clean sweep, and Jules' friends, of whom he had many, and none stauncher than fellow-artists as poor as himself, raised the money to send him to the islands. He died there a few years after and the Club erected a granite shaft over his grave in memory of their love for him personally and for his great genius." [87]

Although Tavernier was adverse to work many paintings in the period 1874-1884 are known to have been made. They include landscapes, cartoons, portraits, figure pieces, etc. Among them, in addition to those already listed, are a number which are of interest in the history of the West, some probably based on the trip of 1873-1874. [88] They include the following:

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 31

1. The Pioneer, 1877. [89]
2. The Indian Dance, 1878. [90]
3. Frontier Man (unfinished), 1879. [91]
4. Sketches of Northwest Indians, 1882 [92]
5. The Rodeo (1884-1885) [93]

Of Frenzeny's final years we know less than of Tavernier. He took an active part in the affairs of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco up until 1878. [94]His companionship with Tavernier con tinued apparently as long as he stayed in Calif ornia. [95] A number of his own illustrations (that is, signed by himself alone and not joint work with Tavernier) appeared in Harper's Weekly for the years 1876, 1877 and 1878. They all deal with aspects of life in California and Nevada. The Chinese several times received Frenzeny's attention and one illustration in particular is notable, "A Chinese Reception in San Francisco." It appeared as a doublepage drawing in the Weekly for June 9, 1877. The Nevada sketches may have been obtained on his westward trip to the coast with Tavernier. The most interesting one of this group is an illustration of a "Camel Train in Nevada" showing remnants of the camel herd introduced into this country in 1856. Several of the Frenzeny sketches depict southern California, one, "Sunday Sports in Southern California," shows a version of the rough and callous pastime of the frontier, "The Gander Pull." [96]

In 1879 Frenzeny began a series of sketches in the Weekly depicting Central America. [97] As a sketch of Coney Island appears in the same year it seems reasonable to assume that he returned to

32 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

New York City by way of Central America in 1879. [98] From 1880 to 1887 about 30 of his sketches appear in Harper's Weekly. Some of these illustrations are of New York scenes, others of California, and there are still others which are apparently based on his trip of 1873-1874. A number of the illustrations, as the 1880's advanced, are exceptionally good. The art of wood engraving was rapidly reaching its heyday and the individual character of the artist becomes more and more apparent. The Western sketches of Frenzeny appearing in the Weekly during the 1880's are of sufficient importance to list:

1. "Muster-Day on an Indian Reservation," from a scene which the artist witnessed on the plains (1/2 page), Harper's Weekly, v. 24 (July 24, 1880), p. 476.
2. "Winter Life on the Plains" (two illustrations on one page), ibid., v. 26 (February 11, 1882), p. 89. [One scene is reproduced in the picture supplement.)
3. "After the Thaw-Victims of a Prairie Snow-Storm" (about 1/3 page), ibid, v. 26 (June 10, 1882), p. 365.
4. "Fresh from West Point" to the plains (1/3 page), ibid, v. 26 (November 18, 1882), p. 733.
5. "Taming and Training the American Mustang" (11 illustrations on double page), ibid., v. 26 (November 25, 1882), pp. 744, 745.
6. "An Indian Funeral-Off for the Happy Hunting Ground" (double page), ibid., v. 28 (July 26, 1884), pp. 480, 481.
7. "On the Rio Grande-Surrendering a Prisoner To the Mexican Authorities" (1/2 page), ibid., v. 30 (August 28, 1886), p. 556.
8. "Smuggling on the Rio Grande" (about 1/2 page), ibid, v. 30 (September 4, 1886), p. 565.

I have no data on Frenzeny illustrations for the years 1887 and 1888, but in 1889 he illustrated Harrington O'Reilly's book, Fifty Years on the Trail; A True Story of Western Life, recounting the Western experiences of John Nelson, a character of considerable fame in his day. [99] Over 100 illustrations appear in the book, and in the introduction, dated May, 1889, O'Reilly quotes Frenzeny as saying "[Illustrating this book] has given me more pleasure than any work I have ever undertaken for it is so graphic that it recalls, without any effort on my part, scenes which I am able to draw, not from imagination, but from personal observation;" the only direct quotation now available from either Frenzeny or Tavernier. After the publication of the O'Reilly book Frenzeny drops completely from view and although my search has been extensive no

On the Cattle Trail to Wichita, October, 1873.

Wichita, October 1873. Looking North on Main Street Where It Crosses
Douglas Avenue.

A thriving Kansas industry in the 1870's -- the Land Office in Sedgewick
County as sketched in October 1873.

Texas cattle-men encamped on the herd grounds West of Wichita
October 1873.

The grocery stores of Dinscoom and McKee at Coldwater, fifteen
miles southwest of Wichita in October 1873.

"Busted" A deserted village on the Great Plains.
Probably Zarah, Barton County, Kansas, October 1873.

Curing buffalo hides and collecting bones,
possibly at Dodge City, October, 1873.

