REVIEWS
Life and Letters of Mrs. Jason Lee, Wife of Rev. Jason Lee of the Oregon Mission by Theressa Gay, Metropolitan Press, Portland, 1936, 224 pages, $2.50.
By Robert Moulton Gates
This recent publication from the Metropolitan Press has been long anticipated as we have known for a number of years that Miss Gay was at work editing the letters of Anna Maria Pittman Lee. Some years ago when Miss Gay visited my office I learned that she had already assembled a considerable amount of her needed editorial data. The approving words of the distinguished western historian, Dr. Herbert E. Bolton, written in his foreword concerning the careful editing of the letters are well deserved. The numerous details have been gathered by long, patient, and skillful research.
The book has two major divisions, the first ninety-four pages consists of a biography of Mrs. Lee, and the remainder of the book consists of letters by Mrs. Lee, and a few concerning her. This brief biography is excellently done, the story of this pioneer missionary being told in a simple, straightforward manner which holds interest. The author's attitude is sympathetic but restrained, and lacking sentimentality. It is minutely annotated and the historian can follow its sources of authority. The author has attempted no feats of imagination to bridge gaps in source materials, in which matter we could wish that some others, both older and recent writers had followed a similar course.
The letters, mostly written by Mrs. Lee to members of her family, are filled with the intense religious feeling characteristic of the day; but are not lacking in a considerable amount of objective information of the times, which throw much light upon the history of the Oregon mission. Miss Gay has given them ample editorial notes to supply needed information about them.
We agree with Dr. Bolton's estimate that “Miss Gay has made a fresh contribution to the early history of the rim of the Pacific. Personal accounts of pioneer life in the Far West by men are legion. Here we have one of the very few written in the earliest days by women-penned indeed by one of the very first white women in all the vast Northwest above California.”
The book is excellently set up and illustrated in an interesting manner.
Tribal Distribution in Washington, by Leslie Spier, George Banta Publishing Company, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1936, map, 43 pages.
By L. S. Cressman}}
DR. SPIER states the problem of this study as follows. “Although the material on tribal distribution within the borders of present Washing- ton is still quite fragmentary and confused, it is high time that it be assembled. The accompanying map of tribal territories is merely tentative. Its sole purpose is to serve as a basis for corrections in the light of future field work.” (p. 5). Faced with the practical difficulty of defining that elusive group the tribe, he solves his problem in a practical fashion by accepting as a "tribe" "any group which has figured in the literature as a national entity, avoiding as far as possible groupings that are too wide, like Teit's dialect groups, and those
