Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 3: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Before we start today's episode,
Speaker 3: we have an announcement.
Speaker 1: We sure do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are going to Morocco in November. Very exciting.
Speaker 3: This is our next trip that we'll be having through
Speaker 3: Defined Destinations. You can find out more about this trip
Speaker 3: at Defined Destinations dot Com. The trip is called a
Speaker 3: Taste of Morocco. They have a different Morocco trip that's
Speaker 3: coming up in the incredibly near future, like just in
Speaker 3: a couple or three weeks. I think it's not that trip.
Speaker 3: It's the one that's in November. We'll be talking more
Speaker 3: about this at the end of the episode today, but
Speaker 3: I wanted to go ahead and put it out there
Speaker 3: at the beginning.
Speaker 2: We're going to Morocco.
Speaker 3: If you want to pause episode right now and go
Speaker 3: to Defined Destinations dot Com to see about it, you
Speaker 3: can do that.
Speaker 2: We're talking about it more at the end though. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited me too.
Speaker 3: In terms of today's episode, I was looking for a
Speaker 3: topic that had something to do with conservation or nature
Speaker 3: or environmentalism. That was just what I felt like talking
Speaker 3: about at the moment, and that ultimately led me to
Speaker 3: Mary Hunter Austin. She published most of her work just
Speaker 3: under the name Mary Austin, but since there are some
Speaker 3: other historical Mary Austin's, I put the Hunter in there
Speaker 3: for clarity in the title of the episode. I was
Speaker 3: initially drawn to her story because one of the things
Speaker 3: that she became known for was walking, and I do
Speaker 3: love a walk. I usually walk in the woods, though,
Speaker 3: and Austin's walks were mostly through the deserts of the
Speaker 3: American Southwest, which she came to just deeply love. She's
Speaker 3: been compared to people like John Muir, but she doesn't
Speaker 3: have nearly that kind of name recognition today. Mary Austin
Speaker 3: was a complicated person with a complicated life.
Speaker 2: So it turns out there is not nearly as.
Speaker 3: Much walking in the desert as I thought I was
Speaker 3: going to get going into this episode. Also as a
Speaker 3: heads up, this episode includes some pretty troubling stuff involving
Speaker 3: her daughter, Ruth, who was disabled.
Speaker 1: Mary Hunter was born September ninth, eighteen sixty eight, in Carlinville, Illinois.
Speaker 1: She was the fourth of six children born to George
Speaker 1: and Susannah Graham Hunter. George was a lawyer who had
Speaker 1: immigrated from England in eighteen fifty one, and he had
Speaker 1: served in the US Army during the Civil War. The
Speaker 1: family spent much of Mary's childhood living on a farm
Speaker 1: outside of town.
Speaker 3: Mary really idolized her father. He loved to read, and
Speaker 3: she loved to spend time in his study, which was
Speaker 3: just full of books. She never really connected to her mother.
Speaker 3: That she felt a need to have a relationship with
Speaker 3: her mother, but that relationship could be very tumultuous. Susannah
Speaker 3: was a strict Methodist who was very focused on religion
Speaker 3: and respectability, and she later became involved in temperance organizations
Speaker 3: like the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Meanwhile, Mary was simultaneously intelligent, sensitive, stubborn,
Speaker 3: and rebellious. Punishment, for example, was just not really a
Speaker 3: deterrent to her. She would sort of do whatever she
Speaker 3: wanted and deal with the consequences later. She felt like
Speaker 3: her family didn't really understand her, and she was also
Speaker 3: awkward and didn't have a lot of friends except for
Speaker 3: her younger sister Jenny, who she was very close to.
Speaker 1: As an adult. Austin was known for her spirituality and mysticism,
Speaker 1: and she claimed to be clairvoyant. This started at a
Speaker 1: very early age. She described herself as seeing things like
Speaker 1: mystical images that she wasn't sure if anyone else saw,
Speaker 1: and of having memories of things that had happened before
Speaker 1: she was born. She would also announce what she thought
Speaker 1: other people were thinking or feeling, leaving her mother to
Speaker 1: say that she thought Mary was possessed.
Speaker 3: By the age of four or five, Mary had started
Speaker 3: to conceive of herself as two Mary's the regular Mary
Speaker 3: who was sort of lonely and uncertain and always at
Speaker 3: odds with her family, and then I Mary, who was
Speaker 3: an inner self who was beyond and.
Speaker 2: Above all of that.
Speaker 3: Later on, she described this inner self as the source
Speaker 3: of her writing. She also had a profound spiritual experience
Speaker 3: at about that same age, sitting under a walnut tree,
Speaker 3: in which she was just struck with a sudden awareness
Speaker 3: of everything around her and a profound sense of wonder,
Speaker 3: which she connected to God.
Speaker 1: George Hunter had contracted malaria while serving in the Civil War,
Speaker 1: and he was chronically ill throughout Mary's childchildhood. He died
Speaker 1: in October of eighteen seventy eight when Mary was about ten.
Speaker 1: Then a couple of months later, Mary contracted diphtheria as
Speaker 1: she was recovering, her sister Jenny got it to and
Speaker 1: Jenny did not survive. Mary blamed herself for having gotten
Speaker 1: her sister sick, and her mother blamed her as well.
Speaker 1: At Jenny's funeral, Mary overheard her mother ask someone why
Speaker 1: it couldn't have been Mary who died rather than her sister.
