DEATH CLAIMS A GIANT OF THE WEST
Neuberger, Richard L.
Death Claims A Giant Of The West By RICHARD L NEUBERGER EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is one of a series which Capt. Richard L. Neuberger will write for The Progressive on the American outdoors and...
...Back he stretched across the years, to the time when Francis Parkman wrote The Oregon Trail and Maj...
...It became part of him...
...The loon calling at sunset, the salmon leaping in the dawn, the silent majesty of mountain peaks against the Northern sky, the weird mystery of the Aurora Borealis, the upland desert with its painted colors—these things moved his spirit and challenged his mind...
...One afternoon Col...
...Wood became a first lieutenant and rode in campaigns against the Bannock Tribe and later against the Pi-yutes...
...The Indians who live in the Wallowas, where Joseph fought, remember the white-headed Colonel who came back many times...
...Wood raised a large family...
...He supported "Battling Bob" for President in 1924, Al Smith in 1928, and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, '36, and '40...
...To him the Indian became a symbol of little people around the world, people who hadn't a chance, but who had hopes and aspirations for a better life and a homeland in which they could take pride...
...Wood was writing a biography of his father, who had been one of the early Governors of California...
...Captain Neuberger, who has just returned from 20 months of service with the United States Army in Alaska and the Canadian Arct ic, is a well known political writer ivho is also widely known for his writing on fishing, hunting, mountain climbing, and the outdoors in general...
...Always he wore a big Windsor tie and Inverness cape and sometimes his battered campaign hat with the crossed sabers of the old First Cavalry...
...John Wesley Powell and Zebulon Montgomery Pike and Capt...
...Bonneville...
...He rode with Gen...
...There were Whitman and Thoreau, and Fremont and Lewis and Clark, and Maj...
...His widow and second wife, Sara Bard Field, is a notable poet in her own right...
...Wood to denounce him...
...Yet the wilderness remained the dominant influence in his life...
...At his feet in Portland a young man grew up named John Reed, who went to Russia and became to the Russian Revolution what Marshal Lafayette was to our own struggle for independence...
...Men stood when he entered a room...
...Joseph was struggling for what Americans have always held dear—home and family and fireside...
...Into his soul the wilderness entered...
...He called himself a New Dealer and he wanted the President to stand by that banner...
...His Poet in the Desert in 1916 is still one of the great and moving descriptions of the American sagebrush and mesa country...
...This strain has nearly run out...
...He fished in the upper reaches of the Columbia and climbed the tall peaks of the Cascades...
...He went to Portland, Oreg., and commenced the practice of law...
...He graduated from Columbia University in New York not only as an attorney but as a Ph...
...He said he was a "philosophical anarchist" at heart...
...He decided that all this vast outdoors was Joseph's homeland, that the Indian had been fighting to defend the place where'his father and his father before him had lived and died...
...Fighter In Indian Wars He was born in Erie, Pa., but he was a product of the West...
...Few of these giants still live in our midst...
...Col...
...He was with Howard in the savage Battle of White Bird Hill, when Joseph ambushed Howard's column in the Snake River Canyon and cut half his command to pieces...
...He was 92 years old and he got his commission as a second lieutenant of cavalry in 1874, when the paint ponies of Indian hostilities still sounded on the Western uplands...
...I am not satisfied that the Indians were in the wrong," he said...
...His Great Versatility During this long period, Col...
...He teas a member of the Oregon State Legislature at the time he entered military service in 1942...
...Influenced By The Wilderness Col...
...Wood put on his medals and his old Army uniform and threw the enemies of Sen...
...Oliver 0. Howard in pursuit of the great Nez Perce leader, Chief Joseph...
...He was still vigorous and strong at his death, a characteristic of men whose lives have been spent under the roof of stars and clouds...
...Wood and Joseph ride again at White Bird and talk over that battle of so long ago...
...In this episode Wood met the elder La Follette and George Norris, and he always backed them in political controversies...
...He lives in Portland, Oreg., has a cabin on theOregon Coast, and is a leading conservationist...
...When he died in Los Gatos, Calif., a few weeks ago Col...
...He began to think of Joseph, the man he had fought and helped to conquer...
...He had achieved greatness as a soldier, as a scholar, as a lawyer, as a poet, as a writer, as a political philosopher...
...Wood by this time was a colonel, a distinguished and valiant military figure, but he resigned his commission in the Army...
...He began to champion the cause of labor...
...In 1901 he published Tales of the North American Indians and tried to expiate his part in the campaign against Joseph so long before...
...Wood became a political associate of a quiet Portland doctor, Harry Lane, and he managed the campaign which sent Lane to the United States Senate...
...They wrote immortal verse and prose, they kept journals which are still indexes to our land, they explored the mountains and rivers and canyons of the West, they made their countrymen understand the ponds and beaches and hillsides of New England...
...One of the last of them has just died...
...Wood was the oldest living graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point...
...Charles Er-skine Scott Wood...
...He was Col...
...When he died Col...
...His daughter, Nanny Wood Honeyman, was an outstanding liberal member of Congress from the State of Oregon...
...With his long white beard and mass of snowy hair, he looked like some ancient seer, a patriarch indeed...
...Wood ceased the practice of law...
...Translated into innumerable languages, it is a story of many illustrious personages coming before the Judgment Seat and arguing their lives and causes with God...
...He became the first white inan to travel the length of the Yukon River...
...And his Heavenly Discourse, written in 1927, is a classic all over the world...
...Wood attained great distinction as a writer and poet...
...A son, Erskine Wood, is a leading lawyer in Portland...
...And he sat contemplatively on lofty summits and thought of Joseph, the Nez Perce who had fought for his homeland...
...D. Again the West beckoned...
...Richard L. Neuberger will write for The Progressive on the American outdoors and wild life...
...D. both fitted him equally...
...THE American outdoors has produced some wonderful men...
...He went to court to defend Emma Goldman and Eugene V. Debs...
...He was attorney for James J. Hill, the "Empire Builder" who constructed the Great Northern Railroad across the Rockies, and he amassed a fortune...
...Then the Army sent him to Alaska to explore that newly-purchased land...
...He remembered how the Indian looked when he surrendered...
...It was the West which produced his versatility, which made him the master of many skills and professions...
...When Harry Lane cast one of the six votes against American participation in World War I, Portland people asked Col...
...And on nights when the wind sweeps down from Eagle Cap, they say that Col...
...He went West with the old First Cavalry after he was commissioned...
...On the Pacific Coast, from Los Gatos to Puget Sound, he was a symbol of the old explorers and pioneers...
...Lane down the stairs...
...They were a magnificent breed...
...Colonel's eagles and the accolade of the Ph...
...Wood studied law...
...Powell made the first turbulent dash by water through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 33
