076: True Visual History of California Part 1 | David W. Rickman, Illustrator and Historian

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

David's Website

Transcript

0:00

Believe it or not, most of us have a very feeble idea of the past. We depend a lot on photographs on Hollywood on. Paintings or other illustrations we've seen, and especially on the frontier and especially in California, we have an even weaker idea of what things look like. First of all, when you talk about the American West, we're very influenced by Hollywood. And let's face it, there were very few, if any, photographers in California prior to the Gold Rush. So it's very hard to conceptualize what things and people looked like, uh, especially how people dressed, for example. So the guest I'm interviewing on this episode is a great person to have on with this regard. He's a very unique person when it comes to his expertise, and he's gonna shed a light on some things that I think we don't even realize that we take for granted. David w Rickman is his name, and he is the premier illustrator of topics related to the history of California and the overall Spanish borderlands. That would be, you know, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, California. Uh. I don't know if I left something out, but this, that whole swath of territory that was part of Northern New Spain. If you visited missions and state historical parks here in California, you have likely seen his work. Or if you've, uh, traveled along the Wam, Batista des, uh, national Historic Trail or. Other history museums throughout the west. Not, not only the west, also on the east coast, you will have seen his work. He's not only, uh, illustrated panels and signs and brochures, everything for state and national parks and museums, but he's illustrated books and he even created the manual for, uh. Sutter's Fort State Historic Parks, costumes also for Fort Ross and others, and he's working on a new one, which I can't wait to see that's going to be updated. David is a fascinating person, not only because he's an incredibly talented artist, but he's an historian and he, he moderates two excellent Facebook groups for people interested in what we call the material culture. Of California and the Southwest. How did people dress? What did they eat? Um, what did architecture look like? The things that you can touch, you know, that the historical, the historical material culture of the Southwest. And on top of that, he's just an overall wonderful person. As you'll hear in our conversation. His experience as an artist and an illustrator gives him a really unique perspective on history and on California history in particular. I. And you will notice that he mentions Antonio Cord a number of times as an important source for information about early California dress. And if you've been following this podcast, you know I have a number of episodes, uh, dedicated to sections of Antonio Cordell's memoirs. So hopefully you go back and listen to those. In much of the interview, by the way, we refer to some illustrations of David's so that he actually shared with me. So I recommend that if you can you watch this interview on YouTube where you can see those illustrations, you can find it by just going and looking up California Frontier. On YouTube and you'll see our channel. I have a number of our interviews posted there. One last thing. You may notice that the audio at times seems a little bit clippy. I hope it's not much of a distraction. I just wanna let you know that I'm aware of it and I don't think, and I hope it won't detract too much from the interview because the content is very fascinating. So now with all that said, let's get into my interview with David w Rickman

Damian Bacich: 4:55

Looks like we've started. thAnks. Thank you for being here. I'm excited

David Rickman: 4:59

you so.

Damian Bacich: 5:00

to you. You know, we have great conversations, or at least I have a great conversation. Listen, listening to you every time we meet up, and I'm just grateful to be able to of share this with the things we talk about with more people. And I'm, I'm always struck by the things I hear and see from you, your, your your presentations when I go to conferences or. Some of the most interesting. So once again, David, I'm really grateful for this.

David Rickman: 5:30

Well, thank you so much, Damian. And it's a shame we only get to see one another once a year or today this. time we could, could see one other twice. But, uh, it's, it's so much fun to, uh, to get out with colleagues because as you probably understand, the, the life of an illustrator is fairly solitary one. And, uh, one of the reasons why I, uh, I love coming out is I get to actually be with fellow nerds. Uh, talking about a subject that, um, you know, if you were to start a conversation on the East coast here about the things that interest me, no. It, it wouldn't work.

