Latest / California Frontier / 077: True Visual History of California Part 2 | David W. Rickman, Illustrator and Historian

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077: True Visual History of California Part 2 | David W. Rickman, Illustrator and Historian · California Frontier

• 0:01
  Welcome to the second part of my interview with Illustrator and historian David w Rickman.
• 0:08
  In this episode, we talk more about David's methodology for research and how he goes about understanding what people actually wore in the past.
• 0:18
  We get into some really interesting discussions about how Hollywood has taken over our perceptions of the American West, and also how much we actually don't understand about what Native people wore in the past.
• 0:34
  I also wanna remind you that if you'd like to see the images associated with our conversation, you can watch the full video on the California Frontier YouTube channel.
• 0:47
  And with that, let's continue my conversation with David Rickman.
• 1:00
  Damian Bacich: so how much time do you spend at museums researching?
• 1:05
  David Rickman: I've not been able to spend as much as I, I would like in recent years, but for a number of years I was a visiting scholar at the National History Museum in Los Angeles County.
• 1:16
  David Rickman: They have beyond doubt, the best collection of, uh, clothing and artifacts.
• 1:24
  David Rickman: Um, and I've, I was there with a, a, uh, professional pattern maker named SA Altman, who has a company called Past Patterns.
• 1:36
  David Rickman: And for several years, every summer we would go out there and spend, oh, like a week going through the collection and discovering new things.
• 1:47
  David Rickman: Correcting their records because they would have things that were misidentified, taking patterns off of some of the things.
• 1:53
  David Rickman: And that is the kind of work that I have done as much as I can.
• 1:59
  David Rickman: Uh, living on the East Coast is a bit of a handicap except that I do have a picture later on of me at the Smithsonian.
• 2:04
  David Rickman: Photographing one of the last known Curos leather armor that was worn by Sodo Dera.
• 2:10
  David Rickman: Although this one, I have a feeling was made for a child.
• 2:13
  David Rickman: Nevertheless, I've been able to go to museums and, and wear, um, ever possible, looked at the things they have.
• 2:21
  David Rickman: I was just at the, um, history Museum in New Mexico.
• 2:27
  David Rickman: They said, I've been to the witty in, uh, uh, San Antonio, Texas.
• 2:32
  David Rickman: Um, I've worked with the De Young Museum.
• 2:36
  David Rickman: I think I know where most things are now.
• 2:41
  David Rickman: Um, what I'm interested in.
• 2:44
  David Rickman: In this part of my life is finding out what hasn't made it into museums and, um, and what those might be.
• 2:51
  David Rickman: Every once in a while you, you see a discovery that, um, that pops your eyes open.
• 2:57
  David Rickman: A few of the pictures that I'm, I'm going to have in my new book where World's Met, uh, which we can talk about, uh, a history of California costume from 1822 to 1860 are pictures that have never been published before, um, that were, if not unknown, they were very little known and they never made their way into print.
• 3:18
  David Rickman: And I think it's going to start a lot of conversations, well, a lot of conversations is a relative term in our small world, but it can start conversations about our assumptions of how the past looked because it's, it's not so much a matter of, of overall difference as a matter of depth.
• 3:40
  David Rickman: Because we get more in and more information, we know more and more about the small variations.
• 3:46
  David Rickman: Um, one of them, if you look at the picture on the screen now of by, um, LA Pariso, mission State Historic Park, there's a picture of a vaccaro on horseback, a a, an Indian Vaquero who worked for the mission.
• 4:02
  David Rickman: And that's actually based on a drawing that was done by, in the 1820s by a British naval officer in San Francisco.
• 4:12
  David Rickman: And so that's was a source of his clothing and horse gear.
• 4:16
  David Rickman: Um, that's in the book, the book that's coming up, um, which I've been working on for almost too many years, but it is coming.
• 4:28
  Damian Bacich: Very interesting.
• 4:30
  Damian Bacich: In fact, I, I've, I've been, um, fortunate to see these in person and who's ever watching or listening.
• 4:36
  Damian Bacich: If you haven't been to Laima, that's one of the great places to see David's illustrations up close and personally.
