William Bartram's Travels has been dubbed “the most astounding verbal artifact of the early republic.”¹ Indeed, Bartram's work, which “presents itself at various times as a travel journal, a naturalist's notebook, a moral and religious effusion, an ethnographic essay, and a polemic on behalf of the cultural institutions and the rights of American Indians,” is a true classic of American literature.²Travels is based on Bartram's field notes, journals, and remembrances that accrued during his tour of the southern backcountry, from 1773 to 1777. The time when Bartram decided to polish his diaries and produce a publishable account of his journey is not known—perhaps he conceived the notion very early, while still in the South. In any case, he must have begun editing his rough notes soon after his return to Philadelphia, in early 1777. By 1783 he had produced a manuscript, which he showed to several interested visitors.³ In 1786, a Philadelphia publisher, Enoch Story, attempted to raise subscribers for the work and even went so far as to notify Benjamin Franklin that Bartram wished to dedicate the proposed volume to him.⁴ But Story did not publish Bartram's book.

The failure of this first publishing attempt appears to be at least partially attributable to the interference of Benjamin Smith Barton, a young Philadelphian who recognized Bartram's genius and befriended the older man, while continually exploiting him for information on the natural world and the American Indians. Bartram's publisher charged Barton, who was about to leave America for study in Scotland, with plotting to have Bartram's manuscript published abroad, to the detriment of his profit. Barton denied any such intent and, through deft persuasion, he managed to salvage his relationship with Bartram as the proposed venture with Story foundered. Barton was bold enough to write to Bartram from Edinburgh, in August 1787, that he had mentioned the manuscript to “many other learned and worthy men: they all seem anxious to see it in print; and I am very certain the work, especially if illustrated with plates, would sell very well.” Further, he proposed that Bartram allow him to edit the journal, add material of his own, and have it printed under both their names at his own expense.⁵

Barton wrote to Bartram again on February 19, 1788, urging him to proceed with publication of his journal. Again, he maintained that his interest arose “almost wholly from a desire to rescue from obscurity (you will pardon the phrase)” a valuable contribution to science. Barton reassured Bartram there was a market for the work: “I need hardly inform you again that Natural History and Botany are the fashionable and the favourite studies of the polite as well as of the learned parts of Europe.”⁶ Bartram tactually deflected Barton's offer to publish jointly, and the two men remained on good terms. In the years that followed, Barton incorporated Bartram's expertise on natural history into his own books, and usually gave Bartram proper credit for his contributions. Though historians have sometimes castigated Barton for “pilfering” Bartram's work, the younger man's enthusiasm and encouragement doubtless served as a catalyst, prompting the more retiring older man to proceed with the publication of his manuscript.⁷

Many scholars have puzzled over the fact that Bartram's book did not appear until fourteen years after his return from the South. Although Story had advertised the proposed book in 1786, Bartram was still polishing the manuscript and adding material at that time. In a 1787 letter, in answer to Barton's inquiries from Edinburgh, Bartram wrote that he had still not decided on publication and that his manuscript “remains yet in improper Embryo.” Moreover, Bartram suffered from nagging doubts as to the value of his own work: “I am doubtful of its consiquence in respect to publick benefit[.] The Narative might afford some amusement & serve to kill time with the Inquisitive of all Denominations.” Bartram further noted that he had given some thoughts to retracing his southern tour and thereby gaining additional material, but was prevented by his long convalescence following his fall from a cypress tree.⁸

Another reason for the delay in publication was that Bartram was awaiting species identifications from the trained botanists in England whom Fothergill had charged with classifying the botanical specimens Bartram sent to London. Unfortunately, those who had been entrusted with overseeing the task were soon diverted from their job by the even more spectacular specimens then coming from Australia and the tropical Pacific.⁹ Perhaps the arrival of a trunk of his sent to him from Charleston in the summer of 1786 by Mary Lamboll Thomas facilitated Bartram's efforts to complete his manuscript. Mrs. Thomas, the daughter of Thomas Lamboll, had received Bartram into her home during his time in Charleston. Bartram had left his trunk in her care when he left Charleston in late 1776. The war, and the consequent disruption of shipping, had prevented its return until ten years later. Bartram was surprised to find that the books, papers, and botanical specimens stored for a decade in the trunk looked “nearly as well” as they had when he had consigned them to her care in 1776.¹⁰ Their unexpected resurrection may have inspired renewed activity on the manuscript.