A rough mountain road on the way to the mines.
Probably sketched in Colorado in the Spring of 1874.

Supply train of the plains in winter.
Sketched by Paul Frenzeny in 1882.

Attack by Indians on the Overland Trail near Chimney Rock Nebraska.
Painting by Jules Taverner.
The inset is a photograph of Taverner taken about 1878.
Both illustrations courtesy of the Bohemian Club, San Francisco.

PICTORIAL RECORD of OLD WEST 33

further information is available at present concerning him. I trust these lines will be read by some individual who can supply me with additional facts concerning Paul Frenzeny. [100]

CONCLUSION

We have presented evidence the majority of which shows (1) that the two artists whose work we have described observed the scenes they depicted; (2) that contemporary statements concerning the work of the artists agree that their illustrations were good representations of the subjects depicted; and (3) that comparison of written contemporary accounts, or of subsequent research, is in satisfactory agreement with the record and information imparted by other illustrations of the artists. We can again repeat, therefore, that the Frenzeny-Tavernier illustrations as a group are important and reasonably authentic pictorial documents of Western history; one can but regret that their medium of reproduction was so crude and that the original drawings apparently no longer exist. It is unfortunate, too, that we can here reproduce only a few of the Frenzeny-Tavernier series. The interested reader and student will, of course, wish to examine the illustrations as they appear in the files of Harper's Weekly for the years 1873-1876.

The influence which these illustrations exerted is difficult, if not impossible, to trace. Harper's Weekly was one of the most widely read journals of its day; a very real "force in American life" as one student of American journalism has said. [101] The illustrations of Frenzeny and Tavernier were, therefore, well known in their day not only because of the medium of publication, but because their illus

34 KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

trations were numerous and unusual and appeared over a period of some years. No effort was made to glamorize the West, an effect many later illustrators of the West were prone to stress; in fact, illustrations such as "Busted," "Slaughtered For the Hide" and the torture shown in the "Sun Dance" were realistic in the extreme and the majority of the illustrations were factual records of Western life in its many aspects.

The Frenzeny-Tavernier illustrations were, therefore, a part of the cultural background of their day. The lure of the West in all its manifold forms was the compelling force that caused the Harper brothers to send the two artists on their Western way, but the efforts of these two artists were by no means all the "Westerns" published by the Weekly. In the same years that the Frenzeny-Tavernier illustrations appeared, Western sketches by Theodore R. Davis, W. M. Cary and A. R. Waud were published in the Weekly, and the Weekly's chief competitor, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, was also recognizing the popular interest in this field. [102]

To those of us of the older generation, Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell were the illustrators and painters of the West. But the fact of the matter is that they were but two of a long line of Western artists, who, including Frenzeny and Tavernier, have contributed their pictorial talents, of varying quality, to one of the most dominant forces in past American life, the Western frontier. Samuel Seymour, the first Western illustrator of note in the 19th century, Catlin, Bodmer, Miller, Stanley, Eastman, Hays, Mathews, Farny, Mary Hallock Foote, Zogbaum, Rogers, Graham, Hansen, Schreyvogel, to name but a few of that long line, all contributed their share of pictorial information, or misinformation, to the field of Western history. Many of the later artists were influenced by their earlier colleagues. Remington, for example, admitted that Catlin was one of the determining forces in shaping his early career,[103] and an examination of Remington's boyhood sketch books preserved in the Remington Art Memorial, Ogdensburg, N. Y., shows crude Western sketches quite patently patterned after those appearing in Harper's Weekly and other illustrated periodicals of the day. So great was the influence of this material that we find him writing in 1877 to a boyhood friend, who, like Remington, was interested in

PICTORIAL RECORD OF OLD WEST 35

sketching, "Send me [sketches of] Indians, cowboys, villains or toughs. Those are what I want." [104] It was to this general influence and background, therefore, that the Frenzeny-Tavernier illustrations made their contribution which affected the lives of thousands of boys and men-and probably women-in the early 1870's.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I acknowledge with, sincere thanks the aid given me: by the staff of the Kansas Historical Society, by Robert Beine and especially by Ens. J. L. Barry who called to my attention the illustrations of Frenzeny and Tavernier in The Great South-West; by Miss Grace M. Mayer of the Museum of the City of New York; by Messrs. John F. Connally, J. J. Liliestrom and Kendrick Vaughan of the Bohemian Club, San Francisco; by Miss Mabel R. Gillis and the California State Library, Sacramento; by Miss Sereta Morris of the Wichita Public Library who "discovered" the original Tavernier sketch of Wichita; most of all, however, I am indebted to Miss Ina T. Aulls of the Denver Public Library who generously made available the results of extensive newspaper searches bearing on the work of Frenzeny and Tavernier in Colorado. I also wish to express my thanks to the Graduate Research Committee of the University of Kansas for research grants which helped pay, in part, the cost of securing transcripts, photostats, and photographs of original materials used in this and other studies of Western artists.