• 4:43
  Damian Bacich: And these are, these are life size, right?
• 4:45
  Damian Bacich: These are human
• 4:47
  David Rickman: Yeah, if you, if you show me the, the next slide, Damien.
• 4:51
  Damian Bacich: Okay.
• 4:54
  David Rickman: yeah, yeah.
• 5:04
  David Rickman: Those are the life-size cutouts and it's, it's kind of interesting and forgive me, it's a, it's a little frustrating as well that, um, early in my career, uh, just before I left to live on the East Coast, I was asked by La Paris Mission to help design their costumes for their living history interpreters at the park and.
• 5:30
  David Rickman: Um, so I had hoped that images like this, um, and the, and the work I'd done would change living history costumes in California.
• 5:40
  David Rickman: And they have to a certain extent, um, but to a great extent they've not been able to break the Hollywood myths.
• 5:49
  David Rickman: And you see a lot of people, uh, wearing very different things despite the fact that, you know, even at the La Parisa, a mission site, even though, you know, a five minute walk across the lawn would get you a picture of what they actually wore.
• 6:05
  David Rickman: No one at La Parisa wears these things.
• 6:07
  David Rickman: They wear something that they invented for themselves.
• 6:10
  David Rickman: Um, the last big project that I did with Living History was with Fort Ross during its, uh, bicentennial in 2012.
• 6:18
  David Rickman: And it was such an uphill battle to get anyone to wear authentic costumes that I just said.
• 6:24
  David Rickman: Alright, I'll tell you what they actually wore, but I won't.
• 6:28
  David Rickman: Um.
• 6:29
  David Rickman: I won't design these costume programs any longer because it's just too frustrating.
• 6:36
  Damian Bacich: Do you think that is?
• 6:37
  Damian Bacich: Is it because the costumes, they may be too complicated or too intricate for people?
• 6:44
  Damian Bacich: Why do you suppose there's that
• 6:47
  David Rickman: No, it, it is that it?
• 6:48
  David Rickman: I think it's a different attitude, Damien.
• 6:50
  David Rickman: Um, we're getting ready for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution here on the East Coast, and I know several people, young people who are involved with it.
• 7:01
  David Rickman: Well, people of all ages, but especially young people.
• 7:03
  David Rickman: Uh, and they take incredible efforts to do things right, getting the right fabrics, getting the right buttons, making the clothing themselves based on actual extent garments and such, and the best of them.
• 7:20
  David Rickman: It's kind of breathtaking to see just how good it is, but I think they can do that for a reason.
• 7:27
  David Rickman: Um, I've long believed that the American West is our fantasy world, and it's the world that you project yourself into, and it's particularly appealing to people who want to be individualistic.
• 7:40
  David Rickman: Uh, the American Revolution is different.
• 7:42
  David Rickman: It was a group effort that people were working toward, and it's, it's not about individualism.
• 7:49
  David Rickman: It's about a country coming together.
• 7:52
  David Rickman: The West is about striking out on your own, whether you're a mountain man or a cowboy or a whatever, and just living your own life and dressing however you wish.
• 8:04
  David Rickman: Trying to convince people west of the Mississippi that there were, that there are right and wrong ways to dress in order to interpret the past authentically is a real, for the large, large part, it's, it's very frustrating because they don't want to hear it.
• 8:24
  David Rickman: And I have actually shown up historic sites where I have in California where I've designed the costumes and someone will ask me who I am and they'll say, oh God.
• 8:38
  David Rickman: And, uh, well, I hope you don't mind what I'm wearing.
• 8:42
  David Rickman: Just No, go ahead.
• 8:47
  David Rickman: Because it,
• 8:48
  Damian Bacich: Yeah, maybe it's a California thing.
• 8:50
  Damian Bacich: Exactly that.
• 8:51
  Damian Bacich: That makes sense.
• 8:53
  David Rickman: well, it isn't just California.
• 8:54
  David Rickman: I mean, it's, yeah.
• 8:57
  David Rickman: I mean, you see it all through the West, but California, um, there's another aspect which I, I, I've talked about before, I think you and I have discussed, which is the idea that the Californias, after their crushing, uh, cultural defeat by the Americans, they began coming back, uh, especially southern Californians, uh, toward the end of the, of the 19th century, led by people like, uh, Antonio.
