¹ Granville and James Stuart are well known to students of the history of the American West for the journals the kept of their overland travels, mining adventures, and experiences in Montana during the first years of settlement. Professor Paul C. Phillips edited the Stuart journals which were first published in 1925 and have been reprinted (1957) by the Clark, Arthur H. Company; for biographical details see Forty Years on the Frontier as Seen in the Journals and Reminiscences of Granville Stuart, Gold-Miner, Trader, Merchant, Rancher and Politician (2 vols.; Cleveland, 1925), passim (hereinafter cited as Forty Years). This pioneer work in Western American history has been quoted by literally scores of scholars since its publication; in many ways it is a primary source for data on Stuart's life and conditions on that elusive perimeter of settlement known as the “frontier.”Google Scholar

² Mrs. Allis Stuart committed her life’s story to a “ Memoir ” in 1946; I have relied on a twenty-four-page copy typed from the manuscript in 1958 (hereinafter cited as “ Memoir ”). In this memoir she uses the name cited above although she signed it as “Belle Brown Stuart.” A diary (hereinafter cited as “ Diary ”) that she kept from May 17, 1891, to August 13, 1892, and from January 9 to February 24, 1898, is inscribed in the flyleaf in her own handwriting as “ Alice B. Stuart.” Professor Phillips, who knew the Stuarts, calls her “ Isabel Allis Brown.” See Forty Years, I, 17. In announcing her wedding to Stuart, the Grantsdale (Montana) Bugle calls her Mrs. Alice B. Fairfield. Her “ Memoir ” does not mention this first marriage. The travel sketch presented here is based essentially upon the “Diary” which relates a day-by-day account of a trip made by the Stuarts from Montevideo, Uruguay, to the United States via the west coast of South America. The “Memoir,” when compared to the “Diary,” has proved to be inaccurate frequently, which can be attributed to Mrs. Stuart’s advanced age (83) when she wrote it.

³ Stuart’s diplomatic career is not included in Forty Years which stops at about 1887; Phillips alludes to the ministerial career in a single paragraph (p. 17) in his introduction, and refers to Stuart’s journals for “his South American residence.” These journals have not been located by this researcher and consequently the record of his Latin American observances depends upon a few letters to friends and his despatches to the Department of State, none of which have been published.

⁴ “Diary,” January 9, 1898. From this point, the narrative is based primarily on Mrs.Stuart’s “Diary” described above. Where there are departures from her “Diary,” appropriate authorities are cited. Mrs.Stuart’s prose is both interesting and charming, but I have chosen to retell her story without all of her detailed observations. Here and there direct quotations have been added for emphasis.

⁵ The pampero is a wind that takes its name from the great expanse of flat land, or pampa, in Argentina. These strong winds usually have the effect of turning weather from warm to chilling cold. However, the pampero is not a sea wind and Mrs. Stuart probably called all strong winds in that region “pamperos.” See James, Preston, Latin America (New York, 1959), p. 328.Google Scholar

⁶ The Falklands are known to Spanish-speaking South Americans as las islas mahinas, which derives from the origins of the first settlers who were Frenchmen from Saint-Malo. Called at first malouines and then maluinas, they came to be known as mavinas by the Spanish. See Moreno, Juan Carlos, Nuestras Malvinas; la Antártida (6th edition; Buenos Aires, 1950), pp. 20–21. Moreno gives a good description of the islands and out-lines the Argentine claims to sovereignty.Google Scholar

⁷ Very likely Mrs. Stuart relied on hearsay for information on the livestock industry in that region; her description of pastoral activity, however, essentially agrees with a nearly contemporary account given in Hirst, W. A., Argentina (New York and London, 1911), pp. 238–253.Google Scholar

⁸ The Indians of the Chilean archipelago are from the Chono, Alacaluf, and Yahgan tribes. These aborigines have one of the lowest cultures and exist by gathering shellfish, hunting birds, and raising a very few vegetables. Their dependence on sea food led them to be canoe makers, but in modern times and with acculturation they have come to build plank boats or to use dories acquired from white men. See Steward, Julian H. and Faron, Louis C., Native Peoples of South America (New York, 1959), pp. 397–405 Google ScholarPubMed; Bird, Junius “The Alacaluf,” Handbook of South American Indians, I (Washington, 1946), 55–80.Google Scholar In her “Diary”(January 19, 1898) Mrs. Stuart described the Indians’ hairdos thus: “ Their hair was cut in the most extraordinary manner round and short about the crown a straight bang in front and long about the neck and over the ears … ” and their dwellings: “ We saw some huts on an island. They looked oval about four feet high in the center with a small hole in one side. They lay down flat and crawl in when they enter. They are constructed of sticks stuck in the ground and covered with grass and moss.” Photographs of an Alacaluf house in Steward, Native Peoples, p. 401, fit this description. Mrs. Stuart similarly described their dwellings in her “ Memoir.”

⁹ The progressive German settlement in the Valdivia region at the turn of the twentieth century is described in Elliot, Junius, Chile, Its History and Development … (London, 1911), pp. 291–298. Scott Elliot's fully descriptive book corroborates Mrs. Stuart's account of Chilean economy and society in many respects.Google Scholar

¹⁰ “Diary,” January 24, 1898.

