Join us for Part 1 of an interview with artist and historian David W. Rickman, renowned for his illustrations of California history and the Spanish borderlands.
In this episode, we delve into the misconceptions influenced by Hollywood and incomplete historical records, and how David's unique expertise helps correct these narratives.
Learn about his fascinating work on early Californian dress, the visual culture of the American West, and the painstaking research process behind his acclaimed illustrations.
Don't miss this deep dive into the material culture and historical representation of the American West.
00:00 Introduction and Technical Notes
01:23 Understanding the Past Through Visuals
02:38 Meet David Rickman: Historian and Illustrator
04:03 David's Unique Perspective on History
06:09 The Influence of Early Experiences
08:12 Challenges in Historical Illustration
20:00 Research and Projects
27:52 The Importance of Accurate Representation
31:15 California's Rich Historical Record
39:55 Conclusion and Upcoming Part Two
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Learn more about the California Frontier Project:
Contact:
damian@californiafrontier.net
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Believe it or not, most of ushave a very feeble idea of the
(00:06):
past.
We depend a lot on photographson Hollywood on.
Paintings or other illustrationswe've seen, and especially on
the frontier and especially inCalifornia, we have an even
weaker idea of what things looklike.
(00:28):
First of all, when you talkabout the American West, we're
very influenced by Hollywood.
And let's face it, there werevery few, if any, photographers
in California prior to the GoldRush.
So it's very hard toconceptualize what things and
people looked like, uh,especially how people dressed,
(00:50):
for example.
So the guest I'm interviewing onthis episode is a great person
to have on with this regard.
He's a very unique person whenit comes to his expertise, and
he's gonna shed a light on somethings that I think we don't
even realize that we take forgranted.
(01:14):
David w Rickman is his name, andhe is the premier illustrator of
topics related to the history ofCalifornia and the overall
Spanish borderlands.
That would be, you know, Texas,Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado,
California.
Uh.
I don't know if I left somethingout, but this, that whole swath
(01:35):
of territory that was part ofNorthern New Spain.
If you visited missions andstate historical parks here in
California, you have likely seenhis work.
Or if you've, uh, traveled alongthe Wam, Batista des, uh,
national Historic Trail or.
(01:57):
Other history museums throughoutthe west.
Not, not only the west, also onthe east coast, you will have
seen his work.
He's not only, uh, illustratedpanels and signs and brochures,
everything for state andnational parks and museums, but
(02:17):
he's illustrated books and heeven created the manual for, uh.
Sutter's Fort State HistoricParks, costumes also for Fort
Ross and others, and he'sworking on a new one, which I
can't wait to see that's goingto be updated.
(02:40):
David is a fascinating person,not only because he's an
incredibly talented artist, buthe's an historian and he, he
moderates two excellent Facebookgroups for people interested in
what we call the materialculture.
Of California and the Southwest.
How did people dress?
What did they eat?
Um, what did architecture looklike?
(03:01):
The things that you can touch,you know, that the historical,
the historical material cultureof the Southwest.
And on top of that, he's just anoverall wonderful person.
As you'll hear in ourconversation.
His experience as an artist andan illustrator gives him a
really unique perspective onhistory and on California
(03:24):
history in particular.
I.
And you will notice that hementions Antonio Cord a number
of times as an important sourcefor information about early
California dress.
And if you've been followingthis podcast, you know I have a
number of episodes, uh,dedicated to sections of Antonio
(03:45):
Cordell's memoirs.
So hopefully you go back andlisten to those.
In much of the interview, by theway, we refer to some
illustrations of David's so thathe actually shared with me.
So I recommend that if you canyou watch this interview on
YouTube where you can see thoseillustrations, you can find it
(04:08):
by just going and looking upCalifornia Frontier.
On YouTube and you'll see ourchannel.
I have a number of ourinterviews posted there.
One last thing.
You may notice that the audio attimes seems a little bit clippy.
I hope it's not much of adistraction.
I just wanna let you know thatI'm aware of it and I don't
(04:30):
think, and I hope it won'tdetract too much from the
interview because the content isvery fascinating.
So now with all that said, let'sget into my interview with David
w Rickman
Damian Bacich (04:55):
Looks like we've started.
thAnks.
Thank you for being here.
I'm excited
David Rickman (04:59):
you so.
Damian Bacich (05:00):
to you.
You know, we have greatconversations, or at least I
have a great conversation.
Listen, listening to you everytime we meet up, and I'm just
grateful to be able to of sharethis with the things we talk
about with more people.
And I'm, I'm always struck bythe things I hear and see from
(05:20):
you, your, your yourpresentations when I go to
conferences or.
Some of the most interesting.
So once again, David, I'm reallygrateful for this.
David Rickman (05:30):
Well, thank you so much, Damian.
And it's a shame we only get tosee one another once a year or
today this.
time we could, could see oneother twice.
But, uh, it's, it's so much funto, uh, to get out with
colleagues because as youprobably understand, the, the
life of an illustrator is fairlysolitary one.
And, uh, one of the reasons whyI, uh, I love coming out is I
(05:53):
get to actually be with fellownerds.
Uh, talking about a subjectthat, um, you know, if you were
to start a conversation on theEast coast here about the things
that interest me, no.
It, it wouldn't work.
Damian Bacich (06:05):
Right.
I think even here in, well, evenhere in California, I think it's
unusual, but, but I'mdiscovering that there are more
and more people, at least than Ithought, who are really
interested in Californiahistory.
And I think the, the visualaspect of what you do is so
fascinating, fascinating.
(06:26):
Because there are, as you know,and as you've mentioned in other
places, there are a lot ofplaces to learn through words
about the life of the past and,you know, in, in our case,
California, that we're talkingabout in particular, uh, but,
but the visual representation ofthat is so unusual, right?
(06:50):
It's so.
Rare.
So what you do is reallyinteresting and exciting.
David Rickman (06:56):
Well, Well, thank you.
Yeah, I, it, it was actually astruggle for me early on in life
to, uh, to go with the life ofthe mind, of the life of, of,
uh, visual expression, I supposeis the best way to put it.
Um.
And in a way I don't think I'veeven solved that problem yet,
except somehow at this point inlife, it seems to be easier and
(07:19):
easier to, uh, uh, to do.
Um, I mean, I would, I got adegree in history from Berkeley,
but nevertheless, when theysaid, do you, do you wanna go
onto graduate school?
I said, actually teaching isn'texactly what I wanted to do.
I set out to be an illustrator,but I just always loved history.
So it, it has been.
(07:39):
It has been kind of a lightmotif of my life that sometimes
I'm a historian, sometimes anI'm an illustrator.
Um, and somehow now it seems towork out.
Um, I think one of the mostflattery things is that I will
come to the, uh, the CaliforniaMissions and Presidio
conferences, which I, I adore.
(08:00):
I just, I have such a good timethere.
There are such wonderfulscholars, including yourself
there, people who have suchqualifications and such.
And at times I feel like I'm abird watcher and a group of
ornithologists.
Um, you know, I can, I couldtell you about the interesting
flicker that I saw, and you canprobably give me chapter in
(08:21):
verse from, you know, itsevolution and it's fully, it's
uh, uh, life and all of that.
Nevertheless, it's, it's beenfun and I'm, I'm so grateful
that it's such a welcomingassociation.
I encourage so many people to,uh, to join the organization
because I think that's where thefuture lies, is, uh, trying to
(08:43):
bring new people into that, thisconversation.
Um, but getting back to thevisual aspect, one of the things
that, um, I'd like to talk aboutif I can, Ken, is that.