NOTES

1. Photography and the American Scene (New York, 1938), see especially pp. 314-321; see, also, The Kansas Magazine, Manhattan, 1938. pp. 45-64.
2. G. W. Sheldon, American Painters (New York, 1879), p. 125.
3. Journal of Rudolph Freiderich Kurtz (Washington, 1937), p. 189.
4. A water color, for example, cannot be expected to show the detail that is present in a carefully drawn pencil sketch.
5. Maria R. Audubon, Audubon and His Journals (London, 1898), v. 2. p. 10.
6. Georgia W. Read and Ruth Gaines, eds., Gold Rush (New York, 1944); 8 vols.
7. Samuel Isham. The History of American Painting (New York, 1927), p. 501.
8. It may be that the views of the art historian are undergoing change. In a recent issue of the College Art Journal, Menasha, Wis., May, 1945, p. 192, Frederick A. Sweet calls attention to the need of study of the artists of the Western expansion.
9. Harper's Weekly, v. 17 (November 8, 1873), pp. 961, 994. As this notice appeared after some of the sketches had already appeared in the Weekly (see Footnote 21) and as the artists were in Wichita on October 6, 1873 (see page 15). it is quite probable they left New York in early September or possibly in August.
10. The biographical data are from obituaries in the San Francisco Morning Call, June 11, 1889, p. 3, col. 2, and the New York Tribune, June 10, 1889, p. 5, col. 5; see, also, recollections of Amadee Joullin, a well-known California artist and pupil and friend of Tavernier, in San Francisco Sunday Call, April 16, 1911, p. 5.
11. Tavernier's first illustration for Harper's, a full-page one, "The Christmas Dream," appeared in the issue for December 30. 1871. p. 1233.
12. The Division of Fine Arts, Library of Congress; the New York Public Library; the Museum of the City of New York; the Frick Art Reference Library; the New York Historical Society; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; La Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris; the California State Library; the Bohemian Club of San Francisco; and D. T. Mallett, author of Mallett's Index of Artists, were all consulted in 1940 and information concerning Frenzeny from these sources was meager. Examination of the Art Index to October, 1945, gives no entry under "Frenzeny." My friend, the late William H. Jackson, of pioneer photography fame, was acquainted with Frenzeny but could tell me little about Frenzeny's personal history or the date of his death; see, also, Footnotes 94-99.
13. Harper's Weekly, v. 12 (1868), pp. 200, 733. 828. The first of these sketches "Las Cumbres Railroad, Mexico-Scene in the Pass de la Mula" and the text accompanying it indicates that Frenzeny had been in Mexico before 1868.
14. Ibid. v. 13 (1869), pp. 4, 108, 116; v. 14 (1870), pp. 616, 744; v. 15 (1871). p. 360; v. 16 1872), pp. 161, 660, 661, 669. 836, 876, 908; v. 17 (1873). pp. 145, 148, 156, 157. 468-. 744, 745.
15. Ibid., v. 17 (1873), pp. 296, 297, 865.
16. Deejay Mackart, a friend of both Tavernier-and Frenzeny wrote that Frenzeny "was infinitely more clever with the point than the brush."-San Francisco Call, July 10, 1892, p. 13, cols. 7, 8. Paintings were also in the portfolio of western sketches made by the two artists. See Footnotes 60 and 71.
17. The Rocky Mountain News, February 28, 1874, p. 4. Frenzeny and Tavernier spent the winter of 1878-1874 in and around Denver. See pp. 22-24.
18. In their sketches appearing in Harper's Weekly for 1874, I have counted 21 letters reversed.
19. San Francisco Call, July 10, 1892, p. 13, cols. 7, 8.
20. Some of these observations will become apparent as we list or discuss the individual illustrations. For the Bohemian character of the two (chiefly concerned with Tavernier) see San Francisco Call, July 10, 1892, p. 13, cols. 7, 8 ; August 12, 1909, p. 6, cola. 6, 7 ; the Sunday Call, April 16, 1911, p. 5; San Francisco Examiner, March 3, 1925. p. 7, col. 1, and R. H. Fletcher, ed., Annals of the Bohemian Club (1872-1880), 2d ed. (San Francisco, 1900), V. 1. p. 191.
21. Harper's Weekly, v. 17 (October 18, 1873), pp. 920, 921, 940.
22. Ibid., v. 17 (November 1. 1873), pp. 964, 965, three illustrations; on p. 993 (November 8, 1873), one illustration of eight views.
23. Ibid., v. 18 (January 31, 1874), p. 105, single page in size. The men depicted were said to be members of the famed "Molly M'Guire Secret Society."
24. The evidence for this route will be presented in the text which follows.
25. Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (January 24. 1874), p. 76; the comment will be found on p. 78.
26. For the early history of the M. K. & T. see The Great South-West (a monthly house organ of the M. K. & T.), Sedalia, Mo., June, 1874. and subsequent issues; Sylvan R. Wood, Locomotives of the Katy (Boston, 1944), pp. 8-19; also Report of the Commissioners of the M. K. and T. Railway Co. (New York, 1888), pp. 2, 3; map in Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway Company, Report To Stockholders, 1903 (Evening Post Job Print, New York); A. T. Andreas-W. G. Cutler, History of the State of Kansas (Chicago, 1883), pp. 250, 251.