Damian Bacich: 6:05

Right. I think even here in, well, even here in California, I think it's unusual, but, but I'm discovering that there are more and more people, at least than I thought, who are really interested in California history. And I think the, the visual aspect of what you do is so fascinating, fascinating. Because there are, as you know, and as you've mentioned in other places, there are a lot of places to learn through words about the life of the past and, you know, in, in our case, California, that we're talking about in particular, uh, but, but the visual representation of that is so unusual, right? It's so. Rare. So what you do is really interesting and exciting.

David Rickman: 6:56

Well, Well, thank you. Yeah, I, it, it was actually a struggle for me early on in life to, uh, to go with the life of the mind, of the life of, of, uh, visual expression, I suppose is the best way to put it. Um. And in a way I don't think I've even solved that problem yet, except somehow at this point in life, it seems to be easier and easier to, uh, uh, to do. Um, I mean, I would, I got a degree in history from Berkeley, but nevertheless, when they said, do you, do you wanna go onto graduate school? I said, actually teaching isn't exactly what I wanted to do. I set out to be an illustrator, but I just always loved history. So it, it has been. It has been kind of a light motif of my life that sometimes I'm a historian, sometimes an I'm an illustrator. Um, and somehow now it seems to work out. Um, I think one of the most flattery things is that I will come to the, uh, the California Missions and Presidio conferences, which I, I adore. I just, I have such a good time there. There are such wonderful scholars, including yourself there, people who have such qualifications and such. And at times I feel like I'm a bird watcher and a group of ornithologists. Um, you know, I can, I could tell you about the interesting flicker that I saw, and you can probably give me chapter in verse from, you know, its evolution and it's fully, it's uh, uh, life and all of that. Nevertheless, it's, it's been fun and I'm, I'm so grateful that it's such a welcoming association. I encourage so many people to, uh, to join the organization because I think that's where the future lies, is, uh, trying to bring new people into that, this conversation. Um, but getting back to the visual aspect, one of the things that, um, I'd like to talk about if I can, Ken, is that. The way this all started out, I think I've, children will show you if they can, what they intend to be. Um, so when I was a child, I drew like crazy and um, a lot of horses in particular. Um, but I also loved history. But the visual aspect of history was always my dream. Not to live in the past, because at a very early age, I found out that the past wasn't always a great place to live, but to see it and then later in life to help others to see it as best I could. Of course we don't actually see it, but I try to come as close as I can to, to creating, um, something that looks as much as. We can tell about history in the same way that, um, there are artists who reconstruct dinosaurs from bones. Uh, I reconstruct the past from archeology, written and, and visual, uh, eyewitness written and visual, uh, accounts. And, um, it showed itself early in my life the same time that I was drawing horses. When I went into fourth grade and they handed me my fourth grade California history book, as they always do. Um, I remember opening it up and actually I have the image in my PowerPoint that, uh, I'll show you and we can talk about it whenever you want to see that. But it was a picture of the Portola expedition coming up the coast, uh, probably heading towards San Francisco Bay, and I can still remember. And it's been a memory I've had all my life of looking at that and thinking it says 1769 and yet that's around the time of the American Revolution. And these guys have got like conquistador outfits on what's going on here. And as I've said often, um, the rest 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 I saw, um, year in fourth grade that inspired me for what I'm doing for the rest of my life, which is. A picture that shows, uh, the Port LA Expedition of 1769 riding up the coast towards San Francisco and in fourth grade, me looked at that when I first opened my, my California history reader. And I thought to myself, wait a minute, it says 1769 and yet that's around the time of George Washington. And why are these people wearing conquistador outfits? And as I have said often before, that's question has been something I've been trying to answer the rest of my life. Uh, why do people picture the past like this? Why haven't they looked to see what it really was like? And you know, the odd thing Damien, is no one really has, um, except a few people that I'll, I'll mention, but there have been, I. No serious books written about what was worn in early California, um, ever. Uh, there was a little book that was published