• 9:24
  David Rickman: And what I have termed the, uh, the California revival.
• 9:28
  David Rickman: And it helped to, um, revive and, and tell us what the past was like.
• 9:39
  David Rickman: But then it went on and as the generations who actually lived that life began to fade away when Coronas and, and such died.
• 9:47
  David Rickman: Um, the younger people wanted to romanticize it because it had been romanticized by things like Ramona and, um, well later Zoro, um, that it.
• 10:03
  David Rickman: Fell out of being an authentic recreation of the past into this kind of golden age, uh, dream of what was, you know, romantic and exciting.
• 10:14
  David Rickman: I mean, I've often called, uh, living history the perfect haven for fashion victims because you go to events in, the first thing they want to talk about is what's, what's new and what's hot and what they can wear.
• 10:28
  David Rickman: Yeah, that's fine.
• 10:30
  David Rickman: And as long as you're not representing yourself as an authentic representation of the past, wear what you want.
• 10:37
  David Rickman: I mean, that's, that's, that's your right.
• 10:40
  David Rickman: But the problem is when they then say, well, you know, I am well, the thing that I actually hate is, is first person living history, where they actually try and convince you that against all the evidence that they actually are a person from the past when it's patently ob obvious that they're not.
• 11:05
  Damian Bacich: I had an experience like that at Disneyland a few years ago where, or maybe it was a couple years ago, I can't remember, and we were in the, with my children in the Star Wars area of Disneyland and the, and the young man there.
• 11:19
  Damian Bacich: I was trying to find out where the gift shop was, and he would not.
• 11:22
  Damian Bacich: Not break character and admit that we were on Earth and start, you know, for a moment it was fun, but after a while it, it really, it really got on my nerves.
• 11:36
  Damian Bacich: I just wanna know where the gift shop is.
• 11:37
  Damian Bacich: Right.
• 11:38
  Damian Bacich: So, so,
• 11:39
  David Rickman: you just wanna shake em.
• 11:41
  David Rickman: Come on.
• 11:42
  Damian Bacich: But this, this, uh, illustration here at Laima that we're looking at now, what time period would that be?
• 11:52
  David Rickman: That's about the 1820s.
• 11:53
  David Rickman: Um.
• 11:56
  David Rickman: By this time, you know, California was coming out of its starving age, which was 1810 to about 1822, um, after the supply shift stopped coming to California.
• 12:08
  David Rickman: And so they started being able to address themselves again, as I discussed in my talk this year at the conference.
• 12:15
  David Rickman: Um, and so this just outfit here that this fellow's wearing is based on several different, um, sources, but particularly, um, there was the, the Beachy expedition, uh, a British naval expedition that arrived in 18 26, 27.
• 12:35
  David Rickman: And they describe in detail what the, uh, California soldiers were wearing.
• 12:40
  David Rickman: Now I've added some details that are not mentioned.
• 12:43
  David Rickman: The, uh, the cartridge box on his waist is not when most people think cartridge box is.
• 12:48
  David Rickman: It's actually cartridge belt, I should say, uh, called a Canna.
• 12:52
  David Rickman: And he's, uh.
• 12:54
  David Rickman: He's wearing one of those that comes from other research when you actually read into the, uh, uh, oral histories, uh, of the, uh, Californias that that Bancroft's agents took down in the 1870s.
• 13:08
  David Rickman: They mentioned these, and you can also find it in the, uh, the re lamento by Felipe Deneve, uh, saying, okay, this is what we're gonna replace the cartridge boxes that were slung on your shoulder.
• 13:21
  David Rickman: These are much more convenient.
• 13:23
  David Rickman: And then there's this wonderful story, which I don't know whether or not, not, I told one of the California informants for Bancroft remembered some idiot shooting a fella sold out a cueta in the waist, uh, because he dropped his gun on the ground and went off and hit the guy in the stomach.
• 13:41
  David Rickman: But luckily it bounced off the tin two that was in his cartridge belt.
• 13:45
  David Rickman: Well, based on that, okay, now we know what they wore, but it's, it's, it's small things like that that are gleaned over a lifetime.