From The Great South-West, we obtain some of our information on Frenzeny's and Tavernier's itinerary as it contains a number of illustrations signed by these artists and which appear in this publication as follows: Views in Hannibal and Sedalia, Mo., issue of July, 1874; depot in Parsons, Kan., November, 1874; Denison, Tex., August, 1874; Arkansas river valley (near Fort Gibson, I. T.), June, 1874; Neosho valley, July. 1874; interior of passenger ear, M. K. & T., November, 1874. Several of these illustrations were used a number of times in different issues of The Great South-West. I have assumed, as seems reasonable, that these illustrations were made on the trip beginning in the fall of 1873. for there is record of only one trip through the West by these two artists.
27. In addition to the illustrations themselves, and those listed in Footnote 26, we may add as further proof of the artists' actual appearance in Texas, the following item from the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, November 6, 1873, p. 4, the day after their arrival in Denver: "Messrs. Frenzeni and Tavernier, artists for Harper's Weekly, have made an extensive tour of Texas, Indian Territory, and southern Colorado, where they have made a large number of interesting sketches of frontier life." >
28. See Footnote 26 and map of the West showing army posts and Indian reservations. Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (1874). p. 691.
29. The Denison [Tex.] Guide, American Guide Series (Denison, 1939), pp. 11-15.
30. Ibid., p. 13.
31. The Wichita sketch was recently reproduced, although incorrectly dated, as illustration No. 33 in Wichita 1866-1883-Cradle Days of a Midwestern City (Wichita, 1945), edited by R. M. "Dick" Long.
32. The Fourth Annual Report (1875) of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture (Topeka, 1875), p. 120, mentions an extensive manufactory in operation at Fort Scott. On the other hand mention of production of lime and limestone at Florence will be found in a pamphlet edited by Stephen C. Marcou, A Description of Marion County, Kansas (Marion Centre. 1874). pp. 8, 11; in Kansas in 1875 (Topeka, 1875), p. 15, the statement is made "3,000 carloads [of stone] were shipped" from Florence in 1874; and in The Kansas Handbook, J. S. Boughton, publisher (Lawrence, 1878), the statement is made on page 14 that the most extensive lime kilns and stone quarries in the state were in Florence. It will be noted that Boughton's comment is made some four or five years after the Fourth Annual Report (which makes no specific mention of lime kilns or quarries at Florence) and an examination of the data given in Andreas-Cutler, op. cit., pp, 1264, 1265, indicates that extensive quarrying did not begin in Florence until 1873, the year the artists were through Florence on the A. T. and S. F. railroad. Since Fort Scott was on the M. K. & T. it seems more probable the illustration was made there on their original and southward trip through Kansas.
33. Rocky Mountain News, November 6, 1873, p. 4.
34. A short branch of the Santa Fe ran north from Wichita to the main line at Newton.
35. Las Animas (Colo.) Leader, November 8, 1873, p. 3. col. 2, has this entry under "west Las Animas Items": The following were the arrivals at the American House this week, as furnished us by the affable Geo. D. Williamson, Clerk: Patrick Shanley, Kit Carson, Col. P, Frenzeny, New York City; Jules Tavemier, do. 11
36. Glenn Danford Bradley. The Story of the Santa Fe (Boston, 1920), pp. 140-141.
37. Andreas-Cutler, op. cit., pp. 762, 763, 769.
38. Bradley, op. cit., p. 85.
39. E. Douglas Branch, The Hunting of the Buffalo (New York. 1929), p. 158.
40. R. I. Dodge, The Plains of the Great West (New York, 1877), p. 133.
41. Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (December 12, 1874). pp. 1013, 1023. For the feeble efforts made by the Kansas legislature to control the indiscriminate slaughter of the buffalo, see E. O. Stene, "The Development of Kansas Wildlife Conservation Policies," Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, v. 47 (1945), p. 291. In 1874. the Topeka correspondent of the New York Tribune described the use to which buffalo bones, hides and meat-2,000,000 pounds of it-were put; see "The Buffalo and His Bones," the Tribune, November 27, 1874, p. 3, col. 2 (nearly a column).
42. For an excellent illustration of an individual dugout, see Edwin White's sketch in Andreas-Cutler, op. cit., p. 253, or Henry Worrall's sketch in W. E. Webb's Buffalo Land (Cincinnati and Chicago, 1872), p. 329. >
43. Pleasant Hill (Mo.) Leader, November 22, 1872. p. 2, col. 3. The quotation is from a letter dated "Wallace, Kas., Nov. 15, 1872." Wallace was on the Kansas Pacific north of the Santa Fe line and the traveler reported that at Wallace some of the habitations were dugouts.
44. Fort Aubrey was about eight miles west of the present town of Kendall, Kan. Kansas, A Guide To the Sunflower State (New York, 1939), p. 390.