Speaker 3: After these deaths, the family left their farm and they
Speaker 3: moved into Carlonville. Susannah got a job as a nurse
Speaker 3: while she waited for approval on a widow's pension. With
Speaker 3: her mother working, Mary took on a lot of the
Speaker 3: household work, as well as the care of her baby brother, George.
Speaker 3: She spent more and more time alone, reading and writing.
Speaker 3: Susannah joined the Carlonville branch of the Chautauqua Literary and
Speaker 3: Scientific Circle, and Mary started using their home study courses
Speaker 3: to learn about literature and science. After reading a Chautauqua
Speaker 3: course in geology, she became particularly fascinated with fossils and
Speaker 3: started collecting them. Mary was bright and a good student
Speaker 3: when she first started school. She was so far ahead
Speaker 3: of her peers that she was placed in third grade.
Speaker 3: In eighteen eighty four, at the age of sixteen, she
Speaker 3: enrolled at Blackburn College in Carlonville, Illinois. She started out
Speaker 3: studying art, but then changed to science. While she wanted
Speaker 3: to be a writer, she thought she could master english
Speaker 3: and writing on her own, and she wanted to dedicate
Speaker 3: her college education to something else. Mary had a series
Speaker 3: of illnesses, some of them pretty serious really, throughout her life,
Speaker 3: and her college education was interrupted after she got a
Speaker 3: cold that she couldn't seem to recover from. She had
Speaker 3: to withdraw from Blackburn, and then once she was better,
Speaker 3: she enrolled at the State Normal School in Bloomington, Illinois.
Speaker 3: Quickly realized that she did not like the curriculum there,
Speaker 3: so she went back to Blackburn and she graduated in
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty eight. She had to get extra tutoring to
Speaker 3: make up for these interruptions in her coursework because her
Speaker 3: mother had given her a deadline she was going to
Speaker 3: cut off Mary's financial support for her education if she
Speaker 3: missed that deadline.
Speaker 1: By the time Mary graduated, her brother Jim had moved
Speaker 1: to California's San Joaquin Valley and filed a claim on
Speaker 1: a homestead there to recap. A series of homesteading laws
Speaker 1: allowed people in the United States to claim purportedly public
Speaker 1: lands for very little money under the condition that they
Speaker 1: improve it, meaning that they had to settle on it
Speaker 1: and cultivate it. But this was not vacant land that
Speaker 1: was waiting to be occupied. It was the traditional and
Speaker 1: ancestral homelands of indigenous nations and peoples who had been
Speaker 1: stripped of that land through wars, treaties, and forestry locations.
Speaker 1: Jim asked his mother for permission to file a claim
Speaker 1: on her behalf as well, and without really talking to
Speaker 1: Mary about it, Susannah and Jim decided that Mary should
Speaker 1: go to California too, with the hope that she would
Speaker 1: claim land of her own. It might seem surprising that
Speaker 1: Mary agreed to go. She didn't really even think that
Speaker 1: her mother should go. She thought Jim should have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to have his own life rather than going back
Speaker 1: to being the head of his mother's household, which is
Speaker 1: what he had done after their father's death. Mary's relationships
Speaker 1: with both Susannah and Jim had also really gone downhill
Speaker 1: after George's death, but Mary went and became both physically
Speaker 1: and emotionally unwell during the trip west, to the point
Speaker 1: that Susannah's letters to her friends described the trip as
Speaker 1: almost killing her. Although Mary was struck by the beauty
Speaker 1: of some of the landscapes that they traveled through, her
Speaker 1: condition got worse after arriving in California. Living in a
Speaker 1: barely furnished cabin without enough food to live on, Mary
Speaker 1: was tasked with hunting rabbits and other small game, which
Speaker 1: she did, but she hated killing animals, and she could
Speaker 1: barely tolerate eating what she.
Speaker 2: Had brought in.
Speaker 1: She spent much of her time exploring the natural world
Speaker 1: around her, writing down her observations, and having strange visions
Speaker 1: and premonitions. It's not totally clear whether these were spiritual
Speaker 1: experiences or reflective of her mental state and persistent malnourishment.
Speaker 1: They had arrived in California in the middle of a drought,
Speaker 1: and Susannah and Jim really struggled with their homesteads. Mary
Speaker 1: didn't wind up filing a homestead claim of her own,
Speaker 1: although there was a timber claim in her name that
Speaker 1: was eventually abandoned. A neighbor offered the family the chance
Speaker 1: to run an inn out of an existing building on
Speaker 1: his land, and that helped them all make ends meet
Speaker 1: enough for Jim and Susanna to keep their land claims.
Speaker 1: As they started to have a little more money, Mary
Speaker 1: started to physically recover, and she started to make connections
Speaker 1: to the other people living in the area homesteaders, sheep herders,
Speaker 1: and ranchers. The people she felt most at home with
Speaker 1: were often Indigenous or Mexican, not the people her family
Speaker 1: thought she should be associating with. She was interested in
Speaker 1: the ways that people outside the world of white homesteaders
Speaker 1: lived and in a landscape around her, and in how
Speaker 1: they lived with it. In eighteen eighty nine, she tried
Speaker 1: to get a job teaching, but failed the California Teaching
Speaker 1: Exam twice. She finally got a job at a private school,
Speaker 1: and she found lodgings with a family that she felt
Speaker 1: a deeper affinity for than she did. Her own.