The way this all started out, Ithink I've, children will show
(09:04):
you if they can, what theyintend to be.
Um, so when I was a child, Idrew like crazy and um, a lot of
horses in particular.
Um, but I also loved history.
But the visual aspect of historywas always my dream.
(09:26):
Not to live in the past, becauseat a very early age, I found out
that the past wasn't always agreat place to live, but to see
it and then later in life tohelp others to see it as best I
could.
Of course we don't actually seeit, but I try to come as close
as I can to, to creating, um,something that looks as much as.
(09:49):
We can tell about history in thesame way that, um, there are
artists who reconstructdinosaurs from bones.
Uh, I reconstruct the past fromarcheology, written and, and
visual, uh, eyewitness writtenand visual, uh, accounts.
And, um, it showed itself earlyin my life the same time that I
(10:10):
was drawing horses.
When I went into fourth gradeand they handed me my fourth
grade California history book,as they always do.
Um, I remember opening it up andactually I have the image in my
PowerPoint that, uh, I'll showyou and we can talk about it
whenever you want to see that.
But it was a picture of thePortola expedition coming up the
(10:33):
coast, uh, probably headingtowards San Francisco Bay, and I
can still remember.
And it's been a memory I've hadall my life of looking at that
and thinking it says 1769 andyet that's around the time of
the American Revolution.
And these guys have got likeconquistador outfits on what's
(10:54):
going on here.
And as I've said often, um, therest of my life has been trying
to answer that.
So yeah.
Damian Bacich (11:02):
Well, maybe we could talk about that picture if
you, if you want to share
David Rickman (11:07):
Yeah, I can call it.
up if you like.
Damian Bacich (11:09):
Yeah.
Let's see here.
You see that there?
David Rickman (11:14):
There it is.
Yes.
Um, this was a picture that Isaw, um, year in fourth grade
that inspired me for what I'mdoing for the rest of my life,
which is.
A picture that shows, uh, thePort LA Expedition of 1769
(11:34):
riding up the coast towards SanFrancisco and in fourth grade,
me looked at that when I firstopened my, my California history
reader.
And I thought to myself, wait aminute, it says 1769 and yet
that's around the time of GeorgeWashington.
And why are these people wearingconquistador outfits?
(11:57):
And as I have said often before,that's question has been
something I've been trying toanswer the rest of my life.
Uh, why do people picture thepast like this?
Why haven't they looked to seewhat it really was like?
And you know, the odd thingDamien, is no one really has,
um, except a few people thatI'll, I'll mention, but there
(12:23):
have been, I.
No serious books written aboutwhat was worn in early
California, um, ever.
Uh, there was a little book thatwas published during the, uh,
depression by, um, two women,uh, Mackey and Suey, and it is a
(12:46):
costume book, and, and it, it'sreally pretty bad and it's
really pretty simplistic.
And yet in 1976 for thebicentennial, Stanford
University Press republished it.
And other than that, my SutterSchwart costume manual and now
my upcoming, where Worlds Metfrom California State Parks.
No one has taken this seriouslynow.
(13:08):
I just this morning, um,received some pictures, uh, from
a collector and they arewatercolor sketches by an artist
named Alexander Harmer who cameto California in 1891.
Married into the Abdi family inSanta Barbara and spent the rest
of his life doing paintings ofearly California.
(13:30):
And he really did try and makethe effort to see into the past.
He wasn't always completelyeffective.
But I've just posted on my two,uh, uh, groups, uh, Alta,
California clothing and, uh,arts and Skills of the Spanish
Borderlands.
Um, this sketch that Harmer didof California clothing,
(13:53):
obviously antiques that werebrought to him by old
Californias.
He wanted to know what theclothing looked like.
They brought him their oldclothes and he painted them and
they appear later in hispaintings and, uh, and other
illustrations.
He took an approach that Iadmire, the one that I try and
follow today, which is to lookat real things.
(14:14):
Don't make things up.
There's another artist, JoeMora, that everyone loves.
And frankly, I love him as anillustrator and an author, but
he was really pretty bad when itcame to try and trying to
reconstruct what the oldCalifornias from Port Law down
to, uh, the Battle La SanPasquale looked like he was so
(14:36):
bad that, as I've often said,uh, he put the leggings, the
BOTAs onto all of his, uh, erosbackwards.
That was not someone whoactually had looked at the real
things and talked to the realpeople.
And yet at the beginning of hisbook, California is he says,
what I've presented here, it'sall true what he's presented
(15:00):
there visually.
None of it is true, and yet he'sthe illustrator that everyone
goes to first when it comes to,uh, uh, showing old Californias,
I mean, his pictures arethroughout the.
The California Park system, forexample.
So what it is that I do, if Icould help, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Damian Bacich (15:23):
no, I was just, and, and I don't want to get off
track here, but why do you thinkit is, or was so difficult to
picture past in California'spast in inaccurate way?
Why do you think, uh, Joe Mora,for example, able to or didn't
talk to descendants or peoplewho had that?
(15:46):
Those, those items of clothing,uh, you know, at their homes.
David Rickman (15:51):
Well, he said that he did talk to people, and
yet he obviously did not takeadvantage of all the things that
were available to him.
I mean, Alexander Harmer, theillustrator, author, I mean
artist and illustrator that Imentioned earlier, I.
Harmer arrived in California in1891 at a time when, uh, Antonio
(16:12):
Cordell and all were stillaround, and he could talk to
them and he could, he had themact as his models, and yet
Harmer lived until 1925.
Joe Mora could have taken a tripdown to from Monterey down to
Santa Barbara, and spoken withHarmer and looked at his
(16:33):
artwork, but evidently he, hedidn't want to.
Um, as an illustrator myself, Iknow that there is a tendency
with some of us that we want toshow the past or whatever
subject it might be, um, the waywe see it.
Um, I live in the hometown of anillustrator named Howard Pyle,
(16:55):
and he is the one who createdthe, the idea of how pirates
looked with the head scarves andthe striped shirts and the big
sashes and all of that.
It that in influenced right downto Pirates of the Caribbean
today.
And yet that isn't at all whatpirates looked like.
And I have spent a lot of timereading through his, uh, papers
(17:17):
and looking at his sketches andall that.
And I realized that at somepoint along the way, he knew
that that's not what they lookedlike.
But he continued to do itbecause he liked the way they
looked.
He liked what he created.
And I think we could go back toJoe Mora and say he did the same
thing.
Whether or not he knew it, hejust bypassed the whole research
(17:40):
part.
Um, and went straight toillustrating.
Another thing that was availableto him is he could have gone
down to Los Angeles, to the LosAngeles County Museum where they
have the largest collection ofCalifornia clothing, the Cornell
and, and other familycollections.
It's not huge, but it's enough,uh, that if you went to that
(18:02):
museum.
He could have answered a lot ofhis questions, or if he had the
questions he could have, hecould have done a much better
job of representing, uh, earlyCalifornia.
There were existing saddlesthroughout California.
Joe Morty ignored them becausehe created something that I
(18:23):
think he liked better.
He might have gotten the bitright as as, uh, my friend John
Grafton will point out, but hegot the saddles all wrong.
I don't think that Mauraunderstood really what
historical illustrators do,where Alexander Harmer did.
Damian Bacich (18:41):
So did your, so your interest begin.
Directly with California, Butyou, you also, what I've noticed
is that you illustrate a broadvariety of historical subjects.
How did you get into this thisworld after having, after having
(19:02):
graduated with a degree fromBerkeley in history?
David Rickman (19:06):
Well, it's interesting.
Um, I grew up in California.