In time, the manuscript was finally finished, and in 1790, the Philadelphia publishing firm of James and Johnson began soliciting subscribers for Travels. Robert Parrish, a fellow Quaker, directed the subscription efforts and traveled to New York, the temporary seat of the U.S. government under the recently adopted Constitution, to promote the forthcoming work. In June, he wrote to Bartram: “I find the disposition of the Inhabitants of this City much more favourable to the work than I heretofore apprehended, they not being that unenlightened set of People which they are frequently represented to be.” Moreover, Parrish urged Bartram to provide more illustrations to enhance the book's marketability. According to Parrish, while the sketches of birds that Bartram had provided were “very much admired,” he believed that if Bartram would send him “the head of the Indian Chief & Some other drawings I think it would be of still greater advantage, nay Numbers of Persons wish to have the Indian in full stature & dress. If thee could recollect clear enough to draw him I am inclined to believe that I could procure a number of Subscribers from the St. Tamminy's Society here who are extremely fond of anything that resembles an Indian—at any rate I think it best to forward me his Head as soon as possible.”¹¹

Parrish was correct in his assessment of the St. Tammany's Society. When a Creek treaty delegation visited New York City later in the year, the society invited the entire delegation, as well as many prominent members of the government, to a banquet. The timely journey of the Creeks from their homeland to New York undoubtedly inspired many subscriptions to Bartram's work. Advertisements for Travels appeared that summer in the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, usually accompanied by extracts from the text relating to the Seminole village of Cuscowilla.¹² In the summer of 1791, the book finally appeared.¹³

One of Bartram's main goals was to describe the new plants he had discovered during his journey, but in Travels he accomplished much more. Far more than a catalog of plants and their habitats, the book included graphic accounts of the landscapes, animals, and peoples he had encountered. Thus, to credit Bartram merely with the discovery of a few new plant species is not sufficient, for he presented to his contemporaries a well-rounded picture of relatively unknown lands, and he preserved for posterity a picture of the eighteenth-century southeastern environment prior to extensive change and disruption by white settlement.

The book consists of four major parts. Part 1, which contains five chapters, covers the first stage of Bartram's journey. It details the author's first exploration of the Georgia coast, his attendance at the New Purchase Cession with the Creeks and Cherokees, held in Augusta, Georgia, and his participation in the survey of the ceded Indian lands. Part 1 concludes with an account of a trip up the Altamaha River, including Bartram's account of Indian mounds and the Creek migration legend. Events in the first four chapters of part 1 occurred principally in 1773, but the last chapter, judging from internal evidence, is placed out of sequence. Francis Harper speculated that this Altamaha voyage actually took place in 1776.¹⁴

Part 2 describes Bartram's travels through East Florida and the Seminole towns, which mostly occurred in 1774, including his famous account of the Alachua savanna and the Indian town of Cuscowilla, although here, too, Bartram rearranged the sequence of his various excursions.¹⁵ Part 3 presents his travels among the Cherokee villages, his momentous journeys on horseback through the Creek country, and boat trips in West Florida and on the Mississippi River. It ends with descriptions of his last months in Georgia and his return to Philadelphia.

Part 4, which contains six chapters and carries its own title page, may have been intended for separate publication. With this section, entitled “An Account of the Persons, Manners, Customs and Government of the Muscogulges or Creeks, Cherokees, Chactaws, & c., Aborigines of the Continent of North America,” Bartram provided us with one of the finest ethnographic accounts of the southeastern Indians written in the eighteenth century.

Whatever else may be said of Bartram's work, it is certainly not a precisely dated travel diary. Indeed, scarcely a date can be trusted in the entire volume. Francis Harper, who devoted much of his professional career to studying Bartram's writings and retracing Bartram's route, noted that the traveler “suffered either from a faulty memory or from an indifference to dates—if not from both!”¹⁶ Part of Bartram's problem was the very nature of his adventure, for he, like the Indians and the traders who lived among them, was relatively free from the constraints of the Western world's rigid calendar. Thus, Bartram recorded the passage of time, as did the Indians, by the rhythms of nature. He found no need to be precise: he stays a week or two at one location, travels several days to reach another. Bartram was more intent on describing the wonders he encountered and enjoying his sojourn to the fullest extent possible than on achieving exactitude with dates. It was simply not his priority. The modern reader must be indulgent, and most will forgive the writer for literally “losing track of time.”

But more troubling than Bartram's failure to record precise dates consistently is his apparent carelessness when he did supply dates. In the first report sent to his English patron, Dr. Fothergill, he began by stating that he departed Philadelphia on March 20, 1774—one year later than he actually left that city. One may surmise that Bartram substituted, for the year he left Philadelphia, the year in which he was actually writing the report, but other errors are harder to understand. For instance, a letter to Lachlan McIntosh, in which he described his journey to the Alachua savanna, was dated July 15, 1775. However, the contents of the letter and other known facts about Bartram's journey seem to indicate that the letter must have been written in 1774, not 1775.¹⁷ Such errors, some of even greater magnitude, occur frequently in the Travels. Many of these are printers' errors, not Bartram's, but taken together, such mistakes make it nearly impossible to reconstruct an accurately dated itinerary for Bartram, though many have tried.¹⁸ There is evidence to suggest that Bartram did not see the proofs of the completed work, which may explain the many typographical errors and some of the incorrect dates.