• 13:53
  David Rickman: Of research and, um, it's what makes the difference of, of, uh, you know, just kind of throwing something together and actually doing something that, um, I look at and think to myself, well, that's the best I can do.
• 14:11
  David Rickman: You know,
• 14:12
  Damian Bacich: Well, you must over time, you must over time develop an eye for, I, I mean, metaphorically, even an eye for those type of details to be reading a document and notice that he mentions that the, that the soldier was protected by the tin in the cartridge belt that sets off, uh, uh, rings a bell maybe in your brain that, oh, I should take note of that.
• 14:41
  Damian Bacich: That in itself is probably a skill you've had to hone over time.
• 14:47
  David Rickman: You know, it's nice for you to, to make it sound like I did this on purpose, Damien, but I just, it's just after you read a lot and you have the kind of brain that likes to draw connections between one thing and another.
• 15:03
  David Rickman: Um, and I think I, I have one of those brains I like to, you know, I like different things like word origins and, oh, well, that's connected because of this root term and so forth.
• 15:17
  David Rickman: Surely you've done that all your life, I'm sure.
• 15:21
  David Rickman: Um, yeah, and that's one of the advantages of studying one time and place for a long period.
• 15:29
  David Rickman: Um, not that I can't do that in other parts of the, uh, uh, American history.
• 15:37
  David Rickman: I, I've done a lot of that.
• 15:39
  David Rickman: Um, but California, yeah, I can definitely do it.
• 15:44
  David Rickman: And it's, um.
• 15:47
  David Rickman: It takes a lifetime of, of dedication and just wanting to know, um, wanting to see the past.
• 15:56
  David Rickman: I can still remember as a child being on a trip to Carmel Mission and still elementary school, standing in front of the, uh, what is now the basilica at, uh, at Carmel, and having this sudden realization, almost a tangible feeling of history that, oh, people in the past actually stood where I'm standing.
• 16:24
  David Rickman: And I've had that several times since, uh, not just in California, but elsewhere.
• 16:29
  David Rickman: But I think that was the, I know that was the first, and I think that was the most, uh, compelling experience I've ever had of that being able to have a sense of what the past, the presence of the past, even in the, in, in, in the.
• 16:45
  David Rickman: Um, in the now.
• 16:48
  David Rickman: Um, so yeah, I'm not sure I've answered your question, Damien, but I've, I've gone off and, and talked about this kind of philosophy of, of, uh, experiencing the, uh, the history both viscerally, but then also wanting to confirm what it was like by looking at, uh, at real things and reading real things.
• 17:15
  David Rickman: Um, yeah, I've, I've often said that I could have gone into fantasy and science fiction, but they never drew me because none of that is real.
• 17:26
  David Rickman: It's exciting, but it's not real.
• 17:29
  David Rickman: This is exciting to me because it's real.
• 17:32
  Damian Bacich: I don't know what it is.
• 17:33
  Damian Bacich: Why in some places, some historical places you get that and some you don't.
• 17:40
  Damian Bacich: And maybe it's a very personal thing.
• 17:42
  Damian Bacich: It might be just the way somebody's attuned to a space.
• 17:46
  Damian Bacich: But that to me is one of the reasons it keeps me coming back to this, uh, area of, of study.
• 17:55
  Damian Bacich: And it's that that tangible feeling other people have been here, have, have touched this have, and, and in some ways, I don't know why now I'm just kind of speculate.
• 18:08
  Damian Bacich: I don't know why that's the case in some places.
• 18:11
  Damian Bacich: Um, you know, I've been to Europe and I've been in very ancient locations, Roman.
• 18:20
  Damian Bacich: Amphitheaters the temples and, and there's certainly that as well.
• 18:23
  Damian Bacich: But I, there's something about certain missions here in California and maybe other historical sites where that is communicated more strongly than others, and I don't know why, uh, but Carmel might be one of those, for example.
• 18:37
  David Rickman: Mm-hmm.
• 18:38
  Damian Bacich: So, uh, let's see.
• 18:41
  David Rickman: may I ask you a
• 18:42
  Damian Bacich: Hmm.