45. Pleasant Hill (Mo.) Leader, January 3, 1873. p. 2. An illustration of one of these way stations on the Santa Fe appears as a wood engraving in Frank Fossett's Colorado (Denver, 1877). p. 446. The account in the Leader cited in this note also gives Some description of the town of Dodge City.
46. In the North Topeka Times, December 20. 1878, are the recollections of a traveler of 1873. "During the year 1873 we `roughed it' in the West," he writes. "Our first stopping place was the famous Dodge City, at the time a perfect paradise for gamblers. cutthroats and girls.' On our first visit the buildings in the town were not buildings, with one or two exceptions, but tents and dug-outs. Every one in the town, nearly, sold whisky, or kept restaurant, perhaps, both. The A., T. and S. F. R. R. was just then working its way up the low-banked Arkansas, and Dodge was the frontier town." "The unsightly dugouts" of early Kendall are mentioned in the Syracuse Journal, June 11, 1886, p. 3, col. 3. The same issue of the Journal (p. 2, col. 1) mentions "the inevitable tank and . . a store in a sort of cellar" at Lakin. The dugout store was still there in 1879, when A. A. Hayes, Jr., and W, A. Rogers went through Lakin on the Santa Fe, for Rogers drew a sketch of it; see A. A. Hayes, Jr., New Colorado and The Santa Fe Trail (New York, 1880), p. 151.
47. Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Co., for the year ending December 31, 1874 (Boston, 1875), p. 35. Other stops between Dodge City and Granada were Cimarron, Pierceville, Sherlock, Lakin, and Aubrey. These possessed windmills and water towers only.-Ibid., p. 37.
48. Note that no comment is made on the construction of the "buildings," however.
49. The Daily Chieftain, Pueblo Colo., August 26, 1873, p. 2, col. 2. Another contemporary written description, which offers no further clues. will be found in the Las Animas (Colo.) Leader, July 4. 1873, p. 2. It was written two days before the Santa Fe reached Granada.
50. A brief description of the town of Sargent appears in The Daily Chieftain, Pueblo, Colo., February 19, 1873, p. 2, but it is of little value in identifying the illustration. Sargent was almost on the Kansas-Colorado line. The Santa Fe was constructed to this point by December 28, 1872; Bradley, op. cit., p. 85. J. H. Conard of Coolidge, long a resident of western Kansas. has been interested in the history of Hamilton county. As Hamilton county contains the towns Coolidge (formerly Sargent), Syracuse and Kendall, all on the line of the Santa Fe, I wrote him some months ago describing the illustration "An Under-Ground Village." Mr. Conard replied that he had talked with J. M. Ward. of Coolidge, who lived in the town in the early days of the Santa Fe. Mr. Ward told him that the picture would fit any of the three towns, Dodge City. Sargent (now Coolidge) or Granada, C. T. "That is about the way all the towns near here started." Some of the results of Mr. Conard's research on the history of Hamilton county from 1873 to 1887 will be found in the Syracuse Journal, November 3 and 10. 1944.
51. Bradley, op. cit., p. 141, gives the rail distance as 133 miles and the stage route was undoubtedly longer.
52. Pueblo Chieftain, November 5, 1873, p. 4. col. 1.
53. Bradley, op. cit., p. 151.
54. Rocky Mountain News, Denver, November 6, 1873, p. 4.
55. Mention of Frenzeny and Tavernier has been found in the following Denver papers: Rocky Mountain News, November 6, 1873, p. 4; Daily Times, February 16, 1874; Rocky Mountain News, February 17, 1874, p. 4; ibid., February 28, 1874, p. 4; Daily Times, March 5, 1874; ibid., March 20, 1874. The reference to their studio is made in ibid., March 5, 1874.
56. Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (May 30, 1874), p, 461.
57. Ibid., v. 19 (May 1, 1875). p. 362.
58. Another illustration should probably be assigned to the Colorado group. It is, however, signed by Frenzeny alone and appeared in ibid. (October 13, 1877), v. 21. p. 808. As the text of the Weekly, in describing the picture, refers to the incident depicted, Sheep Raid in Colorado," as occurring "some time ago" it waS probably drawn during Frenzeny's stay in Colorado 1873-1874.
59. Rocky Mountain News, February 28, 1874, p. 4. Note that the last item would indicate a stop or a special side trip to Colorado Springs.
60. Ibid., February 17, 1874, p. 4.
61. Denver Times, February 16. 1874. As the historian must at least attempt to be honest we must record the comment of still another Denver paper a few days later: "Everybody who examines that painting of Denver, in Richards and Co's windows, comes at once to the conclusion that the artist must have been cross-eyed to have located the city between the Platte river and the mountains, and near sighted to have the foot hills appear to be immediately joining the suburbs. when they are fully ten miles distant."-Rocky Mountain Herald, February 28, 1874, p. 3, col. 1. We can't be sure, of course, that the Herald reporter was referring to Frenzeny and Tavernier's painting, as the word "artist" only is specified. We might conclude from the opinion of the other two Denver papers, that the Herald reporter was a grouch and unduly hypercritical, if the painting he was discussing belonged to Frenzeny and Tavernier. It should be pointed out also that there was a considerable number of resident artists in Denver in the 1870's. I hope to discuss early art in Denver in a later number of this series.