during the, uh, depression by, um, two women, uh, Mackey and Suey, and it is a costume book, and, and it, it's really pretty bad and it's really pretty simplistic. And yet in 1976 for the bicentennial, Stanford University Press republished it. And other than that, my Sutter Schwart costume manual and now my upcoming, where Worlds Met from California State Parks. No one has taken this seriously now. I just this morning, um, received some pictures, uh, from a collector and they are watercolor sketches by an artist named Alexander Harmer who came to California in 1891. Married into the Abdi family in Santa Barbara and spent the rest of his life doing paintings of early California. And he really did try and make the effort to see into the past. He wasn't always completely effective. 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 did of California clothing, obviously antiques that were brought to him by old Californias. He wanted to know what the clothing looked like. They brought him their old clothes and he painted them and they appear later in his paintings and, uh, and other illustrations. He took an approach that I admire, the one that I try and follow today, which is to look at real things. Don't make things up. There's another artist, Joe Mora, that everyone loves. And frankly, I love him as an illustrator and an author, but he was really pretty bad when it came to try and trying to reconstruct what the old Californias from Port Law down to, uh, the Battle La San Pasquale looked like he was so bad that, as I've often said, uh, he put the leggings, the BOTAs onto all of his, uh, eros backwards. That was not someone who actually had looked at the real things and talked to the real people. And yet at the beginning of his book, California is he says, what I've presented here, it's all true what he's presented there visually. None of it is true, and yet he's the illustrator that everyone goes to first when it comes to, uh, uh, showing old Californias, I mean, his pictures are throughout the. The California Park system, for example. So what it is that I do, if I could 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 think it is, or was so difficult to picture past in California's past in inaccurate way? Why do you think, uh, Joe Mora, for example, able to or didn't talk to descendants or people who had that? 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 take advantage of all the things that were available to him. I mean, Alexander Harmer, the illustrator, author, I mean artist and illustrator that I mentioned earlier, I. Harmer arrived in California in 1891 at a time when, uh, Antonio Cordell and all were still around, and he could talk to them and he could, he had them act as his models, and yet Harmer lived until 1925. Joe Mora could have taken a trip down to from Monterey down to Santa Barbara, and spoken with Harmer and looked at his artwork, but evidently he, he didn't want to. Um, as an illustrator myself, I know that there is a tendency with some of us that we want to show the past or whatever subject it might be, um, the way we see it. Um, I live in the hometown of an illustrator named Howard Pyle, and he is the one who created the, the idea of how pirates looked with the head scarves and the striped shirts and the big sashes and all of that. It that in influenced right down to Pirates of the Caribbean today. And yet that isn't at all what pirates looked like. And I have spent a lot of time reading through his, uh, papers and looking at his sketches and all that. And I realized that at some point along the way, he knew that that's not what they looked like. But he continued to do it because he liked the way they looked. He liked what he created. And I think we could go back to Joe Mora and say he did the same thing. Whether or not he knew it, he just bypassed the whole research part. Um, and went straight to illustrating. Another thing that was available to him is he could have gone down to Los Angeles, to the Los Angeles County Museum where they have the largest collection of California clothing, the Cornell and, and other family collections. It's not huge, but it's enough, uh, that if you went to that museum. He could have answered a lot of his questions, or if he had the questions he could have, he could have done a much better job of representing, uh, early California. There were existing saddles throughout California. Joe Morty ignored them because he created something that I think he liked better. He might have gotten the bit right as as, uh, my friend John Grafton will point out, but he got the saddles all wrong. I don't think that Maura understood really what historical illustrators do, where Alexander Harmer did.

Damian Bacich: 18:41

So did your, so your interest begin. Directly with California, But you, you also, what I've noticed is that you illustrate a broad variety of historical subjects. How did you get into this this world after having, after having graduated with a degree from Berkeley in history?