I, I felt the presence ofCalifornia history all around
me, uh, all the years of, of mygrowing up and, and well in,
into my thirties when I firstmoved to the East Coast.
But I wanted to be anillustrator, and an illustrator
as essentially a taxi dancer.
You know, 10 cents a dance, youpay me.
(19:28):
I'll illustrate what it is youask for.
Um, I started out doingchildren's, uh, textbooks and,
and, uh, and other kinds ofbooks for kids.
And then eventually was able towork my way around two the
things that I wanted to do.
And the first thing I did, if,if I could see the next slide,
(19:48):
um, were Dover coloring books.
Um.
Yeah, California missions and,and cowboys coloring books were
my opportunity to break out asan illustrator that did
historical topics and I was ableto use these then to start going
to historic sites, uh, nationalPark Service and such, and doing
(20:13):
more of this kind of thing.
But when you do that, I mean, Iended up doing, oh, uh,
Northwest Coast Indians inAlaska, uh, for the National
Park Service, the prehistoric,uh, ancestral pueblos down in
Colorado.
Um, more recently I've done, um,a, a cotton mill in Providence,
(20:34):
Rhode Island, uh, Jamestown inthe 16 hundreds.
I love it all, and part of it isthat it allows me to do research
and, and that in a way is alsomy calling card when I do
illustrations.
Um, right now I'm doing aproject, I hope it goes forward
with, um, Shriner University inTexas.
(20:56):
They wanted to find someone whowould illustrate the, uh, Texas
Native Americans and Spaniardsin the 1750s, which was a
crucial time in, in Texanhistory.
And so they came to me and I'vejust spent the last month and a
half corresponding with, uh, theforemost experts, uh, trying to
(21:18):
find out about something that noone really understands, which is
the fact that Early PlainsIndians we're used to thinking
of them riding bareback andlying along the sides of their
horses and shooting under thenecks and all that.
Early Plains Indians copied theSpanish and went into battle,
completely armored with theirhorses, covered with buckskin
(21:40):
armor down to their knees, andthe, the men wearing armor as
well.
That's something no one has everillustrated.
Well, I hope to be illustratingthat soon.
Yeah, it's exciting stuff.
Um, I'm also doing, uh, somework, uh, for a little Norwegian
farm in Lake Superior.
(22:00):
No project that allows me to dosome research and, and get into
it is ever boring to me.
But somehow, for whateverreason, early California and
also the Spanish Borderlands asa whole, going from all the way
from Texas to to California,that's had a hold on me.
(22:22):
And if you wanna be mystic aboutit, it's almost as if I didn't
choose it.
It chose me for whatever reason.
Because it feels like thatsometimes.
I'm thinking, well, you know, Icould have gone on and done
other things.
I could have gone on and, andtaught, but I think this kept
pulling me back for whateverreason.
And, um, I think.
(22:43):
Quite simply.
I love it.
Um,
Damian Bacich (22:45):
Did you?
David Rickman (22:46):
if we could see the next slide,
Damian Bacich (22:48):
Sure.
And in the meantime,
David Rickman (22:50):
just wanted to show a few of the things that I
have done.
Um, yeah, this was a wonderfulproject.
It was the Juan Batista Dancesand National Historic Trail,
which in the early twothousands, um, allowed me, uh,
to put, to put, to use somethingI've been researching since the
(23:12):
1970s, since the bicentennialitself.
What, how do they really dress?
What do they really wear?
And it allowed me to go back to,um, the original Spanish
language documents.
Um, uh, one of which was thesupply list, uh, the original
supply list that was shared withme by a man named Don Ti, who
(23:33):
was, uh, worked for the, theNational Park Service.
And he, uh.
Not only spoke Spanish, but healso spoke Basque because his
family was Basque and that wasthe Anza family was Basque, so
he was the perfect scholar totalk to about what they might
have worn and and such.
And so that was a great projectfor me and one that I loved.
(23:55):
And I actually retraced the, um,the trail.
Uh, a friend and I drove thetrail, uh, in, uh, 2023 in order
to, uh, uh, get a feeling forthe landscape and, and the
experiences of the, uh, thepeople who traveled it.
Damian Bacich (24:15):
I don't
David Rickman (24:16):
Um,
Damian Bacich (24:16):
any conquistador helmets.
David Rickman (24:19):
yeah, not a shame.
Yeah.
Um, well, I mean, the term mythbusters is used a lot these days
and, and it's, it's kind of, it,it's fine.
It's not so much busting myths,but it's.
Wanting to know more, wanting tosee what it actually looked
like.
(24:39):
Um, and, and one of the thingsthat, uh, I, I know language is
your great skill and, anddelight.
Damien, one of the things I liketo be able to do is there are
certain words as I, I sure I,you remember from my talk at the
missions conference that come upthat actually need to be
(25:01):
understood from a materialculture point of view.
If you folks are gonna be ableto do your job to the best of
your abilities.
And I can't tell you how manythings I've read, not by you and
no names mentioned, where theword IL will be translated as
rifle and um, uh, cal will betranslated as trousers.
(25:28):
It completely loses the wholecharacter of what it is people
are trying to.
Uh, understand.
And it was a great frustrationfor me when I first started out
doing this.
And so, um, I've studiedSpanish, German, and French
enough that when I read throughthe documents, I can find out
what it is I need to know.
(25:50):
I think if I'd been more of ascholar, I would've spent a lot
more time in archives and, anddealing with original documents.
But what I have done, um, it'sreally helped me to understand
it from the point of view oflanguage.
cause language is so importantto understanding what it is
they, they have.
So now I recommend that whenpeople try and do this kind of
(26:11):
work, they go to the originaldocuments in their original
languages, find, find out howto, to read the handwriting,
find out how to, uh, accessperiod dictionaries that will
explain to you better thanmodern dictionaries what these
people had in mind.
So it's, it's more than just,um.
(26:32):
Sitting around like Howard Pyledid and, and imagining what
pirates looked like.
It's actually trying to findout.
Damian Bacich (26:38):
So going back to the case of the Comanches using
armor or leather clad, how didyou come across, how, how is
that revealed in, say, thedocuments?
David Rickman (26:51):
Well it's, it's an interesting thing and it's,
it's quite a phenomenon.
The first one, and I don't haveany pictures here, but people
can look it up.
Years ago, I think I was stillin college.
I came across the book, uh, bya, uh, Swiss scholar whose name
was Hoz, HOTZ, I don't rememberhis first name, but it was about
(27:11):
two paintings on Buffalo Hidethat were found in a Swiss home
in the 1930s, 40.
Someone recognized what theywere.
He rec recognized that theycertainly weren't.
I mean, people had thought,well, maybe it shows South
America.
Maybe it shows Asia.
No, what it shows, the twodifferent high paintings are
(27:32):
battles that took place in thewest.
The first one is called Sesserone, and, and they, both of'em
are still on display now inSanta Fe at the History Museum.
The first one shows armedhorsemen, completely armored
horses, completely armored menriding the battle against
(27:54):
dismounted Indians who werefiring at them with bows and
arrows.
Well, that was intriguing.
So I thought about it for someyears and, and picked up things
here and there as I went along.
And then, oddly enough, becauseof our connected era with
computers, um, in 2019, Ireceived an email from the
(28:15):
foremost scholar of horse armor,uh, a guy named Jim James
Kaiser.
Who is a professor of archeologyin Oregon.
He's now retired, but he wantedto ask me about Spanish saddles
because he thought he was seeingSpanish saddles in what is his
specialty, which is rock artcarvings on rock that are found
(28:35):
throughout the west.