62. An account of the Indian troubles mentioned above may be found in George E. Hyde, Red Cloud's Polk (Norman, Okla., 1937), pp, 210-215; see, also, letter by Col. John E. Smith dated February 12, 1874, Fort Laramie," New York Semi-Weekly Tribune, February 24, 1874, p. 5. col. 2; other mention of the troubles is given in ibid., February 17, 1874, p. 5, col. 4; February 20, 1874, p, 5, col. 3. Troops under Colonel Smith left Fort Laramie on March 2 and arrived at the Red Cloud Agency on March 5 effectively quieting the Indians for the moment.-Ibid., March 10, 1874, p. 5, col. 5.
63. The record of the first distance will be found in Report of the Special U. S. Commission Appointed To Investigate the Affairs of the Red Cloud Indian Agency, July, 1875 (hereinafter cited as Report of the Special Commission, 1875, (Washington, 1875), p. 195; the second is from Hyde, op. cit., p. 206.
64. Report of the Special Commission, 1875 (Footnote 63), p. 496. and Footnote 65. Catlin described the sun dance of the Sioux in 1832 but did not paint it although many Indian dances were portrayed by this early artist. He arrived in Sioux country a few days after the ceremonial had taken place. The dance took place, he reports, under an awning of immense size-in the center of which was a pole."-George Catlin, North American Indians (Edinburgh, 1926), v. 1. p. 262.
65. Harper's Weekly, v. 19 (January 2, 1875). p. 10; F. W. Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians (Washington, 1910), Pt. 2, p. 650; Leslie Spier, "The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians," Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History (1921), v. 16, pp. 451-529.
66. The Indian population of the Red Cloud Agency for the year ending June 30, 1874, is listed as 9,177-Executive Document 6, House of Representatives, 43 Cong., 2 Sess. (Washington, 1874); see, also, Report of the Special Commission, 1875, pp. 435, 821.
67. Schwatka's description may be found in the Century Magazine, v. 39 (March, 1890). pp. 753-759. The 1875 dance also took place in June, the locality being between the Spotted Tail Agency and "another agency 40 miles to the west." The second agency was the Red Cloud Agency (Report of the Special Commission, 1875, pp. 804. 807. 820). It is of interest to note that Remington illustrated the Schwatka article but he did not attempt to depict the sun dance itself. In fact, Remington did not see an Indian sun dance (Blackfoot) until July, 1890, after the illustrations of the Schwatka article were drawn. Harper's Weekly, v. 34 (December 13, 1890), p. 976, and my own exhaustive study of Remington. Oddly enough, Remington did not produce a picture of a complete view of the sun dance until the last year of his life. Evidently, however, the scene witnessed in 1890 made so profound an impression on him that he wrote in his diary (now in the Remington Art Memorial. Ogdensburg, N. Y.) under date of February 28, 1909: `Am starting `sun Dance' for the love of Record of Great Themes but I'll never sell it-it will give everybody the Horrors. It is in my system and its got to come out."
68. San Francisco Call, July 10, 1892, p. 13, col. 7. Mackart stated that the sketch was published in the Illustrated London News as well as in Harper's Weekly. I have made some effort to find it in the News but so far without success.
69. Another half-page illustration, "Red Cloud Agency-Distributing Goods," is found in the Weekly, v. 20 (May 13, 1876), p. 393, and is signed by I. P. Pranishnikopf. My study of Pranishnikopf is not yet complete but he had occasional western illustrations appearing in various periodicals for many years. In some of these, the illustrations. although signed by Pranishnikopf, also had the added credit line "redrawn after a sketch by" so and so. It is possible that the illustration, "An Indian Agency-Distributing Rations," in the Weekly for November 13, 1875, p. 924, was based on observation by Pranishnikopf but on the above basis, I think it is unlikely. I have also considered the possibility that Pranishnikopf redrew a Frenzeny-Tavernier sketch for the illustration of May 13, 1876, but this possibility seems ruled out by the fact that in Pranishnikopf's illustration of the Red Cloud Agency the legend "F. D. Yates Trading Co." appears on one of the buildings; but F. D. Yates did not begin business at the Red Cloud Agency until April 16, 1875, nearly a year after Frenzeny and Tavernier were there.-Report of the Special Commission, 1875, p. 330. The Pranishnikopf illustration may have been redrawn from a photograph. It should be pointed out, however, that Pranishnikopf had what apparently was a Denver scene in Harper's Weekly, v. 20 (October 14, 1876), p. 836.
