Charles Lummis

Charles Fletcher Lummis (March 1, 1859, in Lynn, Massachusetts – November 24, 1928, in Los Angeles, California) was a United States journalist and an activist for Indian rights and historic preservation. A traveler in the American Southwest, he settled in Los Angeles, California, where he also became known as a historian, photographer, ethnographer, archaeologist, poet and librarian.

Charles Fletcher Lummis was born in 1859 in Lynn, Massachusetts. He lost his mother at age 2 and was homeschooled by his father, who was a schoolmaster. Lummis enrolled in Harvard for college and was a classmate of Theodore Roosevelt, but dropped out during his senior year. While at Harvard he worked during the summer as a printer and published his first work, Birch Bark Poems. This small volume was printed on paper-thin sheets of birch bark; he won acclaim from Life magazine and recognition from some of the day's leading poets. He sold the books by subscription and used the money to pay for college. His best poem from the work, "My Cigarette", highlighted tobacco as one of his life's obsessions.

Lummis also admitted to an obsession with women. At the age of 21, Lummis married Dorothea Rhodes of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1880.

In 1884, Lummis was working for a newspaper in Cincinnati and was offered a job with the Los Angeles Times. At that time, Los Angeles had a population of only 12,000. Lummis decided to make the 3,500-mile journey from Cincinnati to Los Angeles on foot, taking 143 days, all the while sending weekly dispatches to the paper chronicling his trip. One of his dispatches chronicled his meeting and interview with famed outlaw Frank James. The trip began in September and lasted through the winter. Lummis suffered a broken arm and struggled in the heavy winter snows of New Mexico. He became enamored with the American Southwest and its Spanish and Native American inhabitants. Several years later, he published his account of this journey in A Tramp Across the Continent (1892).

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