In turn.
I wanted to ask him about thearmor, because that's what these
pictures show.
So from the Eser Hide Painting,they're able to tell from these
rock carvings that these guys,in early times, from about 1650
to about 1750 were riding horsescovered completely from neck to
(28:57):
tail in leather armor, and theserock carvings occur everywhere
from Texas all the way up to theSaskatchewan River in Canada.
So at one time it was, that wasthe way you used horses in the
old West.
Well, something came alongcalled guns.
Completely ruined that foreveryone.
(29:19):
And of course, that's how fromabout 1750 on you have the light
cavalry tactics of the PlainsIndians, but because the armor
no longer worked.
Um, so when I received this, um,project from Shriner University
in Texas, uh, first thing I didwas I contacted Jim Kaiser and I
said, I need you to walk methrough this.
(29:41):
And he's been wonderfullyopen-handed, so much so to the
point that he now wants me towrite a scholarly article with
him about how I go aboutreconstructing these guys.
So that'll be fun to do and Ihope to, uh, to work on that
next year.
Damian Bacich (29:57):
What about
David Rickman (29:57):
Can we take a look?
Mm-hmm.
Damian Bacich (30:00):
I'm so, uh, what, so it would seem to me that, uh,
in California, the historicalrecord is, is not in the world.
How do you go about finding, youknow, knowing what these, uh,
colonists on the, an expeditionwore, for example?
David Rickman (30:24):
Well, that was a bit of luck.
Um, I knew, I knew basicallywhat they had.
I mean, years and years ago.
Um, B Brinkerhoff and Falk, uh,who were two scholars at the,
uh, Arizona Historical Society,uh, Sid Brinkerhoff and ODB Falk
published something calledLancers for the King.
(30:45):
And I've had this book sinceright after college, and it was
the 1772 Royal Regulations inSpanish and in English, and
their analysis of it.
So you start with theregulations.
Well, 1772 was just for threeyears before Ansys first
(31:05):
expedition to California.
And uh, so that is a start.
But then, you know, given enoughyears, uh, you begin looking
into it further and you find outfrom Herbert Bolton that there
is a, uh, supply list whenthey're trying to figure out how
much this expedition's going tocost for, to outfit all the new
(31:27):
recruits and their families and,and put them on saddles and
such.
And it gives a complete list ofeverything that they thought
they were gonna need for theexpedition and what it would
cost.
Okay.
Then you wanna look at Costapaintings to know what a chupa
corta might be, or what a, anagua, uh, a jacket or a skirt
might look like in the 1770s.
(31:50):
Um, and then you.
Damian Bacich (31:52):
paintings are those famous paintings that we
see, uh, with the differentethnicities and, and, so and so
marries so and so, and, uh,Mestizo marries, mulatto, and
they have a child.
It's called such and such.
Those are the, the Costapaintings, right.
David Rickman (32:12):
And they're, they're absolutely absolute
treasure troves of materialculture information.
Now, you can't always assumethat everything that was used in
Mexico City was used in theSpanish borderlands, but it is
probably our best guide and it'sbacked up because by the time
you get to the 1790s and youhave the malas fina expedition
in California, they'reessentially wearing exactly what
(32:35):
I thought they would've beenwearing.
Uh, cause the fashions didn'tchange that quickly in
California, as they did in NewMexico.
They're essentially wearing,essentially.
The same thing that you wouldsee in the cost of painting from
the 1770s.
So that helps.
And then there were variousinspections and such that
happened.
Archeology, uh, I went to theArizona historical, uh, museum
(32:58):
and, and they had some of theweapons there and such.
And I've been looking at saddlesforever.
Um, no real ones exist from thistime, but there are plenty of
images and there are saddlesthat came later that are of the
same type.
So it all comes together and,um, I've devoted, probably,
(33:19):
undoubtedly most of my life toresearching the material culture
of the Spanish Borderlands andmost particularly California.
But, um.
As I'd like, like to show alittle bit later on, there have
been other areas that I'veworked on and you know, I
mentioned the Howard Py.
I've also worked on RussianAmerica, especially Fort Ross
(33:39):
and such.
And, and that's a bit tougher.
As I said, I've, I've looked atdocuments in Spanish, French,
and German.
There's a lot of discussion, alot of evidence to be found in
Russian documents, and they'rebadly translated in publication
now.
But Russian was bridged too farfor me.
It really was.
(34:01):
Um, could we, could we seeanother picture?
Damian Bacich (34:03):
to, oh, yeah.
Um, is it difficult then to, todo research on such varied
subjects?
You know, you have to shift.
Gears from say, one geographicalarea or one time period to the
next.
Let's see.
Going to the next picture?
Yeah.
Is it, is it hard to switchgears like that?
David Rickman (34:26):
Um, it isn't actually, um, I don't know why,
uh, I will never be able to doJamestown, Virginia in the depth
that I do the Anza Expedition,but luckily, most of the, um,
most other areas, I, I wouldhave to say Damien, that
(34:48):
probably the most neglected partof, uh, American material
culture studies is west of theMississippi.
People spend a lot of timeworking on Colonial America and
even into the Midwest somewhat.
But our understanding of whatwas worn in the American West is
(35:11):
so limited by Hollywood and byillustrators like Charles
Russell and Frederick Remington.
It was far richer, far moreinteresting.
And, and neither of those twoguys actually, I mean, they,
they touched on the Spanishborderlands a bit, but neither
of them, what they reallyunderstood was cowboys and
(35:31):
cavalry and, and Plains Indiansand Apaches and Western art had
remained stuck in that grooveever since.
But they're neglecting hugeamounts of what I find
fascinating and varied cultures.
I mean, I was lucky enough to doprehistoric, uh, Southwest or
(35:53):
the Pacific Northwest where the.
Indians didn't just wanna takeyour scalp, they wanted to take
your head and had created one ofthe most absolutely
breathtakingly, gorgeous fieldsof art, styles of art in the
northwest coast that'scompletely ignored by Hollywood
(36:13):
and by the culture in general.
And I mean, you can't say enoughabout how much the Spanish
borderlands have been ignored.
Um, I think California isprobably the easiest of all
those.
If you were to say Texas, NewMexico, Southern Colorado,
(36:33):
Arizona, Baja California, andAlta California, uh, Alta
California is the easiest andthere are a variety of reasons
for that.
Um, Alta California had a verylong board, uh, shoreline with
the Sea, and so they had a.
Visitors every few years,whether it be George Vancouver
(36:54):
or the Masina Expedition or theBeachy Expedition.
In the 1820s, newcomers werealways arriving at least every
decade, if not more often, upuntil the 18, thirties, forties.
And so they left a lot of, notjust written descriptions, but
visual descriptions, and also anumber of them collected
(37:15):
artifacts and took them backwith them.
So we're so much luckier thaneven a place like Texas, even
though they were, you know, onthe Caribbean, so to speak, you
know, with, uh, they didn't havethat same sort of, um, approach.
One time I was at the WittyMuseum, uh, speaking with a
retired curator there who wasshowing me the collection, and
(37:39):
she pointed out a pair of shoesand I looked at them and I said,
I don't think those are Texan,and.
She looked it up in the recordsand she said, well, actually
they were purchased at anantique show show in Arizona.
And the dealer said that hebought them in California.
And you find this time and againis historic sites from Arizona
(38:03):
to Texas.
They lack artifacts.
They lack images that, um, wouldbe used normally in California
to interpret our history.
And so what they do is theyborrow from California.
And these shoes, if I'm notmistaken, I could even name the
maker, uh, it was Antonio Cordbecause of the way they were
(38:27):
made.
