Charles Fletcher Lummis
This small volume was printed on paper-thin sheets of birch bark; he won acclaim from Life magazine and recognition from some of the day's leading poets.
Lummis decided to make the 3,507-mile journey from Cincinnati to Los Angeles on foot, taking 143 days, all the while sending weekly dispatches to the paper chronicling his trip.
His articles about corrupt bosses committing murders in San Mateo drew threats on his life, so he moved to a new location in the Pueblo Indian village of Isleta, New Mexico, on the Rio Grande.
Somewhat recovered from his paralysis, Lummis was able to win over the confidence of the Isleta Pueblo, a Tewa people, by his outgoing and generous nature.
In Isleta, Lummis divorced his first wife and married Eva Douglas, who lived in the village and was the sister-in-law of an English trader.
It charged its agents with recruiting Native American children for the schools, where they were usually forced to give up traditional clothing and hair styles, and prevented from speaking their own languages or using their own customs.
As president of the Landmarks Club of Southern California (an all-volunteer, privately funded group dedicated to the preservation of California's Spanish missions), Lummis noted that the historic structures "...were falling to ruin with frightful rapidity, their roofs being breached or gone, the adobe walls melting under the winter rains.
"[10] Lummis wrote in 1895, "In ten years from now—unless our intelligence shall awaken at once—"there will remain of these noble piles nothing but a few indeterminable heaps of adobe.
Over his 11 years as editor, Lummis also wrote more than 500 pieces for the magazine, as well as a popular monthly commentary called "In the Lion's Den".
Lummis fought against the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and called on his classmate President Theodore Roosevelt to help change their manner of operating.
He found a home for a small group of Native Americans who had been evicted from their property in the Palm Springs, California area.
He resigned from that sole source of income in 1911, and worked to establish the Southwest Museum while engaged in a bitter and public divorce with his wife Eva.
In that year Lummis went blind, which he attributed to a "jungle fever" contracted while in Guatemala exploring the Mayan ruins of Quiriguá.
[15] After more than a year of blindness, during which he might appear in public with his eyes covered by a bandanna or wearing dark amber glasses, he regained his sight.
Lummis' cultural influence remains today, including a lasting imprint on the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Lummis purchased a 3-acre plot around 1895 and spent 13 years building what would become a 4,000-square-foot stone home with an exhibition hall, calling it El Alisal.
Open to the public as a museum and park on Saturdays and Sundays, the site also serves as a focus for Lummis Day activities (see below).
Much of the material was moved off-site, but The Southwest Museum has maintained an ongoing public exhibit on Pueblo pottery that is free of charge and open on Saturdays only.
It holds the festival in Lummis' honor on the first Sunday in June, drawing people to El Alisal and Heritage Square Museum for poetry readings, art exhibits, music, dance performances, and family activities.