• 18:45
  David Rickman: Where did you grow up?
• 18:47
  Damian Bacich: I grew up in, well, as a young man, we lived in the East Bay in, um, uh, Contra Costa County.
• 18:54
  Damian Bacich: Right.
• 18:55
  Damian Bacich: And then, uh, we spent a few years in Pacific Northwest and then came back as a teenager, lived in the, the Napa Valley and then, you know, spent, spent my time around there until, until I went away to college.
• 19:11
  Damian Bacich: So Northern California.
• 19:13
  David Rickman: Yeah.
• 19:14
  David Rickman: Yeah.
• 19:14
  David Rickman: And like you, I've traveled in Europe and as a small child, I lived in Japan.
• 19:19
  David Rickman: Um, but it's, I think where we grow up is what gives us our ties and why California does it for me.
• 19:28
  David Rickman: Whereas, um, bronze Age Greece just never grabbed me.
• 19:34
  David Rickman: You know, I like it.
• 19:35
  David Rickman: I, I'll be happy to go and visit the, uh, uh, the sites in Crete, but they don't speak to me in the same way and the same way that I think that we respond to the landscape.
• 19:47
  David Rickman: We look at, I can't, I look at the Rolling Hills of California with a Live Oaks on it, and it breaks my heart because that says home to me.
• 19:56
  David Rickman: And I've lived on the east coast for decades now, and it's beautiful and it's got great museums and wonderful friends here, and my life is here, and yet this isn't my home.
• 20:10
  David Rickman: If someone was to ask me what my home is, it's California, because that's where I grew up, and it's kind of like those little ducklings that come out of the shell and attach to the first moving object, whether it be a, a dog or a, a human.
• 20:26
  David Rickman: We imprint on, uh, where we're from and it resonates with us.
• 20:37
  Damian Bacich: I think you're right.
• 20:38
  Damian Bacich: I think you're right.
• 20:39
  Damian Bacich: That that makes a lot of sense and it gives me something to, to chew on.
• 20:44
  Damian Bacich: I'm gonna think more about this and maybe next time we see each other, we'll talk more about it.
• 20:49
  David Rickman: I'd love to.
• 20:49
  Damian Bacich: Back to this illustration, and you have others that we can, we should and can get to.
• 20:55
  David Rickman: Mm-hmm.
• 20:56
  Damian Bacich: What would you say the major change between a time period, say the 1820s and then later, other, other time periods that you've, that you've depicted, say 1840s or in California was, were there major changes in clothing and dress in in that
• 21:18
  David Rickman: Oh, oh, Damian, you,
• 21:19
  Damian Bacich: arrival?
• 21:21
  David Rickman: oh, Damian, you just pitched me a softball.
• 21:25
  David Rickman: Uh, yes, indeed.
• 21:29
  David Rickman: Um, that is, that's an important point and in two ways.
• 21:34
  David Rickman: Uh, the first way is that in 1834 when the Iad Padres colony came from Mexico, the idea being that they were going to bring in new skills and people were going to modernize California, they just happened to also bring new fashions in California, had been very isolated, both by land and sea, from Mexico.
• 21:56
  David Rickman: And so the, the new fashions, which include came in with the 18, uh.
• 22:03
  David Rickman: Teens with the wars against Spain included the long trousers, the caldas, more military looking jackets, uh, women's dresses, uh, which had been in California earlier, but the particular styles of dresses came in in the 1830s and forties.
• 22:21
  David Rickman: Um, and so there was a real change.
• 22:25
  David Rickman: The second part of the equation, though, is that just as we today, uh, as gentlemen of a certain age, do not look to the latest teenage fashions and, and copy them, we wear the clothing that we wore, have worn for years and feel comfortable in, in early California.
• 22:46
  David Rickman: Eyewitnesses tell us that, um, poor women and women of a certain age.
• 22:55
  David Rickman: Did not adopt the new dresses.
• 22:56
  David Rickman: They continued to wear the blouses and skirts that they had known well, that the poor people can afford, and that the, uh, older women of higher status had known as girls.
• 23:08
  David Rickman: And they are going to continue to wear those for most of their lives in the same way who read the eyewitness accounts and see the eyewitness pictures.