David Rickman: 19:06

Well, it's interesting. Um, I grew up in California. I, I felt the presence of California history all around me, uh, all the years of, of my growing up and, and well in, into my thirties when I first moved to the East Coast. But I wanted to be an illustrator, and an illustrator as essentially a taxi dancer. You know, 10 cents a dance, you pay me. I'll illustrate what it is you ask for. Um, I started out doing children's, uh, textbooks and, and, uh, and other kinds of books for kids. And then eventually was able to work 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, um, were Dover coloring books. Um. Yeah, California missions and, and cowboys coloring books were my opportunity to break out as an illustrator that did historical topics and I was able to use these then to start going to historic sites, uh, national Park Service and such, and doing more of this kind of thing. But when you do that, I mean, I ended up doing, oh, uh, Northwest Coast Indians in Alaska, 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, Rhode Island, uh, Jamestown in the 16 hundreds. I love it all, and part of it is that it allows me to do research and, and that in a way is also my calling card when I do illustrations. Um, right now I'm doing a project, I hope it goes forward with, um, Shriner University in Texas. They wanted to find someone who would illustrate the, uh, Texas Native Americans and Spaniards in the 1750s, which was a crucial time in, in Texan history. And so they came to me and I've just spent the last month and a half corresponding with, uh, the foremost experts, uh, trying to find out about something that no one really understands, which is the fact that Early Plains Indians we're used to thinking of them riding bareback and lying along the sides of their horses and shooting under the necks and all that. Early Plains Indians copied the Spanish and went into battle, completely armored with their horses, covered with buckskin armor down to their knees, and the, the men wearing armor as well. That's something no one has ever illustrated. Well, I hope to be illustrating that soon. Yeah, it's exciting stuff. Um, I'm also doing, uh, some work, uh, for a little Norwegian farm in Lake Superior. No project that allows me to do some research and, and get into it is ever boring to me. But somehow, for whatever reason, early California and also the Spanish Borderlands as a whole, going from all the way from Texas to to California, that's had a hold on me. And if you wanna be mystic about it, it's almost as if I didn't choose it. It chose me for whatever reason. Because it feels like that sometimes. I'm thinking, well, you know, I could have gone on and done other things. I could have gone on and, and taught, but I think this kept pulling me back for whatever reason. And, um, I think. 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 wonderful project. It was the Juan Batista Dances and National Historic Trail, which in the early two thousands, um, allowed me, uh, to put, to put, to use something I've been researching since the 1970s, since the bicentennial itself. 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 the supply list, uh, the original supply list that was shared with me by a man named Don Ti, who was, uh, worked for the, the National Park Service. And he, uh. Not only spoke Spanish, but he also spoke Basque because his family was Basque and that was the Anza family was Basque, so he was the perfect scholar to talk to about what they might have worn and and such. And so that was a great project for me and one that I loved. And I actually retraced the, um, the trail. Uh, a friend and I drove the trail, uh, in, uh, 2023 in order to, uh, uh, get a feeling for the landscape and, and the experiences of the, uh, the people 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 myth busters 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 to see what it actually looked like. Um, and, and one of the things that, uh, I, I know language is your great skill and, and delight. Damien, one of the things I like to 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 up that actually need to be understood from a material culture point of view. If you folks are gonna be able to do your job to the best of your abilities. And I can't tell you how many things I've read, not by you and no names mentioned, where the word IL will be translated as rifle and um, uh, cal will be translated as trousers. It completely loses the whole character of what it is people are trying to. Uh, understand. And it was a great frustration for me when I first started out doing this. And so, um, I've studied Spanish, German, and French enough that when I read through the documents, I can find out what it is I need to know. I think if I'd been more of a scholar, I would've spent a lot more time in archives and, and dealing with original documents. But what I have done, um, it's really helped me to understand it from the point of view of language. cause language is so important to understanding what it is they, they have. So now I recommend that when people try and do this kind of work, they go to the original documents in their original languages, find, find out how to, to read the handwriting, find out how to, uh, access period dictionaries that will explain to you better than modern dictionaries what these people had in mind. So it's, it's more than just, um. Sitting around like Howard Pyle did and, and imagining what pirates looked like. It's actually trying to find out.