But we're very lucky inCalifornia to have as much as we
do.
I'd love to have more andsurprisingly enough as just
yesterday, more new things turnup all the time.
Um, one of the great delights ishaving formed.
The, uh, arts and skills of theSpanish borderland and, and to
(38:48):
help, uh, administer the AltaCalifornia site is that I have
made a lot of connections withpeople who said, oh yeah, I have
this here.
Stay tuned for part two of myinterview with David Rickman.
Believe it or not, most of ushave a very feeble idea of the
(00:06):
past.
We depend a lot on photographson Hollywood on.
Paintings or other illustrationswe've seen, and especially on
the frontier and especially inCalifornia, we have an even
weaker idea of what things looklike.
(00:28):
First of all, when you talkabout the American West, we're
very influenced by Hollywood.
And let's face it, there werevery few, if any, photographers
in California prior to the GoldRush.
So it's very hard toconceptualize what things and
people looked like, uh,especially how people dressed,
(00:50):
for example.
So the guest I'm interviewing onthis episode is a great person
to have on with this regard.
He's a very unique person whenit comes to his expertise, and
he's gonna shed a light on somethings that I think we don't
even realize that we take forgranted.
(01:14):
David w Rickman is his name, andhe is the premier illustrator of
topics related to the history ofCalifornia and the overall
Spanish borderlands.
That would be, you know, Texas,Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado,
California.
Uh.
I don't know if I left somethingout, but this, that whole swath
(01:35):
of territory that was part ofNorthern New Spain.
If you visited missions andstate historical parks here in
California, you have likely seenhis work.
Or if you've, uh, traveled alongthe Wam, Batista des, uh,
national Historic Trail or.
(01:57):
Other history museums throughoutthe west.
Not, not only the west, also onthe east coast, you will have
seen his work.
He's not only, uh, illustratedpanels and signs and brochures,
everything for state andnational parks and museums, but
(02:17):
he's illustrated books and heeven created the manual for, uh.
Sutter's Fort State HistoricParks, costumes also for Fort
Ross and others, and he'sworking on a new one, which I
can't wait to see that's goingto be updated.
(02:40):
David is a fascinating person,not only because he's an
incredibly talented artist, buthe's an historian and he, he
moderates two excellent Facebookgroups for people interested in
what we call the materialculture.
Of California and the Southwest.
How did people dress?
What did they eat?
Um, what did architecture looklike?
(03:01):
The things that you can touch,you know, that the historical,
the historical material cultureof the Southwest.
And on top of that, he's just anoverall wonderful person.
As you'll hear in ourconversation.
His experience as an artist andan illustrator gives him a
really unique perspective onhistory and on California
(03:24):
history in particular.
I.
And you will notice that hementions Antonio Cord a number
of times as an important sourcefor information about early
California dress.
And if you've been followingthis podcast, you know I have a
number of episodes, uh,dedicated to sections of Antonio
(03:45):
Cordell's memoirs.
So hopefully you go back andlisten to those.
In much of the interview, by theway, we refer to some
illustrations of David's so thathe actually shared with me.
So I recommend that if you canyou watch this interview on
YouTube where you can see thoseillustrations, you can find it
(04:08):
by just going and looking upCalifornia Frontier.
On YouTube and you'll see ourchannel.
I have a number of ourinterviews posted there.
One last thing.
You may notice that the audio attimes seems a little bit clippy.
I hope it's not much of adistraction.
I just wanna let you know thatI'm aware of it and I don't
(04:30):
think, and I hope it won'tdetract too much from the
interview because the content isvery fascinating.
So now with all that said, let'sget into my interview with David
w Rickman
Damian Bacich (04:55):
Looks like we've started.
thAnks.
Thank you for being here.
I'm excited
David Rickman (04:59):
you so.
Damian Bacich (05:00):
to you.
You know, we have greatconversations, or at least I
have a great conversation.
Listen, listening to you everytime we meet up, and I'm just
grateful to be able to of sharethis with the things we talk
about with more people.
And I'm, I'm always struck bythe things I hear and see from
(05:20):
you, your, your yourpresentations when I go to
conferences or.
Some of the most interesting.
So once again, David, I'm reallygrateful for this.
David Rickman (05:30):
Well, thank you so much, Damian.
And it's a shame we only get tosee one another once a year or
today this.
time we could, could see oneother twice.
But, uh, it's, it's so much funto, uh, to get out with
colleagues because as youprobably understand, the, the
life of an illustrator is fairlysolitary one.
And, uh, one of the reasons whyI, uh, I love coming out is I
(05:53):
get to actually be with fellownerds.
Uh, talking about a subjectthat, um, you know, if you were
to start a conversation on theEast coast here about the things
that interest me, no.
It, it wouldn't work.
Damian Bacich (06:05):
Right.
I think even here in, well, evenhere in California, I think it's
unusual, but, but I'mdiscovering that there are more
and more people, at least than Ithought, who are really
interested in Californiahistory.
And I think the, the visualaspect of what you do is so
fascinating, fascinating.
(06:26):
Because there are, as you know,and as you've mentioned in other
places, there are a lot ofplaces to learn through words
about the life of the past and,you know, in, in our case,
California, that we're talkingabout in particular, uh, but,
but the visual representation ofthat is so unusual, right?
(06:50):
It's so.
Rare.
So what you do is reallyinteresting and exciting.
David Rickman (06:56):
Well, Well, thank you.
Yeah, I, it, it was actually astruggle for me early on in life
to, uh, to go with the life ofthe mind, of the life of, of,
uh, visual expression, I supposeis the best way to put it.
Um.
And in a way I don't think I'veeven solved that problem yet,
except somehow at this point inlife, it seems to be easier and
(07:19):
easier to, uh, uh, to do.
Um, I mean, I would, I got adegree in history from Berkeley,
but nevertheless, when theysaid, do you, do you wanna go
onto graduate school?
I said, actually teaching isn'texactly what I wanted to do.
I set out to be an illustrator,but I just always loved history.
So it, it has been.
(07:39):
It has been kind of a lightmotif of my life that sometimes
I'm a historian, sometimes anI'm an illustrator.
Um, and somehow now it seems towork out.
Um, I think one of the mostflattery things is that I will
come to the, uh, the CaliforniaMissions and Presidio
conferences, which I, I adore.
(08:00):
I just, I have such a good timethere.
There are such wonderfulscholars, including yourself
there, people who have suchqualifications and such.
And at times I feel like I'm abird watcher and a group of
ornithologists.
Um, you know, I can, I couldtell you about the interesting
flicker that I saw, and you canprobably give me chapter in
(08:21):
verse from, you know, itsevolution and it's fully, it's
uh, uh, life and all of that.
Nevertheless, it's, it's beenfun and I'm, I'm so grateful
that it's such a welcomingassociation.
I encourage so many people to,uh, to join the organization
because I think that's where thefuture lies, is, uh, trying to
(08:43):
bring new people into that, thisconversation.
Um, but getting back to thevisual aspect, one of the things
that, um, I'd like to talk aboutif I can, Ken, is that.
The way this all started out, Ithink I've, children will show
(09:04):
you if they can, what theyintend to be.
Um, so when I was a child, Idrew like crazy and um, a lot of
horses in particular.
Um, but I also loved history.
But the visual aspect of historywas always my dream.
(09:26):
Not to live in the past, becauseat a very early age, I found out
that the past wasn't always agreat place to live, but to see
it and then later in life tohelp others to see it as best I
could.
Of course we don't actually seeit, but I try to come as close
as I can to, to creating, um,something that looks as much as.