Speaker 3: Teaching wasn't really what she wanted to do, though. She
Speaker 3: wanted to write, and the one way it seemed like
Speaker 3: she could get the financial support she needed to do
Speaker 3: that was to get married. So we'll have more on
Speaker 3: that after a sponsor break. Mary Hunter lived in an
Speaker 3: era when marriage and motherhood were the expected path for
Speaker 3: white middle class women. We've talked about a number of
Speaker 3: women in similar circumstances who supported themselves through writing without
Speaker 3: getting married. But Mary really didn't have the family support
Speaker 3: that she would need to get started with that. Her
Speaker 3: mother and her brother had their own plans, and they
Speaker 3: weren't really including Mary in their decisions or in things
Speaker 3: like the proceeds from the sale of their house back
Speaker 3: in Illinois. Getting married probably seemed like the only option
Speaker 3: for her to have some financial stability.
Speaker 1: But there were obstacles throughout her life. People commented on
Speaker 1: Austin's appearance, which was not thought to be conventionally pretty
Speaker 1: or feminine. She was very thin, and she had a
Speaker 1: square jaw and heavy eyebrows. People didn't typically smile in
Speaker 1: photos from this era, but in most pictures of Mary Austin,
Speaker 1: she is frowning. And in a part of North America
Speaker 1: that was considered the frontier, there were not that many
Speaker 1: available men to choose from.
Speaker 3: I feel like everybody that had these opinions about Mary
Speaker 3: Hunter's appearance just needed to shut up.
Speaker 2: A lot of that talk, and it bothered me.
Speaker 3: Stafford Wallace Austin, known as Wallace probably seemed like her
Speaker 3: best possible choice for a husband. He was seven years
Speaker 3: older than she was, but they were both intelligent and serious.
Speaker 3: They could talk to each other as intellectual equals. He
Speaker 3: was one of seven children born to a well off
Speaker 3: sugar planter in Hawaii, and so it seemed like they
Speaker 3: would be financially secure. Wallace was also supportive of Mary's
Speaker 3: goals as a writer. They had direct conversations about these
Speaker 3: goals before getting married, and his wedding present to her
Speaker 3: was a gold pen with a pearl handle. Agreeing to
Speaker 3: marry him seemed like the only thing her family thought
Speaker 3: she had ever done right. They got married on May eighteenth,
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety one, when Mary was twenty one.
Speaker 1: But this marriage did not go very well. One caveat
Speaker 1: here is that almost everything we know about the marriage
Speaker 1: comes from Mary's point of view, and her account is
Speaker 1: really not kind to Wallace at all. But that financial
Speaker 1: security did not really materialize, as Wallace kept investing in
Speaker 1: ventures that did not work out. But Mary played a
Speaker 1: role in their situation too. While they'd had candid conversations
Speaker 1: about her ambitions as a writer, Wallace hadn't expected her
Speaker 1: to just abandon most of the domestic tasks that a
Speaker 1: wife typically handled, which is what she did. While they'd
Speaker 1: had into actual conversations during their courtship as a married couple,
Speaker 1: they really didn't seem to be able to talk through
Speaker 1: what was going on in their lives.
Speaker 3: And what was going on was a lot of hardship
Speaker 3: and continually moving around. Wallace tried to start a vineyard,
Speaker 3: which failed. Then they moved to the Owens Valley where
Speaker 3: he had embarked on an irrigation project with his brothers,
Speaker 3: and then he went to San Francisco to work on
Speaker 3: a different project with a brother. They just they were
Speaker 3: never really settled and their money was always tight. Mary
Speaker 3: got pregnant and during the last months of her pregnancy,
Speaker 3: they were living in a hotel in Lone Pine that's
Speaker 3: roughly between Fresno, California and Las Vegas, Nevada. Mary went
Speaker 3: out for a walk one day and came back to
Speaker 3: find that they had been evicted for not paying the bills.
Speaker 3: On the advice of an acquaintance, she went to a
Speaker 3: boarding house that was primarily being used by mine workers
Speaker 3: who had developed lead poisoning, which wasn't on the job has.
Speaker 3: She offered to do things there like cook, clean, and
Speaker 3: mend in exchange for a place to stay. When Wallace
Speaker 3: got back, she learned that the irrigation project had failed
Speaker 3: and that Wallace was now in debt because of it.
Speaker 3: On top of that, he had known they were going
Speaker 3: to be evicted and he had not told her, and
Speaker 3: she found out that he had also turned down paying
Speaker 3: work as a school principal. Mary kept working at the
Speaker 3: boarding house, and she started seriously trying to publish enough
Speaker 3: work to make ends meet, like short pieces like essays
Speaker 3: and short stories. As her pregnancy made it increasingly difficult
Speaker 3: to do the more physical parts of her job at
Speaker 3: the boarding house, she decided to go to Bakersfield, where
Speaker 3: her mother lived, to have the baby. On October thirtieth
Speaker 3: of that year, she gave birth to her daughter, Ruth,
Speaker 3: after a very difficult labor that lasted for more than
Speaker 3: forty eight hours. While Mary was still recovering from giving birth,
Speaker 3: Wallace told her that his finances had totally collapsed and
Speaker 3: that he was facing legal action and that she should
Speaker 3: handle his remaining property as she saw fit. She did
Speaker 3: this by selling everything that could be sold and arranging
Speaker 3: to pay off the rest of his debts in installments.
Speaker 3: When Mary and Ruth joined Wallace back in the Owens Valley,
Speaker 3: their relationship continued to be rocky. He had finally resigned
Speaker 3: himself to teaching, so they had a small but steady income,
Speaker 3: but he was angry that she had made arrangements to
Speaker 3: pay off his debts rather than just filing for bankruptcy.
