Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904 by RichardHenry Pratt; Robert M. UtleyReview by: Wilcomb E. WashburnThe American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Oct., 1965), pp. 322-323Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1863270 .

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322 Reviews of Books

THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY: THE MATURING YEARS. By Charles Gano Talbert. [Centennial Publication.] (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. I965. Pp. ix, 208. $5.oo.)

HAIL KENTUCKY! A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY. By Helen Deiss Irvin. With an introduction by Holman Hamilton. ([Lexington:] University of Kentucky Press for the University of Kentucky Centennial Committee. I965. PP. IO2. $2.50.)

A WORTHY successor to James F. Hopkins' able study of the early years of the University of Kentucky, Professor Talbert's volume covers chiefly the period I9II- I956. The author has not let the redundant sources of recent academic history bog down his narrative; his writing is succinct and lucid. Nor has the recency of affairs intimidated him. He records the vainglory of a president emeritus, the trustees' highhanded abolition of faculty policy-making power (in I94I, soon re- versed), and the scandal of bribed basketball players. Interpretation is sparse, but plausible; quotations infrequent, but revealing. Building costs, football records, and the number of articles published by the faculty make some dreary paragraphs, but on the whole the book answers the important questions and does so without sentimentality. Many names appear, but only the presidents and an occasional dean are characterized with any fullness. The university was unusual in having two successive presidents who approached greatness. Frank L. McVey (I9I7-1940) brought higher standards and a more generous freedom to the university (he helped prevent passage of an antievolution law). Herman L. Donovan (I94I- I956) contributed an educationist's shrewdness to politics and public relations (at his urging, the trustees did not appeal the district court decision of I949 that brought integration to the university). If the book has a villain, it is the state legislature, which repeatedly undervalued the university. Without federal and foundation aid it could not have achieved its present stature.

Doubtless by prearrangement, Hail Kentucky! makes up for a certain flatness and disregard of student life in Talbert's book. Covering the full century of the university's history, it presents old anecdotes, legends, poems, advertisements, and photographs (for example, a shot of the university's League of Nations pageant in I9I9, "complete with Kaiser Wilhelm, Bestiality, and Suffering Humanity"). Alumni will warm to Hail Kentucky! Historians of higher education should not ignore it. Historiographical crimes have been committed in the name of centen- nial celebrations, but neither of these volumes will be indicted. Two very differ- ent sorts of history, both do honor to the University of Kentucky. Amherst College HUGH HAWKINS

BATTLEFIELD AND CLASSROOM: FOUR DECADES WITH THE AMERICAN INDIAN, I867-I904. By Richard Henry Pratt. Edited and with an introduction by Robert M. Utley. [Yale Western Americana Series, Number 6.] (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. I964. PP. xix, 358. $8.50.)

THE role of one of the key figures in America's unhappy post-Civil War Indian policy is detailed in this valuable documentary capably edited by the newly ap-

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Americas 323 pointed chief of the Division of History Studies, US National Park Service. Edited from the typescript memoir dictated to his daughter in I923 at the age of eighty- two, the account provides vital documentation, as well as evocative detail, about the manner in which American Indian policy in the second half of the nineteenth century was created and carried out.

Pratt's single-minded dedication to the belief that the Indian could and must be brought into the mainstream of American life by education off the reservation and his constant war against "our segregating reservating Indian policy"-which led to his abrupt retirement in I904-are a remarkable demonstration of the power of one individual to condition thinking about one of our great national problems.

With almost no support, and frequent hostility, from Indian Bureau and War Department officials in Washington, Pratt was able to restore (in their own and in white eyes) the dignity of his Indian prisoners at Fort Marion, to create and win support for his Carlisle Industrial School experiment, and to promote the cause of Indian rights generally by some of the most inventive and unorthodox means ever devised by a lieutenant of cavalry on detached duty.

Pratt's account of his role in creating the Carlisle Indian School is a remarkable chapter in the legislative history of the US Congress. Traveling back and forth be- tween the War and Interior Departments and between the House and Senate dur- ing the course of a single day, Pratt convinced Secretary of the Interior Schurz of the value of an Indian school in an eastern community, got authority from the Secretary of War to use the old army barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for the purpose, helped draft a bill to effect the transfer from the War Department to Interior, saw that revisions in the bill were approved by both Secretaries and cleared with other officials, carried the revised bill to Capitol Hill, and got a rep- resentative and a senator to agree to introduce it in both houses the following morning.

The correspondence and accounts of oral exchanges between Pratt and leading political and military figures-Presidents Hayes and Garfield, Secretary of the In- terior Schurz, Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Miles, and Armstrong (founder of Hampton Institute)-which are incorporated in Pratt's memoirs provide a valu- able documentary source for the historian. Pratt's memoir has previously been utilized in such studies as Elaine Goodale Eastman's Pratt: The Red Man's Moses (I935), but it has not heretofore been available in print.

Pratt's account is valuable not only for the historian but for the "insidious" ethnologist whose influence, along with that of the Indian Affairs bureaucrat, Pratt sought to combat. Pratt was a close observer during his years commanding, fighting, jailing, or educating Indians, and he details the precise manner in which the Indians, particularly the Indians of the southern Plains with whom he was in closest contact, captured wild horses, conducted ceremonial dances, reacted to a general's peremptory commands, and so forth. Of course Pratt's memory some- times fails him, and the memoir is in the nature of an apologia, but its appearance in this well-edited, well-illustrated form further illuminates the tragic history of Indian-white relations on this continent.

Smithsonian Institution WILCOMB E. WASHBURN

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