(09:49):
We can tell about history in thesame way that, um, there are
artists who reconstructdinosaurs from bones.
Uh, I reconstruct the past fromarcheology, written and, and
visual, uh, eyewitness writtenand visual, uh, accounts.
And, um, it showed itself earlyin my life the same time that I
(10:10):
was drawing horses.
When I went into fourth gradeand they handed me my fourth
grade California history book,as they always do.
Um, I remember opening it up andactually I have the image in my
PowerPoint that, uh, I'll showyou and we can talk about it
whenever you want to see that.
But it was a picture of thePortola expedition coming up the
(10:33):
coast, uh, probably headingtowards San Francisco Bay, and I
can still remember.
And it's been a memory I've hadall my life of looking at that
and thinking it says 1769 andyet that's around the time of
the American Revolution.
And these guys have got likeconquistador outfits on what's
(10:54):
going on here.
And as I've said often, um, therest of my life has been trying
to answer that.
So yeah.
Damian Bacich (11:02):
Well, maybe we could talk about that picture if
you, if you want to share
David Rickman (11:07):
Yeah, I can call it.
up if you like.
Damian Bacich (11:09):
Yeah.
Let's see here.
You see that there?
David Rickman (11:14):
There it is.
Yes.
Um, this was a picture that Isaw, um, year in fourth grade
that inspired me for what I'mdoing for the rest of my life,
which is.
A picture that shows, uh, thePort LA Expedition of 1769
(11:34):
riding up the coast towards SanFrancisco and in fourth grade,
me looked at that when I firstopened my, my California history
reader.
And I thought to myself, wait aminute, it says 1769 and yet
that's around the time of GeorgeWashington.
And why are these people wearingconquistador outfits?
(11:57):
And as I have said often before,that's question has been
something I've been trying toanswer the rest of my life.
Uh, why do people picture thepast like this?
Why haven't they looked to seewhat it really was like?
And you know, the odd thingDamien, is no one really has,
um, except a few people thatI'll, I'll mention, but there
(12:23):
have been, I.
No serious books written aboutwhat was worn in early
California, um, ever.
Uh, there was a little book thatwas published during the, uh,
depression by, um, two women,uh, Mackey and Suey, and it is a
(12:46):
costume book, and, and it, it'sreally pretty bad and it's
really pretty simplistic.
And yet in 1976 for thebicentennial, Stanford
University Press republished it.
And other than that, my SutterSchwart costume manual and now
my upcoming, where Worlds Metfrom California State Parks.
No one has taken this seriouslynow.
(13:08):
I just this morning, um,received some pictures, uh, from
a collector and they arewatercolor sketches by an artist
named Alexander Harmer who cameto California in 1891.
Married into the Abdi family inSanta Barbara and spent the rest
of his life doing paintings ofearly California.
(13:30):
And he really did try and makethe effort to see into the past.
He wasn't always completelyeffective.
But I've just posted on my two,uh, uh, groups, uh, Alta,
California clothing and, uh,arts and Skills of the Spanish
Borderlands.
Um, this sketch that Harmer didof California clothing,
(13:53):
obviously antiques that werebrought to him by old
Californias.
He wanted to know what theclothing looked like.
They brought him their oldclothes and he painted them and
they appear later in hispaintings and, uh, and other
illustrations.
He took an approach that Iadmire, the one that I try and
follow today, which is to lookat real things.
(14:14):
Don't make things up.
There's another artist, JoeMora, that everyone loves.
And frankly, I love him as anillustrator and an author, but
he was really pretty bad when itcame to try and trying to
reconstruct what the oldCalifornias from Port Law down
to, uh, the Battle La SanPasquale looked like he was so
(14:36):
bad that, as I've often said,uh, he put the leggings, the
BOTAs onto all of his, uh, erosbackwards.
That was not someone whoactually had looked at the real
things and talked to the realpeople.
And yet at the beginning of hisbook, California is he says,
what I've presented here, it'sall true what he's presented
(15:00):
there visually.
None of it is true, and yet he'sthe illustrator that everyone
goes to first when it comes to,uh, uh, showing old Californias,
I mean, his pictures arethroughout the.
The California Park system, forexample.
So what it is that I do, if Icould help, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Damian Bacich (15:23):
no, I was just, and, and I don't want to get off
track here, but why do you thinkit is, or was so difficult to
picture past in California'spast in inaccurate way?
Why do you think, uh, Joe Mora,for example, able to or didn't
talk to descendants or peoplewho had that?
(15:46):
Those, those items of clothing,uh, you know, at their homes.
David Rickman (15:51):
Well, he said that he did talk to people, and
yet he obviously did not takeadvantage of all the things that
were available to him.
I mean, Alexander Harmer, theillustrator, author, I mean
artist and illustrator that Imentioned earlier, I.
Harmer arrived in California in1891 at a time when, uh, Antonio
(16:12):
Cordell and all were stillaround, and he could talk to
them and he could, he had themact as his models, and yet
Harmer lived until 1925.
Joe Mora could have taken a tripdown to from Monterey down to
Santa Barbara, and spoken withHarmer and looked at his
(16:33):
artwork, but evidently he, hedidn't want to.
Um, as an illustrator myself, Iknow that there is a tendency
with some of us that we want toshow the past or whatever
subject it might be, um, the waywe see it.
Um, I live in the hometown of anillustrator named Howard Pyle,
(16:55):
and he is the one who createdthe, the idea of how pirates
looked with the head scarves andthe striped shirts and the big
sashes and all of that.
It that in influenced right downto Pirates of the Caribbean
today.
And yet that isn't at all whatpirates looked like.
And I have spent a lot of timereading through his, uh, papers
(17:17):
and looking at his sketches andall that.
And I realized that at somepoint along the way, he knew
that that's not what they lookedlike.
But he continued to do itbecause he liked the way they
looked.
He liked what he created.
And I think we could go back toJoe Mora and say he did the same
thing.
Whether or not he knew it, hejust bypassed the whole research
(17:40):
part.
Um, and went straight toillustrating.
Another thing that was availableto him is he could have gone
down to Los Angeles, to the LosAngeles County Museum where they
have the largest collection ofCalifornia clothing, the Cornell
and, and other familycollections.
It's not huge, but it's enough,uh, that if you went to that
(18:02):
museum.
He could have answered a lot ofhis questions, or if he had the
questions he could have, hecould have done a much better
job of representing, uh, earlyCalifornia.
There were existing saddlesthroughout California.
Joe Morty ignored them becausehe created something that I
(18:23):
think he liked better.
He might have gotten the bitright as as, uh, my friend John
Grafton will point out, but hegot the saddles all wrong.
I don't think that Mauraunderstood really what
historical illustrators do,where Alexander Harmer did.
Damian Bacich (18:41):
So did your, so your interest begin.
Directly with California, Butyou, you also, what I've noticed
is that you illustrate a broadvariety of historical subjects.
How did you get into this thisworld after having, after having
(19:02):
graduated with a degree fromBerkeley in history?
David Rickman (19:06):
Well, it's interesting.
Um, I grew up in California.
I, I felt the presence ofCalifornia history all around
me, uh, all the years of, of mygrowing up and, and well in,
into my thirties when I firstmoved to the East Coast.
But I wanted to be anillustrator, and an illustrator
as essentially a taxi dancer.
You know, 10 cents a dance, youpay me.
(19:28):
I'll illustrate what it is youask for.
Um, I started out doingchildren's, uh, textbooks and,
and, uh, and other kinds ofbooks for kids.
And then eventually was able towork my way around two the
things that I wanted to do.