• 23:17
  David Rickman: And you see older men continuing to wear britches right into the American period.
• 23:22
  David Rickman: And there's one description from the 1840s of, um, an older man in California wearing his hair down to the middle of his back in a braid.
• 23:34
  David Rickman: Not many people realized that California men, up until the 1830s generally wore their hair exactly the same way that women wore it, which was with in a long braid down their back.
• 23:44
  David Rickman: Um, so yes, new fashions come in, but whenever I see pictures of white-haired men or sea.
• 23:55
  David Rickman: Uh, men of my own age, uh, or anyone over 40 reenacting early California, and they're wearing cals and braided jackets and such, I'm saying, you know, it's as if you were dressed like your teenage son or grandson.
• 24:12
  David Rickman: You're the wrong age to wear that.
• 24:13
  David Rickman: Just you're the wrong age.
• 24:15
  David Rickman: So that's a two part answer to your question.
• 24:23
  Damian Bacich: So what about, we talked about Spanish, Mexican Californians.
• 24:28
  Damian Bacich: What about native people?
• 24:30
  Damian Bacich: How did their, what kind?
• 24:33
  Damian Bacich: Well, how of this, what, what kind of misconceptions do we generally have about how, uh, native people Indians dressed in the early period prior to us statehood?
• 24:48
  David Rickman: Well, I mean, years ago, um.
• 24:51
  David Rickman: I gave a talk for the California Missions, uh, conference, uh, called to Cloth the Naked, and it talks about how, uh, the Mission Padres needing to dress the Indians.
• 25:07
  David Rickman: Who California traditional clothing for men was no clothing.
• 25:12
  David Rickman: And for women, a skirt, and much to too much can be made of the idea that, you know, this shocked the sensibility to the Spanish.
• 25:23
  David Rickman: They weren't shocked in the least.
• 25:24
  David Rickman: There are eyewitness pictures from the, uh, LA Perouse and Expedition, the Padres and, and soldiers and all standing casually and talking to half clad women.
• 25:35
  David Rickman: No big deal.
• 25:36
  David Rickman: You know, they're, they're used to that.
• 25:38
  David Rickman: Nevertheless, if the idea is to bring them into Spanish society eventually and make them full, fully fledged Spaniards.
• 25:48
  David Rickman: And then later fully flesh Mexicans, then you wanna get them into clothing.
• 25:53
  David Rickman: That, that's a sign of progress in civilization.
• 25:56
  David Rickman: That's my interpretation of, of the situation.
• 25:59
  David Rickman: And so you get father, uh, Mario Pires, for example, writing back to his college saying, can you buy me scrap fabric, any kind of scrap fabric, bolt ends, whatever, and send them to me because I can make clothing for these people.
• 26:13
  David Rickman: Well, probably what he's talking about is not clothing for the neophytes.
• 26:19
  David Rickman: Generally, the, the people who did not, had not been at the mission long, had not acquired skills.
• 26:25
  David Rickman: He probably was talking about a certain class of elite, uh, neophytes.
• 26:31
  David Rickman: Those who had skills or were useful in other ways, uh, to the Padres.
• 26:37
  David Rickman: And they were the people who were, um, entitled from their point of view to dress more like a Spaniard.
• 26:44
  David Rickman: And you, you get the, um.
• 26:47
  David Rickman: Uh, eyewitness accounts from the missions of people saying, well, you know, I, I dressed the vaqueros and the go.
• 26:55
  David Rickman: Those who didn't have any skill, they just rode in their breach clout without a saddle.
• 26:58
  David Rickman: Those who had the skills we dressed head to toe exactly like a Spaniard.
• 27:04
  David Rickman: And so what we have gotten wrong, I, I actually traced back to the, um, the works of, uh, father Zein Engelhardt.
• 27:17
  David Rickman: I don't know why he did it, I cannot say, but he mistranslate the, uh, the eyewitness descriptions that came from the Padres Interros, the ones that they had to send back to Mexico City to explain what they were doing for the neophytes.
• 27:33
  David Rickman: And they very clearly say, we dressed the men in a cone, a shirt, and a breach clout.
