James Baquet

    Last time, I talked about American “characters,” those odd personalities that capture the public’s attention through showmanship. Today I’d like to talk about another example. Not as famous as some, he is still the epitome of that uniquely American type.

    Charles Fletcher Lummis was born in Massachusetts in 1859 and educated at Harvard (where he was a classmate of future president Theodore Roosevelt), though he dropped out in his senior year. At the age of 25, he was working as a newspaper reporter in Ohio when he was offered a job at the then-new Los Angeles Times, in a city of only 12,000 people.

    This is when he hit on the first of his many self-promoting schemes. He decided to walk from Cincinnati to Los Angeles — a journey of 3,500 miles — entirely on foot. Remember, this was 1884; at this point there were still disturbances happening between white settlers and the original Native American occupants of the land. Along the way, Lummis sent articles ahead to Los Angeles and back to Ohio. The trip took 143 days, during which he broke his arm, struggled through winter snows, and stayed in Indian villages. The articles were later published as a book, called “A Tramp Across the Continent.”

    After arriving, he became the first city editor of The Times. He later served as city librarian, and with his collection of southwest Indian artifacts started L.A.’s Southwest Museum. The house he built near the museum stands to this day.

    He returned to the southwest many times, and became an activist on the issue of Native American rights. In California, he published a magazine, using it as a platform for the preservation of the Spanish mission churches of California, and for convincing Easterners to come west and buy land in the burgeoning city.

    Lummis was a small man, who delighted in shocking others. He wore a green corduroy suit with a red sash around his waist, and a cowboy hat — even when he went to Washington, D.C., to confer with President Roosevelt.

    This American original died in 1928, leaving behind over 20 books and innumerable articles.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. flourishing, growing quickly

    2. meet and discuss (something)

    3. perfect example

    4. unable to be counted

    5. advancing one’s cause though publicity

    6. people who live in a place

    7. people on the east coast of America

    8. the first people to move into a place

    9. ability to entertain people

    10. a heavy, ridged cloth