Speaker 3: Mary and Ruth were also sick a lot of the time,
Speaker 3: and sometimes Mary needed a wet nurse. Her nurse was
Speaker 3: a Piute woman from a nearby settlement, as she was able. Though,
Speaker 3: Mary kept writing and kept exploring the valley where they lived.
Speaker 3: She really fell in love with the arid landscape, and
Speaker 3: she formed relationships with many of the payute women who
Speaker 3: were living in the area, voting one named Saab, whom
Speaker 3: Mary became particularly close to. She started learning Pyute methods
Speaker 3: for doing things like making baskets and identifying and gathering
Speaker 3: local plants. Wallace eventually became the Inyo County school superintendent,
Speaker 3: and Mary kept working on selling short pieces of writing
Speaker 3: so they had a little more income, but they faced
Speaker 3: some new struggles. Mary's lack of attention to typical homemaking
Speaker 3: duties raised eyebrows as did her friendships outside of the
Speaker 3: community of white homesteaders. As we said earlier, many of
Speaker 3: her friends were Mexican or indigenous, and she frequently visited
Speaker 3: mining camps and saloons and other places that were not
Speaker 3: considered appropriate for a white woman to be.
Speaker 1: She was also.
Speaker 3: Worried about Ruth. As a baby, Ruth had been prone
Speaker 3: to periods of inconsolable crying, and then as she moved
Speaker 3: through toddlerhood, she didn't start learning to speak when most
Speaker 3: other children did. She moved her hands strangely, and it
Speaker 3: seemed like she couldn't coordinate her body. She would scream
Speaker 3: without a clear reason, and she also made strange sounds.
Speaker 3: Mary's friend, Helen McKnight doyle was a physician known as
Speaker 3: Doctor Nelly, and she described Ruth as having quote passionate,
Speaker 3: ungovernable spells. Another doctor who examined Ruth said that her
Speaker 3: condition was incurable. Some more modern historians have concluded that
Speaker 3: Ruth may have been injured during her birth, or that
Speaker 3: she may have had a genetic disorder known as rhet syndrome,
Speaker 3: or that she may have been autistic.
Speaker 1: We are not suggesting that there is blame involved with
Speaker 1: having a disabled child, but this was Mary's mindset. When
Speaker 1: she learned she was pregnant. She had promised herself that
Speaker 1: she was going to give birth to a brilliant child.
Speaker 1: The disparity between that promise to herself and Ruth's reality
Speaker 1: was painful, and Mary grieved over it. She thought all
Speaker 1: the physical work that she had done in the last
Speaker 1: months of her pregnancy, or the long journey she had
Speaker 1: taken to get to her mother's to give birth, might
Speaker 1: have harmed Ruth somehow. When doctors and friends assured her
Speaker 1: that she wasn't at fault, she turned her blame to Wallace.
Speaker 1: At this point, the eugenics movement dominated conversations on things
Speaker 1: like health and disability, and Mary held some of these
Speaker 1: ideas herself. She concluded that Wallace must have had bad
Speaker 1: blood that she had then passed on to her child.
Speaker 1: Her family, unsurprisingly did not really help. By Mary's account,
Speaker 1: Wallace was not very involved in raising their daughter, and
Speaker 1: socially he really wouldn't have been expected to be. Mary's
Speaker 1: mother was of the belief that hardships were a punishment
Speaker 1: from God. After hosting Ruth for a visit, Susannah wrote
Speaker 1: Mary a letter that said in part quote, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you've done, daughter, to have such judgment upon
Speaker 1: you you. Mary largely cut off contact with her mother
Speaker 1: after that, and Susannah died in eighteen ninety six. Although
Speaker 1: their relationship had always been difficult, Mary was really heartbroken
Speaker 1: that they had not reconciled before her death. Beyond the
Speaker 1: lack of family support, there were really no other support
Speaker 1: systems in place for disabled children or their families at
Speaker 1: this point. We don't know Ruth's own thoughts about herself,
Speaker 1: but it is very clear that in today's terminology she
Speaker 1: had high support needs. Mary didn't have much money for
Speaker 1: doctors or to hire help, and while there were neighbors
Speaker 1: who offered to watch Ruth from time to time, these
Speaker 1: offers could be short lived when people couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: how to interact with her. When she got a little
Speaker 1: bit older, Ruth repeatedly tried to run away.
Speaker 3: Mary thought the only way she could make this work
Speaker 3: was to earn enough money to support them both and
Speaker 3: to pay for care and help for her daughter. Her
Speaker 3: options were really to write or to teach, but she
Speaker 3: was trying to do that while also trying to raise
Speaker 3: a child who needed a lot of care. When Mary
Speaker 3: kept Ruth at home with her while she tried to write.
Speaker 3: At the same time, her parenting could be inattentive to
Speaker 3: the point of neglect. When Mary later found a teaching
Speaker 3: job and had nobody to look after Ruth while she
Speaker 3: was gone, she would sometimes leave Ruth by herself. People
Speaker 3: understandably judged Mary for all of this, but then when
Speaker 3: the Frager family offered to take Ruth in on their ranch,
Speaker 3: those same people, including her husband, accused Mary of abandoning
Speaker 3: her child, Even though the Fragger family was kind to
Speaker 3: Ruth and really seemed to look after her well. A
Speaker 3: lot of people were already really judgmental of Mary's defiance
Speaker 3: of social norms and when she didn't seem like an
Speaker 3: attentive mother. On top of all that, people thought she
Speaker 3: was monstrous. Wallace did not face similar judgment. People were
Speaker 3: more likely to feel sympathy for him for being married
Speaker 3: to someone that they thought was such a terrible wife
Speaker 3: and mother. Mary's critics initially included Helen McKnight doyle, who
Speaker 3: later became her friend. At one point, while Ruth was
Speaker 3: living with the Fraggers, doctor Nelly heard that she was ill,
Speaker 3: and she went to get Mary, she assumed that she
Speaker 3: would want to be with her daughter. Mary's response was quote,
Speaker 3: Ruth makes me nervous and I make her nervous. It
Speaker 3: is not good for us to be together, which doctor
Speaker 3: Nelly described as an offense against all motherhood, But she
Speaker 3: eventually came to the conclusion that Mary could provide the
Speaker 3: best home for her child by earning enough to pay
Speaker 3: for her care, rather than trying to abandon her work
Speaker 3: and care for her daughter without any resources to do so.