¹¹ Mrs. Stuart is guilty of frequent, but pardonable, errors in spelling Spanish words in her “Diary.” Cousiño came out “ Cochina ” in the “Diary.” Scott Elliot describes Lota, the company, and the chateau much like Mrs. Stuart’s account; see Elliot, , Chile …, pp.267–269.Google Scholar Her “Memoir” (p. 26) indicates that Señora Cousiño was negotiating a sale of her holdings to aFrench buyer.

¹² “ Diary,” February 4, 1898. Although Mrs. Stuart admired and appreciated most of what she had observed in Hispanic culture, her “ Diary ” and “ Memoir ” abound with comments that have the flavor of the Black Legend (leyenda negra) of alleged Spanish cruelty; she also displays a somewhat haughty attitude about South American Indians. The most vivid account of the siege and brutal treatment of captured Peruvians after the fall of the fort at Arica is in: Markham, Clements R., The War Between Peru and Chili, 1879–1882 (New York and London, 1883), pp. 204-207.Google Scholar

¹³ Thomas G. Moonlight migrated to the United States from Scotland in 1833 at the age of thirteen; he served four years in the United States Army during the 1850's and at the outbreak of the Civil War he raised a union artillery battery as a captain and later was breveted a brigadier general. After serving as a Republican Secretary of State in Kansas in 1868, he became a Democrat and was an elector for Grover Cleveland in 1884. Cleveland rewarded this Party service with an appointment as territorial governor of Wyoming in 1886 and minister to Bolivia in 1894, where he served until 1898. See The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, XII, 312. President Grover Cleveland, who professed to be opposed to partisan appointments, rewarded these two Western Democrats with diplomatic posts in Latin America for which they were not ostensibly qualified. In 1893 Stuart had asked Samuel T. Hauser, a Montana banker and former Democratic territorial governor, to use his influence with Cleveland to support Stuart’s application for the post of minister to Bolivia. See Stuart to Hauser, Helena, April 26, 1893; September 5, 1893, Hauser Collection, Montana Historical Society Library, Helena.

¹⁴ In her “ Memoir ” (pp. 26–27) Mrs. Stuart mistakenly located Pizarro’s remains in Santiago de Chile.

¹⁵ On p. 27 of her “ Memoir ” she described the railroad in the same terms and discussed its builder “ George Meigs, an American, who embezzled the funds of an American bank and fled to Peru to avoid the consequence of his crime. He built the railroad for the Peruvian Government…” For a more precise account, see Stewart, Watt, Henry Meiggs, Yankee Pizarro (Durham, N. C, 1946).Google Scholar

¹⁶ According to the “ Memoir,” (p. 28)the president of Peru accompanied them to the bullfiight; the “ Diary ” gives no such account and indicates they accompanied the American minister. The “ Memoir ” also described the bulls and the fight in some detail; she said the president apologized for a tame performance, and “ We were mighty glad that it was tame, I never want to see another.”

¹⁷ In her “ Memoir ” (pp. 28–29) Mrs. Stuart described their visit to a Peruvian silver mine that had been abandoned when the silver vein gave way to copper; she goes on to say that her husband inspected the mine at length and surmised that it contained a rich copper ore bed. He then secured options, ascertained that the Peruvian Government would extend railroad facilities to the mine under certain guarantees by a responsible American company. She further claimed that these findings were divulged to a Salt Lake City firm (Haggin and McCune) that eventually bought the mine for $600,000 and made it a paying venture. Her husband, she complained, received nothing for his report. Very likely she referred to the copper syndicate of Haggins, Hearst, Tevis, and Daly that formed the Anaconda Cooper Mining Company of New York City and Butte, Montana, in 1895, and which later operated mines in both Chile and Peru. James Ben Ali Haggin had mining interests in both Peru and Chile; whether he had invested on the strength of Stuart's recommendations remains to be verified. If Mrs. Stuart’s assertions were accurate, her husband had performed a good service for an overseas investment. For details of Haggin’s investment career in Latin America, see Marcosson, Isaac F., Anaconda(New York,1957) passim; S. E. Moffett, Cosmopolitan, XXXIII (June, 1902), pp. 163–67; and New York Times, September 13, 1914, p. 9, September 15, 1914, p. 30, September 18, 1914, p. 11.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The European civilization which was superimposed upon the native one stressed mining more than agriculture which accounts to some extent for the failure to maintain this irrigation system. Dime, Baily W., Latin American Civilization, Colonial Period (Harrisburg, Pa.,1945), pp. 87–92.Google Scholar

¹⁹ “ Memoir,” p. 29. The remarkable Mrs. Stuart wrote her “ Memoir ” in 1946 at a very old age and it is not unlikely that her memory had played some tricks on her, especially in remembering precise dates. If she kept a diary of the trip after February 21, 1898, it has yet to be located. Perhaps she prepared the “ Memoir ” from the “ Diary ” (or diaries) because they terminate almost simultaneously; the “ Memoir ” summarizes in a few sentences the remainder of her life with Granville Stuart until his death in 1918.

²⁰ The Daily Missoulian of Missoula, Montana, on June 25, 1898, carried an item on its back page (p. 8) in the personal news column: “ Hon. Granville Stuart, former U. S. Consul at Paraguay, South America, accompanied by his family arrived in this city this morning from the east en route to Grantsdale. …” This constituted a demotion and a half truth, but was forgivable on both accounts since the paper largely concerned itself with the dazzling news of the Spanish-American War.