And the first thing I did, if,if I could see the next slide,
(19:48):
um, were Dover coloring books.
Um.
Yeah, California missions and,and cowboys coloring books were
my opportunity to break out asan illustrator that did
historical topics and I was ableto use these then to start going
to historic sites, uh, nationalPark Service and such, and doing
(20:13):
more of this kind of thing.
But when you do that, I mean, Iended up doing, oh, uh,
Northwest Coast Indians inAlaska, uh, for the National
Park Service, the prehistoric,uh, ancestral pueblos down in
Colorado.
Um, more recently I've done, um,a, a cotton mill in Providence,
(20:34):
Rhode Island, uh, Jamestown inthe 16 hundreds.
I love it all, and part of it isthat it allows me to do research
and, and that in a way is alsomy calling card when I do
illustrations.
Um, right now I'm doing aproject, I hope it goes forward
with, um, Shriner University inTexas.
(20:56):
They wanted to find someone whowould illustrate the, uh, Texas
Native Americans and Spaniardsin the 1750s, which was a
crucial time in, in Texanhistory.
And so they came to me and I'vejust spent the last month and a
half corresponding with, uh, theforemost experts, uh, trying to
(21:18):
find out about something that noone really understands, which is
the fact that Early PlainsIndians we're used to thinking
of them riding bareback andlying along the sides of their
horses and shooting under thenecks and all that.
Early Plains Indians copied theSpanish and went into battle,
completely armored with theirhorses, covered with buckskin
(21:40):
armor down to their knees, andthe, the men wearing armor as
well.
That's something no one has everillustrated.
Well, I hope to be illustratingthat soon.
Yeah, it's exciting stuff.
Um, I'm also doing, uh, somework, uh, for a little Norwegian
farm in Lake Superior.
(22:00):
No project that allows me to dosome research and, and get into
it is ever boring to me.
But somehow, for whateverreason, early California and
also the Spanish Borderlands asa whole, going from all the way
from Texas to to California,that's had a hold on me.
(22:22):
And if you wanna be mystic aboutit, it's almost as if I didn't
choose it.
It chose me for whatever reason.
Because it feels like thatsometimes.
I'm thinking, well, you know, Icould have gone on and done
other things.
I could have gone on and, andtaught, but I think this kept
pulling me back for whateverreason.
And, um, I think.
(22:43):
Quite simply.
I love it.
Um,
Damian Bacich (22:45):
Did you?
David Rickman (22:46):
if we could see the next slide,
Damian Bacich (22:48):
Sure.
And in the meantime,
David Rickman (22:50):
just wanted to show a few of the things that I
have done.
Um, yeah, this was a wonderfulproject.
It was the Juan Batista Dancesand National Historic Trail,
which in the early twothousands, um, allowed me, uh,
to put, to put, to use somethingI've been researching since the
(23:12):
1970s, since the bicentennialitself.
What, how do they really dress?
What do they really wear?
And it allowed me to go back to,um, the original Spanish
language documents.
Um, uh, one of which was thesupply list, uh, the original
supply list that was shared withme by a man named Don Ti, who
(23:33):
was, uh, worked for the, theNational Park Service.
And he, uh.
Not only spoke Spanish, but healso spoke Basque because his
family was Basque and that wasthe Anza family was Basque, so
he was the perfect scholar totalk to about what they might
have worn and and such.
And so that was a great projectfor me and one that I loved.
(23:55):
And I actually retraced the, um,the trail.
Uh, a friend and I drove thetrail, uh, in, uh, 2023 in order
to, uh, uh, get a feeling forthe landscape and, and the
experiences of the, uh, thepeople who traveled it.
Damian Bacich (24:15):
I don't
David Rickman (24:16):
Um,
Damian Bacich (24:16):
any conquistador helmets.
David Rickman (24:19):
yeah, not a shame.
Yeah.
Um, well, I mean, the term mythbusters is used a lot these days
and, and it's, it's kind of, it,it's fine.
It's not so much busting myths,but it's.
Wanting to know more, wanting tosee what it actually looked
like.
(24:39):
Um, and, and one of the thingsthat, uh, I, I know language is
your great skill and, anddelight.
Damien, one of the things I liketo be able to do is there are
certain words as I, I sure I,you remember from my talk at the
missions conference that come upthat actually need to be
(25:01):
understood from a materialculture point of view.
If you folks are gonna be ableto do your job to the best of
your abilities.
And I can't tell you how manythings I've read, not by you and
no names mentioned, where theword IL will be translated as
rifle and um, uh, cal will betranslated as trousers.
(25:28):
It completely loses the wholecharacter of what it is people
are trying to.
Uh, understand.
And it was a great frustrationfor me when I first started out
doing this.
And so, um, I've studiedSpanish, German, and French
enough that when I read throughthe documents, I can find out
what it is I need to know.
(25:50):
I think if I'd been more of ascholar, I would've spent a lot
more time in archives and, anddealing with original documents.
But what I have done, um, it'sreally helped me to understand
it from the point of view oflanguage.
cause language is so importantto understanding what it is
they, they have.
So now I recommend that whenpeople try and do this kind of
(26:11):
work, they go to the originaldocuments in their original
languages, find, find out howto, to read the handwriting,
find out how to, uh, accessperiod dictionaries that will
explain to you better thanmodern dictionaries what these
people had in mind.
So it's, it's more than just,um.
(26:32):
Sitting around like Howard Pyledid and, and imagining what
pirates looked like.
It's actually trying to findout.
Damian Bacich (26:38):
So going back to the case of the Comanches using
armor or leather clad, how didyou come across, how, how is
that revealed in, say, thedocuments?
David Rickman (26:51):
Well it's, it's an interesting thing and it's,
it's quite a phenomenon.
The first one, and I don't haveany pictures here, but people
can look it up.
Years ago, I think I was stillin college.
I came across the book, uh, bya, uh, Swiss scholar whose name
was Hoz, HOTZ, I don't rememberhis first name, but it was about
(27:11):
two paintings on Buffalo Hidethat were found in a Swiss home
in the 1930s, 40.
Someone recognized what theywere.
He rec recognized that theycertainly weren't.
I mean, people had thought,well, maybe it shows South
America.
Maybe it shows Asia.
No, what it shows, the twodifferent high paintings are
(27:32):
battles that took place in thewest.
The first one is called Sesserone, and, and they, both of'em
are still on display now inSanta Fe at the History Museum.
The first one shows armedhorsemen, completely armored
horses, completely armored menriding the battle against
(27:54):
dismounted Indians who werefiring at them with bows and
arrows.
Well, that was intriguing.
So I thought about it for someyears and, and picked up things
here and there as I went along.
And then, oddly enough, becauseof our connected era with
computers, um, in 2019, Ireceived an email from the
(28:15):
foremost scholar of horse armor,uh, a guy named Jim James
Kaiser.
Who is a professor of archeologyin Oregon.
He's now retired, but he wantedto ask me about Spanish saddles
because he thought he was seeingSpanish saddles in what is his
specialty, which is rock artcarvings on rock that are found
(28:35):
throughout the west.
In turn.
I wanted to ask him about thearmor, because that's what these
pictures show.
So from the Eser Hide Painting,they're able to tell from these
rock carvings that these guys,in early times, from about 1650
to about 1750 were riding horsescovered completely from neck to
(28:57):
tail in leather armor, and theserock carvings occur everywhere
from Texas all the way up to theSaskatchewan River in Canada.
So at one time it was, that wasthe way you used horses in the
old West.
Well, something came alongcalled guns.