Speaker 3: In nineteen o three, when Ruth was eleven, Mary Austin
Speaker 3: published her first and best known book, The Lamb of
Speaker 3: Little Rain. It's a set of lyrical sketches about the
Speaker 3: Owens Valley and the Mojave Desert and the indigenous people
Speaker 3: living there. The pieces had appeared serially in the Atlantic
Speaker 3: before being published by Houghton Mifflin Books. It's not a
Speaker 3: straightforward nonfiction piece. Many of the places that Mary describes
Speaker 3: in it are amalgamations or composites of places in the
Speaker 3: real world. She started writing it after recovering from an
Speaker 3: illness during which she had a vision of two angel
Speaker 3: like beings in the room with her. She said that
Speaker 3: it had taken her twelve years to research, but only
Speaker 3: a month to craft it. With the money she earned
Speaker 3: from the Land of Little Rain, Mary was able to
Speaker 3: place Ruth in a small private hospital in Santa Clara, California,
Speaker 3: run by doctor R. E.
Speaker 2: Osborne.
Speaker 3: She thought the hospital staff would be able to give
Speaker 3: Ruth better care than she was able to do herself.
Speaker 3: She also thought it would be better for Ruth to
Speaker 3: be with other children who were like her. Ruth had
Speaker 3: been the target of derision and cruelty from children and
Speaker 3: adults alike, and she was definitely able to understand what
Speaker 3: was happening when that happened. This was initially a trial placement,
Speaker 3: and it became permanent in nineteen oh five. Austin worried
Speaker 3: about her daughter for the rest of Ruth's life, but
Speaker 3: she never visited after this. She found the whole idea devastating,
Speaker 3: and the prevailing wisdom at the time was often that
Speaker 3: family visits to hospitals and institutions would disrupt the care
Speaker 3: that children were receiving there and would actually make things
Speaker 3: worse for them. When people asked about Ruth, Mary would answer, quote,
Speaker 3: we have lost her. Austin's life from this point combines travel, writing,
Speaker 3: and activism, and we'll talk about that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 3: Around the same time that Mary Austin published The Land
Speaker 3: of Little Rain, she separated from her husband, although their
Speaker 3: divorce was not finalized until nineteen fourteen. She does seem
Speaker 3: to have had some other relationships, but she never remarried.
Speaker 3: After their separation, Mary visited San Francisco and met writer
Speaker 3: George Sterling and went to Carmel also called Carmel by
Speaker 3: the Sea on the Monterey Peninsula, where there was an
Speaker 3: artist colony. She started expanding her network of other writers,
Speaker 3: including Jack London and past podcast subject Ambrose Bierce, and
Speaker 3: she started writing and publishing a book roughly every year.
Speaker 1: Austin had developed an affinity for the indigenous peoples of
Speaker 1: the Desert Southwest, which is obvious through her writing. Her
Speaker 1: next book after The Land of Little Rain was The
Speaker 1: Basket Woman, a book of Pyute tales and legends for children,
Speaker 1: and that came out in nineteen oh four. It's clear
Speaker 1: that she was trying to be respectful and how she
Speaker 1: discussed Indigenous people in the land that they lived on,
Speaker 1: but this was definitely something that was filtered through her
Speaker 1: own lens, and she wasn't really aware of how that
Speaker 1: lens affected her impressions and interpretations of what was around her.
Speaker 1: It's also not clear how much permission she had to
Speaker 1: share these stories, if any. She also incorporated Indigenous art
Speaker 1: and dress and language into her life in a way
Speaker 1: that could be appropriative, and in her autobiography she described
Speaker 1: herself as having a quote slightly mythical Indian ancestor, even
Speaker 1: though she did not have indigenous ancestry. And while she
Speaker 1: advocated for Indigenous rights, white people started regarding her as
Speaker 1: the expert in these issues rather than the people she
Speaker 1: was advocating for.
Speaker 3: While she was no longer really in a relationship with
Speaker 3: her husband, their lives did overlap from time to time,
Speaker 3: especially in the early years of their separation. The biggest
Speaker 3: example is in a water rights dispute between the Owens
Speaker 3: Valley and the City of Los Angeles in the early
Speaker 3: to mid nineteen hundreds. Essentially, people acting on behalf of
Speaker 3: Los Angeles had been buying up land in the Owens Valley.
Speaker 3: Local people initially thought this was related to a federal
Speaker 3: land reclamation project, and so that's the use of irrigation
Speaker 3: to turn arid or semi arid land into farmland. When
Speaker 3: an article in the La Times announced that the plan
Speaker 3: was actually to build an aqueduct that would drain water
Speaker 3: out of the valley and carry it to Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: more than two hundred miles away, people in Owens Valley
Speaker 3: were outraged. Whileas Austin was a huge part of the
Speaker 3: advocacy against this project, but a lot of Mary's writing
Speaker 3: about it really leaves his workout. She kind of claims
Speaker 3: most of the credit.
