that George Pierce garrison had wished to reserve for himself.
We can only imagine Bolton's exhilaration when he unearthed the Pike papers. This feat was the beginning of a long career marked by impressive discoveries of important documents and historical sites that had been unknown or given up for lost. Such finds came to define the sort of history Bolton did. He was as much an explorer-detective as a historian. For Bolton these discoveries were the big emotional payoff for his unstinting labor in airless rooms. Here was a primary difference between Bolton and Turner as scholars. For Turner, satisfaction came with intellectual inquiry and explanation—his history lived in the mind. But Bolton found his rewards in the discovery of the physical thing itself, whether it be artifact, document, or place. Both men were alive to the physical and metaphysical aspects of history, but the difference in emphasis placed them at different spots on the philosophical spectrum. Turner was quick, intuitive, intellectual, willing to write hypothetically, theoretically. He was very much a modern historian and as such was ahead of his time. Bolton, despite his studies with Turner, was at heart a Rankean historian who labored to construct the documentary edifice of history. His work—find the documents, publish the documents, write the history from the documents—was the very definition of scientific history, as that term was commonly understood in the late nineteenth century. There seemed little room for individual interpretation in this scheme. This was a point of view that likely came from his early work with Haskins. Yet Bolton was a romantic who thrilled to the tangible remains of the past that fired his imagination. His approach to history and enthusiasm for discovery would bring him great rewards; in time it would lead him into error.
In December 1907 the AHA met in Madison. The anticipation of returning to his alma mater with the announcement of his great discovery of the Pike papers must have been sweet indeed.49 Bolton was a comer in the historical profession. Haskins, who was now on the Harvard faculty, approvingly told his colleagues about Bolton's paper.50 Bolton's accomplishments were undeniable, but it is equally true that he had useful connections with the men who operated the levers of power in the historical profession. Bolton returned to Mexico sure of that.
Back in Mexico Bolton continued to survey the archives at a sprintlike pace. Even so, he was willing to take on additional work for a Dallas law firm.51 This small job was the start of a lifetime of litigation support for attorneys in the Southwest.52 The legal research took longer than expected because of the lack of finding aids and uncooperative archivists. Bolton often faced such difficulties. Hoping to see the archives in a Catholic cathedral, he presented a letter of introduction from the archbishop of Mexico to the local vicar, who asked Bolton to return the following day at noon. When he returned, a subordinate official met him and asked him to return the next day. And so it went for twelve days. “Finally they capitulated and then I was given the courtesy of the place,” Bolton recalled. “Of course they thought I was ill mannered.” He told many similar stories in later years. In time he “learned to play [his] fish,” as he put it.53
In San Luis Potosi Bolton sought records about the Mexican-American War, or Guerra de Tejas, as his Mexican hosts called it. The old clerk said that Benito Juárez had taken them when he was president of Mexico in the 1860s. Bolton doubted the story, so he stayed in the clerk's office for three hours making small talk. When the clerk complained of a bad cough, Bolton told him about the fine climate for consumptive patients in New Mexico. This information interested the clerk. “I told him all I knew about how to cure consumption.” Pretty soon he took Bolton through a door with the date 1565 carved above and into the archives, “the best I saw in Mexico.” As they perused the shelves, Bolton stopped. “Senor,” Bolton said, “here is a whole bundle labeled La Guerra de Tejas.” The clerk replied, “Of course.”
One by one Bolton overcame the resistance of suspicious and cynical officials. In Monterey he looked for the missionary archives of Zacatecas, which were thought to be lost. The local bishop told him about a great fire that had destroyed the records. “You must have had a very fine archive here,” Bolton mused. “Sí, magnifico,” the bishop replied. “It must have occupied a large place.” “Sí, señor, mucho” “Just out of curiosity I would like to see the room where the documents used to be kept.” The bishop obliged, and there were the “lost” Zacatecas records.
Sometimes Bolton dealt with cooperative people who did not know what they had in their libraries. At Querêtaro Bolton searched the archive of the College of the Holy Cross for missionary records concerning Sonora and Pimería Alta. The friars were helpful, but the library contained only books that Bolton had seen before. Sensing that there might be more than met his eye, Bolton remained at the college admiring the library and browsing its contents. After two days he noticed a trap door in the ceiling. In the attic he found “a great trunk…packed nearly full with missing records,” plus a complete list of the documents that existed in 1772. Two-thirds of the records were there. Bolton spent two weeks putting them back in their original order.
Perseverance usually won the day for Bolton, but he sometimes had raw political power behind him, as in the case of his survey of the Secretaría de Gobernación, which was under the control of the vice president of Mexico, Ramon Corral, an unpopular man with a reputation for ruthlessness.54 Bolton described him as “one of those hard fisted soldier like men from Sonora.” “Everybody feared him,” he continued, “and because of that they hated him.” Bolton wanted to look at the Gobernación papers, so he asked to meet Vice President Corral in order to smooth the way. When Bolton made the request to see Corral, one official “pretty nearly turned pale at the mention of the ‘hombre terrible.’” Corral frowned at Bolton but gave him “all the privileges in the world” and a pleasant office off the main patio.55 The vice president held no terrors for Bolton, but as the Diaz regime began to collapse, the unpopular Corral would become one of the main targets of critics, reformers, and revolutionaries. The Mexican Revolution was only a few months in the future when Bolton got his room at the Gobernación.
Bolton's personal acquaintance with Mexican politicians, priests, librarians, clerks, archivists, diplomats, and scholars broadened and deepened his knowledge of Mexican culture and people. And they began to accept, like, and even to admire Bolton and his single-minded pursuit of the materials of Mexican history. Friars, who had at first been reluctant to cooperate, gave him bed and board in their monasteries. Those times “were very pleasant indeed,” he reminisced, but they would be interrupted by Mexican political events as well as Bolton's professional peregrinations.56
While in Mexico Bolton asked Turner for advice about getting a job at the University of California so that he could have access to the Bancroft Library. Now that Bolton had mastered the materials relating to Spanish colonial Texas, “the best of all points of attack, is California,” he reasoned. “Somebody is sure to fall heir to a professorship in California that will put him in control of the great mass of material that Bancroft collected.” He did not know if anyone else had “preempted” a position at California, but he wanted a shot at it. “I know that whenever such a position opens up in California you will be quite certain to know about it and to be consulted.”57 Turner promptly wrote to Stephens and suggested that Bolton contact the Berkeley department head. “I have not yet screwed up the nerve to write to Professor Stephens,” Bolton confessed, “but I may come to it soon.”58
Evidently Bolton was reluctant to write Stephens because his first meeting with him at the 1903 AHA meeting in New Orleans had not been encouraging. As they sat side by side on a round settee in a hotel lobby, Bolton said that he was using Stephens's Revolutionary Europe as a text.59 “'Tisn't worth a damn!” Stephens snorted, and that was the end of the conversation. Bolton felt that this was how the “great man” told a young professor that he did not know how to select a proper textbook.60 So Bolton hesitated to contact Stephens even after Turner had smoothed the way.
Then a reconfiguration of the California planets changed the orbits of Bolton and Turner. “You have probably heard that Farrand is going to Yale,”