• 27:41
  David Rickman: And for whatever reason, not only did father.
• 27:44
  David Rickman: Uh, Englehart translate that as we dress them in, in a suit of cotton clothing, when cotton is not Spanish for cotton.
• 27:57
  David Rickman: Even worse is that some of the pads explain what a cotton is.
• 28:01
  David Rickman: He says it is a woolen shirt.
• 28:07
  David Rickman: And, and yet Payas rode right over that and said, we dress him in cotton suits, which was kind of hard to explain why.
• 28:15
  David Rickman: They also issued them breach clouds, which is also in his translation.
• 28:19
  David Rickman: But not only did he do that, but he had two artists, one of whom was Alexander Harmer, whom I mentioned earlier, illustrate the, the books now, both.
• 28:31
  David Rickman: Now different Inglehart had served in Mexico.
• 28:34
  David Rickman: Alexander Harmer had been a cavalryman in Arizona and New Mexico, and he knew, you know.
• 28:42
  David Rickman: White cotton clad Native Americans were a common site for both men.
• 28:47
  David Rickman: And so somehow all the illustrations to Engle Hart's books show these Indian men and women wearing white cotton clothing.
• 28:57
  David Rickman: Well, that ended up in the movies and that ended up in murals and paintings.
• 29:03
  David Rickman: And it has absolutely nothing to do with what the neophyte wore.
• 29:08
  David Rickman: And now I see it being used as a, um, standard dress.
• 29:13
  David Rickman: Whether the, uh, the illustrators working in Texas or New Mexico or Arizona, they all show their neophyte Indians wearing you white cotton clothing.
• 29:23
  David Rickman: There's no evidence for that whatsoever.
• 29:24
  David Rickman: Just that was just something that Rine Englehart, for whatever reason, created.
• 29:34
  Damian Bacich: And Englehardt was the, the historian, Franciscan historian who, who wrote that multi-volume history that that many people still rely on for the, the, history of the missions in
• 29:45
  David Rickman: and rightly so.
• 29:46
  David Rickman: It's, it's a, it's a remarkable work.
• 29:48
  David Rickman: Um, you know, I can be a nitpicker.
• 29:53
  David Rickman: God knows I am a nitpicker.
• 29:55
  David Rickman: Um, Herbert Bolton is a wonderful historian who did something that when I, when I traveled to Anza Trail, I did it in a car.
• 30:05
  David Rickman: When he traveled to Anza Trail, he did it on a mule or on a horse, you know, depending on what he had that day.
• 30:12
  David Rickman: Um, I didn't do that.
• 30:14
  David Rickman: He wrote the best books, foundational books, I should say, on the Anza Expedition.
• 30:22
  David Rickman: Nevertheless, when he translated that, um, supply list, he took the term anado and translated it as button sided shoes.
• 30:35
  David Rickman: Well, abodo is not button sided.
• 30:39
  David Rickman: It means ankle boots.
• 30:41
  David Rickman: So we know what ankle boots were, but that's not what he wrote.
• 30:48
  David Rickman: Well, it's gone into countless versions online and, and elsewhere that these people were wearing button sided shoes.
• 30:58
  David Rickman: Does that in any way negate the importance of Herbert Bolton as a terrific historian?
• 31:06
  David Rickman: I mean, when I was at Berkeley, he was practically a God there, um, that was his campus.
• 31:14
  David Rickman: No, it doesn't.
• 31:15
  David Rickman: It just means that people like me come in afterwards and kind of sweep up the mess and try and tidy up the record and say, no, no, no.
• 31:22
  David Rickman: Herbert, you, you're a great guy.
• 31:24
  David Rickman: But those were ankle boots.
• 31:27
  David Rickman: Those weren't button sighted shoes.
• 31:30
  Damian Bacich: Right.
• 31:30
  Damian Bacich: Those are those details that, that don't really mar the value of the, of the work.
• 31:36
  David Rickman: AB absolutely.
• 31:38
  So that does it for the second part of my interview with David w Rickman.
• 31:44
  In the next segment, I'll have the final part of our interview, so I hope you'll join us for that.
• 31:52
  I.
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