Damian Bacich: 26:38

So going back to the case of the Comanches using armor or leather clad, how did you come across, how, how is that revealed in, say, the documents?

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 have any pictures here, but people can look it up. Years ago, I think I was still in college. I came across the book, uh, by a, uh, Swiss scholar whose name was Hoz, HOTZ, I don't remember his first name, but it was about two paintings on Buffalo Hide that were found in a Swiss home in the 1930s, 40. Someone recognized what they were. He rec recognized that they certainly weren't. I mean, people had thought, well, maybe it shows South America. Maybe it shows Asia. No, what it shows, the two different high paintings are battles that took place in the west. The first one is called Sesser one, and, and they, both of'em are still on display now in Santa Fe at the History Museum. The first one shows armed horsemen, completely armored horses, completely armored men riding the battle against dismounted Indians who were firing at them with bows and arrows. Well, that was intriguing. So I thought about it for some years and, and picked up things here and there as I went along. And then, oddly enough, because of our connected era with computers, um, in 2019, I received an email from the foremost scholar of horse armor, uh, a guy named Jim James Kaiser. Who is a professor of archeology in Oregon. He's now retired, but he wanted to ask me about Spanish saddles because he thought he was seeing Spanish saddles in what is his specialty, which is rock art carvings on rock that are found throughout the west. In turn. I wanted to ask him about the armor, 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 horses covered completely from neck to tail in leather armor, and these rock carvings occur everywhere from Texas all the way up to the Saskatchewan River in Canada. So at one time it was, that was the way you used horses in the old West. Well, something came along called guns. Completely ruined that for everyone. And of course, that's how from about 1750 on you have the light cavalry tactics of the Plains Indians, but because the armor no longer worked. Um, so when I received this, um, project from Shriner University in Texas, uh, first thing I did was I contacted Jim Kaiser and I said, I need you to walk me through this. And he's been wonderfully open-handed, so much so to the point that he now wants me to write a scholarly article with him about how I go about reconstructing these guys. So that'll be fun to do and I hope 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 historical record is, is not in the world. How do you go about finding, you know, knowing what these, uh, colonists on the, an expedition wore, for example?

David Rickman: 30:24

Well, that was a bit of luck. Um, I knew, I knew basically what 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 called Lancers for the King. And I've had this book since right after college, and it was the 1772 Royal Regulations in Spanish and in English, and their analysis of it. So you start with the regulations. Well, 1772 was just for three years before Ansys first expedition to California. And uh, so that is a start. But then, you know, given enough years, uh, you begin looking into it further and you find out from Herbert Bolton that there is a, uh, supply list when they're trying to figure out how much this expedition's going to cost for, to outfit all the new recruits and their families and, and put them on saddles and such. And it gives a complete list of everything that they thought they were gonna need for the expedition and what it would cost. Okay. Then you wanna look at Costa paintings to know what a chupa corta might be, or what a, an agua, uh, a jacket or a skirt might look like in the 1770s. Um, and then you.

Damian Bacich: 31:52

paintings are those famous paintings that we see, uh, with the different ethnicities 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 Costa paintings, right.