70. In addition to the references already noted are the vague recollections of Joullin (San Francisco Call, April 16, 1911, p. 5) and a reference to the artist's experiences in 1874 with General Smith, Spotted Tail and Red Cloud that will be found in California Art Research First Series (San Francisco, 1937), v. 4, p. 3. The General Smith is undoubtedly the Colonel Smith mentioned in Footnote 62.
Dr. G. R. Gaeddert, formerly of the staff of the Kansas Historical Society but now of Washington, kindly searched the records in the National Archives for me. He reports that no mention of Frenzeny and Tavernier occurs in the period March 20 to July 1, 1874, in the Fort Laramie Letter Books and the Red Cloud Agency Letters." These materials, however, are confined almost exclusively to military and agency affairs. Unfortunately no log books of daily happenings and register of visitors at Fort Laramie, which I had hoped to find, are among the collections of the Interior and War branches of the National Archives.
71. This painting, on display in San Francisco in 1919, is probably the most authentic evidence that the artists were at Fort Laramie. It was painted on the lid of a cigar box, dated 1874, with the legend on the store "J. S. Collins."-San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 1919, p. 25, col. 5. The Wyoming State Library informs me that Gilbert Collins, a brother of J. S. Collins, was actually in charge of the post-trader's store in 1874.
72. San Francisco Alta California, October 22, 1878, p. 1, col. 3. The vicinity of the scene depicted was near Chimney Rock, western Nebraska. The locality would be between Fort Laramie and the Red Cloud Agency. The painting is now owned by the Bohemian Club, San Francisco.
73. Ibid., January 27, 1879, p. 1, col. 3. The account of the painting states "It recently sold for $2,000."
74. Information from the California State Library, Sacramento. This item, together with other data on Tavernier, was compiled in 1907. The painting was reported then as owned by "H. Belloc, Paris."
75. California Art Research, First Series. v. 4, p. 25. Reported as painted about 1880-1882.
76. See map, Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (August 22, 1874), p. 691.
77. Contemporary notice in the San Francisco papers has been found for only one of the above sketches. The San Francisco Bulletin, May 20, 1875, p. 3, Col. 6, makes the brief comment, "Harper's Weekly, just at hand, is embellished with a number of graphic views in the Chinese quarter, San Francisco, by the artists Frenzeny and Tavernier."
78. Records of the Bohemian Club, San Francisco.
79. San Francisco News Letter, May 1, 1875. p. 12; May 15, 1875, p. 5 ; San Francisco Bulletin, May 22, 1875, p. 2, Col. 2; San Francisco Daily Post, May 22, 1875, p. 1, col. 3.
80. Harper's Weekly, v. 18 (March 14, 1874), p. 246.
81. Ibid., v. 19 (May 22, 1875), pp. 420, 426.
82. Among the paintings of Tavernier listed in California Art Research, First Series, v. 4, p. 25, is "A Scene in New Mexico" which was dated 1880-1882. This painting may be based on a trip to the New Mexico country in 1873-1874 or later, or it may be based on photographs as suggested later in the text.
83. San Francisco Alta California, April 2, 1879, p. 1. Col. 3. In 1892. a painting, "Montezuma Landscape," by Tavernier, waS reported in the possession of one Irving M. Scott, The Wave, San Francisco, v. 8 (January 16, 1892), p. 7, Col. 3. Whether this was the painting, "Waiting For Montezuma," or an additional one, is uncertain. It is possible that all three references to the Montezuma titles refer to but one painting.
84. San Francisco Call, May 28, 1893. p. 26, Col. 1.
85. Ibid., December 16, 1884, p. 7. col. 6.
86. See Footnote 10.
87. The quotations are from Annals of the Bohemian Club, v. 1. p. 191. Other sources of information on Tavernier's later life are found in California Art Research, First Series, v. 4, pp. 1-26, a very inadequate and poorly documented account. Among the newspaper references utilized may be mentioned the following (many others are available at the California State Library, Sacramento): San Francisco Alta California, July 13, 1877, p. 1, col. 9; January 27, 1879, p. 1, col. 3 ; San Francisco Morning Call, March 10, 1886, p. 4, col. 2 ; The Wave, San Francisco, January 16, 1892, v. 8. p. 7, col. 3; San Francisco Call, July 10, 1892. p. 13, cola. 7, 8, which credits Tavernier with the founding of the Monterey art colony; San Francisco Call, August 12, 1909, p. 6, cols. 6, 7 ; the Sunday Call, April 16, 1911. p. 5 ; San Francisco Examiner, March 3 1925 p 7 Cols. 1-3 and obituaries listed in footnote 10.
88. Tavernier also had an illustration appearing under his own signature in Harper's Weekly (July 26, 1879), v. 23, p. 588, 'Jeanette' Leaving the Harbor of San Francisco" (full page).
89. Depicts a sick or dying pioneer in rude cabin. For an amusing contemporary criticism of this piece see the San Francisco Argonaut, November 24, 1877, p. 3, col. 4. The original painting is now in the possession of The Society of California Pioneers. San Francisco.
