Photograph of Charles F. Lummis playing guitar for his children, Turbese and Jordan, in the courtyard of El Alisal, Los Angeles, California, July 31, 1903. | Image: Unidentified photographer; courtesy of the Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum of the American West.
Artbound revisits early Los Angeles to explore one of its key and most controversial figures: Charles Fletcher Lummis. As a writer and editor of the L.A. Times, an avid collector and preservationist, an Indian rights activist, and founder of L.A.'s first museum, Lummis' brilliant and idiosyncratic personality captured the ethos of an era and a region. Watch Artbounds season eight debut episode, Charles Lummis: Reimagining the American West, premiering Tuesday, May 10 at 9 p.m., or check for rebroadcasts here.
Charles Fletcher Lummis built a world with words.
Before the polymathic writer, editor, and preservationist would become a hyperbolic figure of Los Angeles history, he was a poet. And by many accounts, he wasn't very good. Writing hackneyed love poems and odes to his cigarettes, Lummis wrote his first work, the Birch Bark Poems, while at Harvard, during the height of the Romantic literary movement of the mid-1800s. But Lummis later found success as a journalist in Chillicothe, Ohio. When Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, offered him a job in 1884, he picked up his life and traversed the continent to venture to Los Angeles, by foot. Along his self-proclaimed tramp across the continent, he wrote letters that were widely read in the paper, earning him a reputation before he sauntered up to this distant outpost on the Pacific, whose population was under 15,000 at the time.
When Otis met up with Lummis in a San Gabriel hotel, to walk the final ten miles with the bedraggled eccentric, the publisher later wrote: It was needless to say that he did not come here for his health, and he could hardly be called a tenderfoot. He has joined the staff of the Times, and has come to stay. Lummis was the Los Angeles Times' first city editor. But after surviving his 143 day sojourn across wild terrain, it was a desk job that proved dangerous. Within a few months at the paper, he suffered a mild stroke, which ended his tenure at the Times.
Lummis published A Tramp Across the Continent in 1892, recounting his outlandish trek. His journey was perhaps a connective tissue suturing the Anglo American world with cultures of indigenous peoples, the vestiges of the Spanish Empire, and the former territories of Mexico. It was a first contact filtered through Lummis' experience, a perspective constrained by his New England upbringing and those late Victorian compulsions to catalog and report. His concepts of civilization were ensconced in the concepts of Eurocentric and neoclassical ideals that celebrated architecture and a culture's ability to change a landscape, instead of working with it. Like Percy Shelley writes in his early Romantic poem Ozymandias, about an Egyptian artifact at the British Museum: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away. Like Shelley's interest in ancient Egypt's ability to build, Lummis' attention was on Native Americans' ability to create tangible things: baskets, clothing, or pueblo buildings. For many native peoples, the ephemerality of life was part of the beauty of living. Immortality wasn't achieved by the things or artifacts of an empire left behind, but instead a person's life was a short moment in an infinite existence intertwined with nature, which preceded one's birth and continued after death.
Yet Tramp Across the Continent connected with the city-bound populaces in those years between the late Industrial Revolution and the beginning of Modernism, who dreamed of the freedom of native peoples espoused and exoticised by writers like Lummis.
He later moved to New Mexico, and traveled through Peru, but returned to Los Angeles in the middle 1890s. He enlisted as an editor of a magazine called Land of Sunshine, which he relaunched as Out West, in 1901.
Later, he would found the Southwest Museum as Los Angeles' first institution, but in many ways, his magazine became his first museum, showcasing photographs of indigenous communities, dispatches by famed naturalist John Muir, and unveiling his version of the West to readers across the country.
Below Artbound presents a full article written by Chas Lummis in the 1905 edition of Out West, with all of the eras idiosyncratic typographical follies intact. Lummis article illuminates the way his travels informed the worldview that he'd manifest later, from his efforts to preserve Spanish folk songs and the missions to his crusade to keep the cultures of indigenous peoples intact.
WHEN the Southwest Society of the Archaeological Institute of America began, as the very forefront of its scientific activities, to record on a large scale the old folk-songs of the South west, there were not lacking formal persons in the East to protest : But that isnt archaeology you know.
To which the obvious and the actual reply was : No, it isnt. But in ten years it will be, and as dead and gone as the rest. Out here we think it would be rather sensible and scientific to catch our Archaeology alive.
And that is what the Southwest Society has done, is doing, and will continue to do for so long as there shall remain a still-animate specimen to collect. It is, indeed, also uncovering and re-articulating the dry bones of the extinct humanities in its great field ; it has done, in its first year, at least as much for the archaeology and history of its region as any sister society ever did-and has in its hands the tangible results, for the grea
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
27/04/2024
On April 26, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher E. Kubasik joined CNBC's Mor...
27/04/2024
PORTLAND, Oregon Audinate Group Limited, the developer of the Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced significant new additions to Dante Connect, its cloud-based D...
27/04/2024
TORONTO Bell Media has launched 10 English and French-language FAST channels featuring entertainment, factual, news, and sports programming. The new free stream...
27/04/2024
An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their...
27/04/2024
GERMANTOWN, Md. EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems has opened a new manufacturing facility and private 5G incubation center in Germantown, Maryland....
27/04/2024
Harry Pappas, one of three brothers who founded Pappas Telecasting Companies in 1971, died April 24. He was 78 years old....
27/04/2024
ATLANTA and LONDON Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution....