Speaker 1: After this, Mary Austin left Owens Valley at first, returning
Speaker 1: to Carmel. She had a craftsman style cottage built for
Speaker 1: herself there and a treehouse that she used as a
Speaker 1: writing studio that she called wikiup from the indigenous dwelling
Speaker 1: style that is also referred to as a wigwam.
Speaker 3: In April of nineteen oh six, she went to San
Speaker 3: Francisco to meet with her publisher. While she was there,
Speaker 3: she had a premonition of an impending disaster, and she
Speaker 3: was frightened enough that she left her hotel to go
Speaker 3: stay with a friend. The next morning, an earthquake struck,
Speaker 3: followed by a fire. This was a huge disaster, and
Speaker 3: she later published her account of it in The argonaut
Speaker 3: Our episode on this earthquake and fire ran as a
Speaker 3: Saturday Classic in May of twenty twenty four. Austin's books
Speaker 3: from these years include The Flock, which was a successor
Speaker 3: to the Land of Little Rain about sheep herding, and
Speaker 3: Santa Lucia, which was focused on an unhappy marriage that
Speaker 3: was similar to her own. Lost Borders was.
Speaker 1: A collection of fiction that ends with the show short
Speaker 1: story The Walking Woman. Most of Austin's work is at
Speaker 1: least somewhat autobiographical, and in The Walking Woman, a narrator
Speaker 1: describes an encounter with the Walking Woman, who is well
Speaker 1: known by reputation in the area where she lives. She
Speaker 1: started by walking off in illness and ultimately quote she
Speaker 1: was the Walking Woman. That was it. She had walked
Speaker 1: off all sense of society, made values, and knowing the
Speaker 1: best when the best came to her, was able to
Speaker 1: take it.
Speaker 3: These books came out in the years after Austin had
Speaker 3: gone to the doctor about persistent arm pain and was
Speaker 3: told she was dying of breast cancer. Doctors said surgery
Speaker 3: might extend her life, but that her prognosis was terminal.
Speaker 3: She decided not to have that surgery and instead to
Speaker 3: live the best life she could in the time that
Speaker 3: she had left. That diagnosis came in nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 3: and when she was still alive in nineteen oh nine
Speaker 3: to go to Italy.
Speaker 1: She met another person we've covered on the show, Isadora Duncan.
Speaker 1: While she was there, she also spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time exploring Italy's museums and Catholic religious sites. Although Austin
Speaker 1: no longer thought of herself as Christian, she was drawing
Speaker 1: spiritual inspiration from multiple religions and traditions. She started treating
Speaker 1: her pain with prayer based on advice she got while
Speaker 1: visiting the Convent of the Blue Nuns. Soon after undertaking
Speaker 1: a retreat with the nuns, her pain was gone, and
Speaker 1: she considered herself to be cured. The books that came
Speaker 1: out of her time in Italy include Christ in Italy
Speaker 1: being The Adventures of a Maverick among Masterpieces, and The
Speaker 1: Man Jesus being a brief account of the life and
Speaker 1: teachings of the Prophet of Nazareth. After leaving Italy, Austin
Speaker 1: went to France, and before returning to the United States,
Speaker 1: she visited London, where she met writers like H. G.
Speaker 2: Wells and G. K.
Speaker 3: Chesterton, who we covered on the show in March of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. She also met Herbert and lou Henry Hoover,
Speaker 3: the future President and first Lady of the United States.
Speaker 3: She made multiple visits to the Lyceum Club, where she
Speaker 3: met seemingly everyone who was famous in the worlds of
Speaker 3: English language literature and art in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: On the way home, Austin visited New York City, where
Speaker 1: her play The Arrowmaker, about a paiute woman, was being staged.
Speaker 1: She joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association and became
Speaker 1: connected to birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. For the next
Speaker 1: few years, she spent her time traveling back and forth
Speaker 1: between California and New York while also advocating for women's suffrage,
Speaker 1: birth control, the right to divorce, and indigenous rights.
Speaker 3: A lot of her books during these years were connected
Speaker 3: to these issues. Her semi autobiographical novel, A Woman of Genius,
Speaker 3: came out in nineteen twelve and is about a woman
Speaker 3: whose aspirations as an actor ran against society's expectations of her.
Speaker 3: The Ford, which came out in nineteen seventeen, fictionalized the
Speaker 3: water dispute between Owens Valley and Los Angeles Number twenty six.
Speaker 3: Jane Street was a feminist novel that was named after
Speaker 3: the boarding house that was home to its central character,
Speaker 3: Ruth Farwell. By the time this novel came out, Austin's daughter, Ruth,
Speaker 3: had died at the age of twenty six. That happened
Speaker 3: on October sixth, nineteen eighteen. Some sources attribute Ruth's death
Speaker 3: to the pandemic flu, but her death certificate listed her
Speaker 3: cause of death as acute asthma. In the nineteen teens,
Speaker 3: Austin started visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, and she moved
Speaker 3: into a house there called Casakarita in nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 3: She continued to travel extensively, including lecture tours and book tours,
Speaker 3: but this was her primary home for the rest of
Speaker 3: her life. While living in New Mexico, she became a
Speaker 3: more vocal proponent of indigenous rights, including advocating for the
Speaker 3: preservation of indigenous traditions and arts. She also worked with
Speaker 3: Arthur leon Kampa of the University of New Mexico to
Speaker 3: collect Spanish language folklore, transcribing it from oral accounts. In
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty seven, Austin became involved in a second water
Speaker 3: rights controversy. This one connected to the building of Hoover Dam,
Speaker 3: which is sometimes called the Boulder Dam depending on when
Speaker 3: things about it were written. The plan was to build
Speaker 3: a dam across the Colorado River in the Black Canyon,
Speaker 3: which would provide hydroelectric power, flood control, and a water
Speaker 3: supply for irrigation and other uses. The Colorado River drains
Speaker 3: water from seven states, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona,
Speaker 3: and California, so this project required agreement among all of
Speaker 3: these states on how the water would be used and distributed.
