Desert Hawk Books

 

Trails of Tiburón
The 1894 and 1895 Field Diaries of W. J. McGee

Transcribed by
Hazel McFeely Fontana
and annotated, with an introduction, by
Bernard L. Fontana

 

 

Cloth Cover
200 pages
57 halftones, 15 line drawings
6" x 9"

Quantity: $29.95 & S/H

 

"Reached camp just before sunset. The first question was whether boat had been seen; but no sign had been observed by men in camp. Millard uttered the opinion that he had long harbored--that [it] would never be seen again. The rest of the party were quite despondent. I explained that we had several days flour and beans, plenty of water by carrying with one day's supply ahead, a little coffee, etc., and abundant clams and oysters at sand spit, with game in mountains; that we should probably find balsas at the upper rancheria, and that if not I could easily construct a raft; and I laughed away their fears--but mine would not down. I slept none that night." - December 21, 1895, Camp Thirsty

When William John McGee set out from Washington, D.C., for the Sonoran Desert in 1894, he was inspired by a passion for adventure as much as a thirst for knowledge. McGee lived in an era when discovery was made through travel rather than study, and reputations were forged by going where no outsiders had gone before.

A self-taught scientist in the newly forming field of anthropology, McGee led two expeditions through southern Arizona and northern Sonora for the Bureau of American Ethnology. There he conducted ethnographic research among the Papagos (Tohono O'odham) and the Seris, and his subsequent publication The Seri Indians helped secure his place in the anthropological community.

McGee's complete journals of the expeditions, kept in small field notebooks and preserved in the Library of Congress, are published here for the first time. These journals contain detailed descriptions of the country and people McGee encountered and convey the adventure of traveling through wild and unfamiliar places--including a voyage to Isla Tiburón, or Shark Island, in the Gulf of California--and being plagued by foul weather, a shortage of supplies, and fear of attack from hostile Indians.

Trails to Tiburón features 57 historical photographs taken on the expedition, capturing the places McGee saw and the people he encountered. Fontana's notes to the diary provide useful botanical, geological, and ethnographic information, while his introduction places McGee and his field work in the context of late-nineteenth-century anthropology and science.

Trails to Tiburón reveals McGee's versatility as a field worker and shows his methods, often questioned today, to be the reasonable response of a man caught up in the intellectual fervor of his time. For anyone wanting to share in the spirit of adventure, these journals are a landmark in the annals of exploration.

Bernard and Hazel Fontana have collaborated on several publications since their marriage in 1954. Hazel's art has illustrated such books as Edward Spicer's Cycles of Conquest and Herbert R. Hislop's An Englishman's Arizona. Now retired, Bernard Fontana was formerly ethnologist at the Arizona State Museum and field historian at the University of Arizona Library. Among his many books are Of Earth and Little Rain: The Papago Indians and Tarahumara: Where Night Is the Day of the Moon, both with photographs by John P. Schaefer and both from the University of Arizona Press.