27/04/2024
Participate in the Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this surve...
27/04/2024
SDVI Rally Access Workstation Earns Two Top Awards at 2024 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
SDVI, the leading platform provider for clo...
27/04/2024
Berklee's Music and Health Institute Launches Community Health Musician Cert...
27/04/2024
Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers....
27/04/2024
Two environmentally-focused groups are partnering to engage the unscripted TV world in finding better ways to address climate change. Reality of Change is an ec...
27/04/2024
Sarah Garcia has been promoted to weekend anchor at KTLM McAllen, Texas, known as Telemundo 40. Starting April 27, she will anchor Noticias Telemundo 40 weekend...
27/04/2024
CBS Sports said it launched a new 24-hour free, ad supported streaming television (FAST) channel devoted to the UEFA Champions League....
27/04/2024
Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts received $35.4 million in compensation in 2023, up 11% from the previous year, according to a proxy statement filed by th...
27/04/2024
Art Happens Here With John Lithgow, which sees the actor study dance, ceramics, silk-screen printing and vocal jazz with students in Los Angeles, debuts on PBS ...
27/04/2024
Remember Leave It to Beaver? Bewitched? Dragnet? When cable ratings were rising?...
27/04/2024
Next up for the weekend binge at Catchy Comedy is Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Every weekend, Catchy Comedy features The Catchy Binge, a marathon of a classic sitcom....
26/04/2024
Sundance Film Festival CDMX 2024 kicks-off today with screenings in 5 theaters in Mexico City and the opening-night film, FRIDA, directed by Carla Guti rrez...
26/04/2024
[Editor's Note: This interview is part of a larger feature about the women d...
26/04/2024
Once again this year, SGL Carbon opened its doors to interested children and young people. On the occasion of the German Girls and Boys Day, which took place on...
26/04/2024
Orders1 of $5.5 billion; book-to-bill of 1.06x
Revenue of $5.2 billion, up 17%,...
26/04/2024
Five Considerations For Communications Modernization In The 21st Century
In the digital-enabled battlespace, the Joint Force needs to shoot, move and communica...
26/04/2024
CBS Sports has launched Champions League as a new, 24-hour streaming channel that will serve as the year-round destination for nonstop highlights of the UEFA ...
26/04/2024
Despite tough competition in the streaming space, Roku reported solid results in Q1 2024, beating revenue expectations, with total net revenue up 19% YoY to $88...
26/04/2024
LONDON AND TORONTO Pinewood Toronto Studios has appointed Sarah Farrell as general manager of the Studios in downtown Toronto....
26/04/2024
Quantum to Offer Advanced Filesharing Technology and Performance in StorNext and...
26/04/2024
FilmLight Colour Awards welcomes 2024 entries and introduces new Emerging Talen...
26/04/2024
Picture Shop Announces Chris Evans as Head of Unscripted
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
Picture Shop announced Chris Evans will lead Unscripte...
26/04/2024
Participate in a Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this survey,...
26/04/2024
Toy maker Mattel said it is working with Samsung to launch its first free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels later this year....
26/04/2024
Trusted Media Brands (TMB) said it named Marty Moe as president....
26/04/2024
Ron Howard is the director on Jim Henson Idea Man, a documentary that premieres on Disney Plus May 31. Henson of course created Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Big...
26/04/2024
The ice continues to melt under the regional sports network business as the Seattle Kraken of the National Hockey League have made a long-term deal to broadcast...
26/04/2024
Heading into the upfronts, Warner Bros. Discovery said it launched Olli, a first-party data platform advertiser can use for converged, targeted advertising camp...
26/04/2024
CBS has renewed the drama The Equalizer, which will see season five on in 2024-2025. Queen Latifah stars....
26/04/2024
The CW has entered into an exclusive multiyear broadcast partnership for the Miss USA Pageant and the Miss Teen USA Pageant. The 73rd Miss USA Pageant will air ...
26/04/2024
Fuse Media isn't mincing words in a campaign urging its young viewers to register and participate in the 2024 elections....
26/04/2024
Dead Boy Detectives, a series from Neil Gaiman about a detective agency staffed by ghosts, debuts on Netflix April 25. George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri are in t...
26/04/2024
The Story Collective has gradually repurposed the former Mortlake Brewery to include production offices, workshops and sound stages
By Matthew Corrigan
Publi...
26/04/2024
Perkett joins the company following a 25 year career in product management, product marketing, engineering and user experience (UX) across multiple industries
...
26/04/2024
Teradek, the industry leader in wireless video transmitters and receivers, announced today the launch of new Bolt 6 LT 750 and Bolt 6 Monitor Module 750 RX with...
26/04/2024
NEW YORK Amagi has appointed Richard Perkett chief product officer (CPO)....
26/04/2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has announced the results of the 2024 NAB Radio and Television Board of Directors elections. The...
26/04/2024
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. & NEW YORK Mattel has announced a deal to launch its first three 24/7 free ad supported streaming (FAST) channels on Samsung TV Plus, Samsung...
26/04/2024
PORTLAND, Maine Viewers here can now receive the NextGen TV signals of five local stations with the launch of ATSC 3.0 service from host station WPFO, which is ...
Photograph of Charles F. Lummis playing guitar for his children, Turbese and Jordan, in the courtyard of El Alisal, Los Angeles, California, July 31, 1903. | Image: Unidentified photographer; courtesy of the Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum of the American West. 