Speaker 3: Austin was against the building of Hoover Dam. She advocated
Speaker 3: not for a project that would provide massive amounts of
Speaker 3: water to big cities, but one that could bring irrigation
Speaker 3: and flood control to small, self sufficient communities that could
Speaker 3: live within the constraints of what the land around them
Speaker 3: could support. She thought these communities might gradually industrialize, but
Speaker 3: that they would do so in a way that would
Speaker 3: allow them to maintain their traditions and their connections to
Speaker 3: the past, rather than just becoming huge and homogenized. She
Speaker 3: advocated for local control of water resources and preservation and
Speaker 3: conservation of an area's land and heritage.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty seven, Austin was appointed by the governor
Speaker 1: of New Mexico to serve as one of the state's
Speaker 1: representatives at the Seven States Conference on Water Resources. Another representative,
Speaker 1: Francis Wilson, described the address Austin gave in an interview
Speaker 1: later on quote, never in my life have I seen
Speaker 1: anything so funny as that speech she made. There were
Speaker 1: all these men armed to the teeth with facts, and
Speaker 1: Mary Austin stood up and made a speech that, well,
Speaker 1: the kind of speech Mary would make.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that they weren't interested and that it
Speaker 1: wasn't a good speech. But those hard headed, hard boiled
Speaker 1: men didn't care how beautiful Arizona is or what folklore
Speaker 1: and Indians it has.
Speaker 3: I did not find a transcript of the actual speech, uh,
Speaker 3: but that felt to me like it probably accurately summed
Speaker 3: up the tone of it. Obviously, Hoover Dam was ultimately built,
Speaker 3: but disputes among those seven states about water rights associated
Speaker 3: with it continued for years. Arizona and California in particular,
Speaker 3: remained at odds over it for decades. This was not
Speaker 3: resolved until Arizona versus California was decided by the US
Speaker 3: Supreme Court in nineteen sixty three, which was long after
Speaker 3: Austin's death. In nineteen twenty nine, Austin met Ansel Adams,
Speaker 3: who was at the very start of his career as
Speaker 3: a photographer. They collaborated on his first book, Taos Pueblo,
Speaker 3: which paired his photographs with her text. With the help
Speaker 3: of Tony Luhan, who is from the pueblo, Adams got
Speaker 3: permission from the Pueblo Council to take photographs there. This
Speaker 3: book was a limited edition of one hundred signed, numbered,
Speaker 3: and hand bound copies. Adams printed the photographs by hand.
Speaker 3: Across those one hundred books, it totaled nearly thirteen hundred prints.
Speaker 3: A facsimile edition of this book was published in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy seven, and both editions are very expensive and hard
Speaker 3: to find today, but you can see the twelve prints
Speaker 3: it includes online at the Two Red Roses Foundation. In
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty two, Austin published her autobiography called Earth Horizon.
Speaker 3: It's written primarily in the third person, although it occasionally
Speaker 3: shifts into first. It sort of continues that idea of
Speaker 3: Mary and I Mary that she had first come to
Speaker 3: in her childhood. This book led H. G. Wells to
Speaker 3: threaten to sue her over a brief mention of an
Speaker 3: affair that he had in which he had fathered a
Speaker 3: child out of wedlock. Austin rewrote the paragraph in question,
Speaker 3: but during all of the stress surrounding all of this,
Speaker 3: she had a heart attack.
Speaker 1: Austin continued to have trouble with her heart after this.
Speaker 1: She'd struggled to earn enough money off and on throughout
Speaker 1: her career, and her financial problems got worse in the
Speaker 1: wake of the Great Depression.
Speaker 3: In nineteen thirty three, she was awarded an honorary Doctor
Speaker 3: of Letters from the University of New Mexico. She published
Speaker 3: a collection of indigenous legends in folklore called One Smoke
Speaker 3: Stories in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1: Mary Hunter Austin died in her sleep on August thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, at the age of sixty five, following
Speaker 1: another heart attack. Over the course of her career, she
Speaker 1: had published thirty two books and well over two hundred
Speaker 1: articles and shorter works. Ansel Adams had said of her quote,
Speaker 1: seldom have I met and known anyone of such intellectual
Speaker 1: and spiritual power and discipline. She is a future person,
Speaker 1: one who will a century from now appear as a
Speaker 1: writer of major stature in the complex matrix of American culture.
Speaker 1: That turned out not to be true. Helen McKnight doyle
Speaker 1: published a biography of her in nineteen thirty nine, but
Speaker 1: Mary Austin was largely forgotten about after her death. Although
Speaker 1: there was some rediscovery of her work starting in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, it is mostly taught today in the context
Speaker 1: of environmental literature. She's sometimes described as an early ecofeminist,
Speaker 1: although that term was not coined until the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: She said of herself quote, I may not know how
Speaker 1: to write, nor how to delineate character, nor even how
Speaker 1: to tell a story. The one thing I am sure
Speaker 1: about myself that I know the relation of letters and landscape,
Speaker 1: of life and environment. Some of the land that Austin
Speaker 1: wrote about in works like The Land of Little Rain
Speaker 1: is now part of a number of parks and preserves,
Speaker 1: including Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve.