90. "Taken From Life"90 "Taken From Life" in an underground sweat house of the California Digger Indians, near Clear Lake".-San Francisco Alta California, June 12, 1878, p. 1. col. 4.
91. California Art Research, First Series, v. 4, p. 25.
92. According to ibid., p. 19, Tavernier went to the Pacific Northwest on a hunting trip with Sir Thomas Hesketh and sketches of the Northwest Indians were obtained. No other record of the sketches or paintings resulting from the trip seems to be available.
93. Ibid., p. 25.
94. Annals of the Bohemian Club, v. 1, pp. 19, 26, 43, 107 191. At the end of volume 1, Frenzeny is listed as a member of the board of directors of the club for 1876-1877.
95. Deejay Mackart. See Footnote 16.
96. Frenzeny's illustrations in Harper's Weekly for 1876-1878 are: "The Indian War-Buying Cavalry Horses," near San Francisco (full page), v. 20 (November 11, 1876), p. 924; "Chinese Immigrants at the San Francisco Custom-House" (title page), v. 21 (February 3, 1877), p. 81; Sunday Sports in Southern California" (full page), v. 21 (March 3, 1877),. p. 164; "Chinese Lantern Feast" (1/3 page), v. 21 (April 25, 1877), p. 332; Charcoal Burning in Nevada" (1/3 page), v. 21 (May 26, 1877), p. 405; "Chinese Reception in San Francisco" (double page), v. 21 (June 9, 1877), pp. 444, 445; "A Whaling Station on the California Coast" (title page), v. 21 (June 23, 1877), p. 477; "Camel Train in Nevada" (1/3 page). v. 21 (June 30. 1877), p. 501; "Nevada Silver Mine--Changing the Shift" (title page), v. 21 (August 25, 1877), p. 657; "Sheep Raid in Colorado" (1/3 page), v. 21 (October 13, 1877), p. 808; "Mission Indians of Southern California . . " (1/3 page), v. 21 (October 20, 1877), p. 821; "The Vintage in California" (double page), v. 22 (October 5, 1878), pp. 792, 793; "On the Way To the Yosemite Valley" (full page), p. 9'52. For the camel experiment of 1856. see Dan E. Clark, The West in American History (New York, 1937), pp. 520. 521.
97. Harper's Weekly, v. 23 (August 23, 1879), p. 664; v. 24 (1880), pp. 152, 556, 812.
98. "The Brighton Beach Fair Grounds, Coney Island" (full page), ibid., v. 23 (August 30, 1879), p. 684.
99. The book was published by June of 1889 as there is a brief description of it in the Publisher's Weekly, v. 35 (June 29, 1889), p. 833.
100. Further data on both artists and upon their work would be most thankfully received by the author. He may be addressed at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
101. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism (New York, 1941), p. 379. The circulation of Harper's Weekly estimated by the American Newspaper Directory for 1875 (George P. Rowell and Company, New York), p. 249, was 100,000. Mott, op. cit., p. 379. states that its circulation by 1872 was 160,000; A. R. Paine, Th. Nast (New York, 1904), p. 204, states that by 1871, the circulation of the Weekly had grown to 300,000. Neither Mott nor Paine, however, give any indication of the source of their data. Paine attributes the wide circulation of Harper's Weekly to the political cartoons of Nast in exposing the Tweed ring of New York. City. It is doubtful if any such claim is justified. The happenings in New York City (to which the Nast cartoons were devoted exclusively), were of general interest to the nation but the widely diversified character of the Weekly's offerings, both in print and in picture, were of greater importance in establishing its wide circulation. Paine is undoubtedly correct (p. 204) when he points out that the illustrations of the Weekly were to be found "in the most isolated farm-house of the West, in the woodsman's but and in the miner's cabin" for we have already observed the comment of the Emporia News (pp. 14. 15) "we are glad to know that the Weekly is well patronized here"; a comment of special significance coming from a small Western village.
For an opinion of the powerful influence of Harper's Weekly, more nearly contemporary with the period of Frenzeny and Tavernier than is found in Mott, see the two and a half page review and criticism in the staid North American Review, v. 100 (April, 1865), p. 625. The Review account concludes with a prophesy now made fact: "Our historical societies and public libraries throughout the country should secure a complete set of the volumes of the Weekly,-for every year will add to their value as an illustrated record of the times.
102. Leslie's, however. in this period never reached the circulation figures achieved by its competitor. In 1874, the circulation estimated by the American Newspaper Directory, 1874, p. 228, was 40,000. Frenzeny-Tavernier never published western illustrations in Leslie's, although I have found one Frenzeny sketch in that publication before the Western tour, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, November 16, 1872, p. 149, "Rehearsal For Annual Training in a Village Store Band."
103. Collier's Weekly, March 18, 1905. p. 16.
104. Ibid., September 17, 1910, p. 28.

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