Completely ruined that foreveryone.
(29:19):
And of course, that's how fromabout 1750 on you have the light
cavalry tactics of the PlainsIndians, but because the armor
no longer worked.
Um, so when I received this, um,project from Shriner University
in Texas, uh, first thing I didwas I contacted Jim Kaiser and I
said, I need you to walk methrough this.
(29:41):
And he's been wonderfullyopen-handed, so much so to the
point that he now wants me towrite a scholarly article with
him about how I go aboutreconstructing these guys.
So that'll be fun to do and Ihope to, uh, to work on that
next year.
Damian Bacich (29:57):
What about
David Rickman (29:57):
Can we take a look?
Mm-hmm.
Damian Bacich (30:00):
I'm so, uh, what, so it would seem to me that, uh,
in California, the historicalrecord is, is not in the world.
How do you go about finding, youknow, knowing what these, uh,
colonists on the, an expeditionwore, for example?
David Rickman (30:24):
Well, that was a bit of luck.
Um, I knew, I knew basicallywhat they had.
I mean, years and years ago.
Um, B Brinkerhoff and Falk, uh,who were two scholars at the,
uh, Arizona Historical Society,uh, Sid Brinkerhoff and ODB Falk
published something calledLancers for the King.
(30:45):
And I've had this book sinceright after college, and it was
the 1772 Royal Regulations inSpanish and in English, and
their analysis of it.
So you start with theregulations.
Well, 1772 was just for threeyears before Ansys first
(31:05):
expedition to California.
And uh, so that is a start.
But then, you know, given enoughyears, uh, you begin looking
into it further and you find outfrom Herbert Bolton that there
is a, uh, supply list whenthey're trying to figure out how
much this expedition's going tocost for, to outfit all the new
(31:27):
recruits and their families and,and put them on saddles and
such.
And it gives a complete list ofeverything that they thought
they were gonna need for theexpedition and what it would
cost.
Okay.
Then you wanna look at Costapaintings to know what a chupa
corta might be, or what a, anagua, uh, a jacket or a skirt
might look like in the 1770s.
(31:50):
Um, and then you.
Damian Bacich (31:52):
paintings are those famous paintings that we
see, uh, with the differentethnicities and, and, so and so
marries so and so, and, uh,Mestizo marries, mulatto, and
they have a child.
It's called such and such.
Those are the, the Costapaintings, right.
David Rickman (32:12):
And they're, they're absolutely absolute
treasure troves of materialculture information.
Now, you can't always assumethat everything that was used in
Mexico City was used in theSpanish borderlands, but it is
probably our best guide and it'sbacked up because by the time
you get to the 1790s and youhave the malas fina expedition
in California, they'reessentially wearing exactly what
(32:35):
I thought they would've beenwearing.
Uh, cause the fashions didn'tchange that quickly in
California, as they did in NewMexico.
They're essentially wearing,essentially.
The same thing that you wouldsee in the cost of painting from
the 1770s.
So that helps.
And then there were variousinspections and such that
happened.
Archeology, uh, I went to theArizona historical, uh, museum
(32:58):
and, and they had some of theweapons there and such.
And I've been looking at saddlesforever.
Um, no real ones exist from thistime, but there are plenty of
images and there are saddlesthat came later that are of the
same type.
So it all comes together and,um, I've devoted, probably,
(33:19):
undoubtedly most of my life toresearching the material culture
of the Spanish Borderlands andmost particularly California.
But, um.
As I'd like, like to show alittle bit later on, there have
been other areas that I'veworked on and you know, I
mentioned the Howard Py.
I've also worked on RussianAmerica, especially Fort Ross
(33:39):
and such.
And, and that's a bit tougher.
As I said, I've, I've looked atdocuments in Spanish, French,
and German.
There's a lot of discussion, alot of evidence to be found in
Russian documents, and they'rebadly translated in publication
now.
But Russian was bridged too farfor me.
It really was.
(34:01):
Um, could we, could we seeanother picture?
Damian Bacich (34:03):
to, oh, yeah.
Um, is it difficult then to, todo research on such varied
subjects?
You know, you have to shift.
Gears from say, one geographicalarea or one time period to the
next.
Let's see.
Going to the next picture?
Yeah.
Is it, is it hard to switchgears like that?
David Rickman (34:26):
Um, it isn't actually, um, I don't know why,
uh, I will never be able to doJamestown, Virginia in the depth
that I do the Anza Expedition,but luckily, most of the, um,
most other areas, I, I wouldhave to say Damien, that
(34:48):
probably the most neglected partof, uh, American material
culture studies is west of theMississippi.
People spend a lot of timeworking on Colonial America and
even into the Midwest somewhat.
But our understanding of whatwas worn in the American West is
(35:11):
so limited by Hollywood and byillustrators like Charles
Russell and Frederick Remington.
It was far richer, far moreinteresting.
And, and neither of those twoguys actually, I mean, they,
they touched on the Spanishborderlands a bit, but neither
of them, what they reallyunderstood was cowboys and
(35:31):
cavalry and, and Plains Indiansand Apaches and Western art had
remained stuck in that grooveever since.
But they're neglecting hugeamounts of what I find
fascinating and varied cultures.
I mean, I was lucky enough to doprehistoric, uh, Southwest or
(35:53):
the Pacific Northwest where the.
Indians didn't just wanna takeyour scalp, they wanted to take
your head and had created one ofthe most absolutely
breathtakingly, gorgeous fieldsof art, styles of art in the
northwest coast that'scompletely ignored by Hollywood
(36:13):
and by the culture in general.
And I mean, you can't say enoughabout how much the Spanish
borderlands have been ignored.
Um, I think California isprobably the easiest of all
those.
If you were to say Texas, NewMexico, Southern Colorado,
(36:33):
Arizona, Baja California, andAlta California, uh, Alta
California is the easiest andthere are a variety of reasons
for that.
Um, Alta California had a verylong board, uh, shoreline with
the Sea, and so they had a.
Visitors every few years,whether it be George Vancouver
(36:54):
or the Masina Expedition or theBeachy Expedition.
In the 1820s, newcomers werealways arriving at least every
decade, if not more often, upuntil the 18, thirties, forties.
And so they left a lot of, notjust written descriptions, but
visual descriptions, and also anumber of them collected
(37:15):
artifacts and took them backwith them.
So we're so much luckier thaneven a place like Texas, even
though they were, you know, onthe Caribbean, so to speak, you
know, with, uh, they didn't havethat same sort of, um, approach.
One time I was at the WittyMuseum, uh, speaking with a
retired curator there who wasshowing me the collection, and
(37:39):
she pointed out a pair of shoesand I looked at them and I said,
I don't think those are Texan,and.
She looked it up in the recordsand she said, well, actually
they were purchased at anantique show show in Arizona.
And the dealer said that hebought them in California.
And you find this time and againis historic sites from Arizona
(38:03):
to Texas.
They lack artifacts.
They lack images that, um, wouldbe used normally in California
to interpret our history.
And so what they do is theyborrow from California.
And these shoes, if I'm notmistaken, I could even name the
maker, uh, it was Antonio Cordbecause of the way they were
(38:27):
made.
But we're very lucky inCalifornia to have as much as we
do.
I'd love to have more andsurprisingly enough as just
yesterday, more new things turnup all the time.
Um, one of the great delights ishaving formed.
The, uh, arts and skills of theSpanish borderland and, and to
(38:48):
help, uh, administer the AltaCalifornia site is that I have
made a lot of connections withpeople who said, oh yeah, I have
this here.
Stay tuned for part two of myinterview with David Rickman.
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