Speaker 1: Her home in Inno County is now California Historical Landmark
Speaker 1: two twenty nine. This is where she wrote most of
Speaker 1: the land of Little Rain, and the marker includes a
Speaker 1: quote from it quote, but if you ever come beyond
Speaker 1: the borders as far as the town that lies in
Speaker 1: a hill temple at the foot of Kearsarge, never leave
Speaker 1: it until you have knocked at the door of the
Speaker 1: brown house under the willow tree at the end of
Speaker 1: the village street. And there you shall have such news
Speaker 1: of the land of its trails, and what is a
Speaker 1: stir in them, as one lover of it can give
Speaker 1: to another.
Speaker 2: And that is Mary Hunter Austin.
Speaker 3: I did not intend to pick an episode that was
Speaker 3: about desert landscapes in which we were also going to
Speaker 3: talk about going to Morocco.
Speaker 1: That's a coincidence. It just worked out.
Speaker 3: But in lieu of listener mail, let's talk about going
Speaker 3: to Morocco. Okay again, we are going to go to Morocco.
Speaker 3: This trip is from November fourth through fifteenth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: November fourth is really the travel day that people will
Speaker 3: leave the United States to go to Morocco. We have
Speaker 3: had folks join us on these trips who have been
Speaker 3: flying from places other than the United States, but most
Speaker 3: folks are from the US, so that's why we say
Speaker 3: it that way. I am really excited about this trip.
Speaker 3: It feels a little weird to be talking about going
Speaker 3: on a trip in the kind of chaotic times that
Speaker 3: we're living in currently, but still excited about It is
Speaker 3: something that we started planning last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: not able to announce until just now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm very excited. Listen. We're gonna go
Speaker 1: to fees. There's gonna be some Indiana Jones filming locations
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna make sure I check out. But we're
Speaker 1: also doing a lot of really really beautiful stuff. I
Speaker 1: actually met a woman from Morocco while I was on
Speaker 1: vacation recently, and she was so excited that We're going
Speaker 1: to spend a couple days in chef Showen, which is
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily beautiful place. It's all just gonna be a
Speaker 1: little mind blowing, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we have some things that I'm particularly excited
Speaker 3: about that are slightly different from what we have done
Speaker 3: on our previous trips. One is we are going to
Speaker 3: have a Moroccan cooking class. Yeah, very excited about that.
Speaker 3: We were also going to have one night of glamping.
Speaker 3: It's a luxury camping experience. I'm very excited about that. Also,
Speaker 3: this is most of our trips. I guess all of
Speaker 3: our trips really before this point that we've gone on
Speaker 3: for the show have been to Europe. So I'm interested
Speaker 3: in going to a place that is, you know, culturally
Speaker 3: and in terms of the landscape, like quite different from
Speaker 3: where we have traveled to before. The photos of some
Speaker 3: of the places that we are going to be visiting
Speaker 3: are just so beautiful. I don't know, I can't, I
Speaker 3: don't know what else to say about it. I'm very
Speaker 3: excited about it. I think on the spectrum of trips
Speaker 3: that we have gone on, this is probably toward the
Speaker 3: more active trip.
Speaker 1: We are on the move throughout this trip, we're not Yes, listen,
Speaker 1: is this a fear for me? Yes, because I like
Speaker 1: to like nest up in a hotel for a week
Speaker 1: and like have my base of operations. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to pack in a manner that makes me
Speaker 1: able to pick up every day and a half and go.
Speaker 1: But I think that's also great and it's a good challenge.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, So again we are both incredibly excited about
Speaker 3: this trip. You can learn more about it at defined
Speaker 3: destinations dot com.
Speaker 2: That is all one word. The actual url.
Speaker 3: At it of it as is Defined Destinations dot Com slash.
Speaker 3: Then it's Taste of Morocco twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 3: Each of those words is separated by a dash of
Speaker 3: That feels a little complicated to me to read out
Speaker 3: in a way. So the probably easier way to get
Speaker 3: there is to go to Defined Destinations dot Com on
Speaker 3: under tours, it is the one called a Taste of Morocco.
Speaker 2: If you have questions.
Speaker 3: About the travel arrangements, the trip itself, all of that,
Speaker 3: the folks to ask are going to be the folks
Speaker 3: at Defined Destinations. Because Holly and I will be on
Speaker 3: this trip. We are both extremely excited about it and
Speaker 3: looking forward to meeting everyone who joins us on the trip.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to things like hotel and accommodations
Speaker 3: and any dietary restrictions, anything like that, like, that's going
Speaker 3: to be Defined Destinations making those arrangements and answering those questions.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I have anything else to add
Speaker 3: with that other than very excited for the twelfth time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be a blast and I can't wait. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I'm sure we will be talking about this
Speaker 3: some more. We will be putting links to it up
Speaker 3: on our various social media and yeah, if you would
Speaker 3: like to send us a note about this or any
Speaker 3: other podcast or about travel, or about you know, signing
Speaker 3: up for this trip and telling us how excited that
Speaker 3: you are that you're going to be going on it.
Speaker 3: We are at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and
Speaker 3: you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 3: and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Missed in History.
Speaker 3: Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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Speaker 3: to your favorite shows.