David Rickman: 32:12

And they're, they're absolutely absolute treasure troves of material culture information. Now, you can't always assume that everything that was used in Mexico City was used in the Spanish borderlands, but it is probably our best guide and it's backed up because by the time you get to the 1790s and you have the malas fina expedition in California, they're essentially wearing exactly what I thought they would've been wearing. Uh, cause the fashions didn't change that quickly in California, as they did in New Mexico. They're essentially wearing, essentially. The same thing that you would see in the cost of painting from the 1770s. So that helps. And then there were various inspections and such that happened. Archeology, uh, I went to the Arizona historical, uh, museum and, and they had some of the weapons there and such. And I've been looking at saddles forever. Um, no real ones exist from this time, but there are plenty of images and there are saddles that came later that are of the same type. So it all comes together and, um, I've devoted, probably, undoubtedly most of my life to researching the material culture of the Spanish Borderlands and most particularly California. But, um. As I'd like, like to show a little bit later on, there have been other areas that I've worked on and you know, I mentioned the Howard Py. I've also worked on Russian America, especially Fort Ross and such. And, and that's a bit tougher. As I said, I've, I've looked at documents in Spanish, French, and German. There's a lot of discussion, a lot of evidence to be found in Russian documents, and they're badly translated in publication now. But Russian was bridged too far for me. It really was. Um, could we, could we see another picture?

Damian Bacich: 34:03

to, oh, yeah. Um, is it difficult then to, to do research on such varied subjects? You know, you have to shift. Gears from say, one geographical area or one time period to the next. Let's see. Going to the next picture? Yeah. Is it, is it hard to switch gears like that?

David Rickman: 34:26

Um, it isn't actually, um, I don't know why, uh, I will never be able to do Jamestown, Virginia in the depth that I do the Anza Expedition, but luckily, most of the, um, most other areas, I, I would have to say Damien, that probably the most neglected part of, uh, American material culture studies is west of the Mississippi. People spend a lot of time working on Colonial America and even into the Midwest somewhat. But our understanding of what was worn in the American West is so limited by Hollywood and by illustrators like Charles Russell and Frederick Remington. It was far richer, far more interesting. And, and neither of those two guys actually, I mean, they, they touched on the Spanish borderlands a bit, but neither of them, what they really understood was cowboys and cavalry and, and Plains Indians and Apaches and Western art had remained stuck in that groove ever since. But they're neglecting huge amounts of what I find fascinating and varied cultures. I mean, I was lucky enough to do prehistoric, uh, Southwest or the Pacific Northwest where the. Indians didn't just wanna take your scalp, they wanted to take your head and had created one of the most absolutely breathtakingly, gorgeous fields of art, styles of art in the northwest coast that's completely ignored by Hollywood and by the culture in general. And I mean, you can't say enough about how much the Spanish borderlands have been ignored. Um, I think California is probably the easiest of all those. If you were to say Texas, New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Arizona, Baja California, and Alta California, uh, Alta California is the easiest and there are a variety of reasons for that. Um, Alta California had a very long board, uh, shoreline with the Sea, and so they had a. Visitors every few years, whether it be George Vancouver or the Masina Expedition or the Beachy Expedition. In the 1820s, newcomers were always arriving at least every decade, if not more often, up until the 18, thirties, forties. And so they left a lot of, not just written descriptions, but visual descriptions, and also a number of them collected artifacts and took them back with them. So we're so much luckier than even a place like Texas, even though they were, you know, on the Caribbean, so to speak, you know, with, uh, they didn't have that same sort of, um, approach. One time I was at the Witty Museum, uh, speaking with a retired curator there who was showing me the collection, and she pointed out a pair of shoes and I looked at them and I said, I don't think those are Texan, and. She looked it up in the records and she said, well, actually they were purchased at an antique show show in Arizona. And the dealer said that he bought them in California. And you find this time and again is historic sites from Arizona to Texas. They lack artifacts. They lack images that, um, would be used normally in California to interpret our history. And so what they do is they borrow from California. And these shoes, if I'm not mistaken, I could even name the maker, uh, it was Antonio Cord because of the way they were made. But we're very lucky in California to have as much as we do. I'd love to have more and surprisingly enough as just yesterday, more new things turn up all the time. Um, one of the great delights is having formed. The, uh, arts and skills of the Spanish borderland and, and to help, uh, administer the Alta California site is that I have made a lot of connections with people who said, oh yeah, I have this here.

38:57

Stay tuned for part two of my interview with David Rickman.