Following publication of Travels, the Universal Asylum and Columbia Magazine ran excerpts from the work, including much of part 4 and parts of the Cuscowilla journey narrative. While the magazine's reviewer generally credited Bartram with providing much useful information regarding the natural sciences, he disapproved “of the garb in which they appear,” calling Bartram's “rhapsodical effusions … [and] style so very incorrect and disgustingly pompous.” The reviewer also could not “help thinking that he magnifies the virtues of the Indians, and views their vices through too friendly a medium.”¹⁹ Other magazines were likewise critical of Bartram's melodramatic prose but were generally complimentary of his contribution to natural history. The reviewer for the Massachusetts Magazine believed that Bartram's “botanical researches are more copious than any other writers” and noted that even “the Aboriginals … [have not] escaped the minutiae of attention.” The reviewer found Bartram's descriptions “rather too luxuriant and florid,” but declared “a thousand of these trivia faults, the effect of a poetical imagination, are amply compensated for, by a rich vein of piety, blended with the purest morality.”²⁰

However, many doubted the validity of Bartram's most original observations, particularly his vivid account of alligator behavior. Later observers proved his observations, almost without exception, to have been correct, but Bartram must have been mortified to see his veracity questioned so publicly. Considering the overall lack of praise the work received, Francis Harper concluded: “The generally indifferent reception accorded his maximum effort must have been vastly discouraging. … Is it any wonder that the contributions from his pen during the next 31 years were so meager?”²¹

Apart from a few brief articles, Bartram wrote little during the remainder of his life. In addition to lingering memories of reviewers' disparagements, Bartram's failing eyesight and generally poor health, and the fact that he never traveled again, contributed to his lack of interest in writing for the public. Though he published little, he remained active, observing nature in his garden, collaborating with and serving as a mentor for numerous young scientists, as well as undertaking illustrative work for his friend Barton.

The book fared well abroad, and several editions promptly appeared in England, Ireland, Germany, Austria, and France.²² There, the unrestrained classical imagery in Bartram's writings, and what Thomas Carlyle labeled his “wondrous kind of floundering eloquence,” inspired a generation of European romantic writers.²³ Samuel Taylor Coleridge drew on Bartram's dreamlike descriptions of the lush Florida landscape for his own works, notably “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan.” Travels provided inspiration for William Wordsworth, who fancifully envisioned Bartram, in his poem “Ruth,” as “a youth from Georgia's shore” who attempts to win a young woman's affection. Likewise, the French writer François René de Chateaubriand drew on Bartram's images in his “Atala.”²⁴ For these writers, Bartram's Indians were symbols of humanity untarnished by the hypocrisy of Western civilization. In America itself, Henry David Thoreau, in his classic essay Walden, cited Bartram's description of the Creek “busk,” or annual renewal ceremony, in which the Indians destroyed wornout domestic articles and clothing, as an appropriate remedy for American materialism.²⁵ The wide popularity of Bartram's work continues to the present, and the book has seen numerous reprintings, including the authoritative Naturalist's Edition by Francis Harper, published in 1958.

While the Indian references in Travels, excerpted here, are a critical and voluminous segment of Bartram's Indian writings, and must, therefore, be included in a volume that claims to be comprehensive in its coverage of that subject, we are also acutely aware that presenting extracts from that book distorts the author's holistic portrayal of the American South. We recognize Bartram's Travels as a masterpiece of literature and natural history, and we vigorously encourage everyone with an interest in the region to read his book in its entirety, preferably Francis Harper's ably annotated version, which faithfully reproduces the original Philadelphia edition of 1791.

Notes

1. William Hedges, “Toward a National Literature,” [Columbia Literary History of the United States, edited by Emory Elliott, 1988,] p. 190.

2. Douglas Anderson, “Bartram's Travels and the Politics of Nature,” [Early American Literature, 25, no. 1, 1990,] p. 3.

3. In 1783, Johann David Schoepf saw an “unprinted manuscript” in Bartram's possession “on the nations and products” of Florida. Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, 1:91.

4. [Francis] Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, [1998,] p. xxi.

5. Benjamin Smith Barton to William Bartram, August 26, 1787, bp, hsp, vol. 1, folder 3.

6. Benjamin Smith Barton to William Bartram, February 19, 1788, bp, hsp, vol. 1, p. 4. In the letter, Barton mentioned the forthcoming work by Joseph Banks.

7. Ewan, ed., William Bartram: Drawings, p. 29.

8. William Bartram to Benjamin Smith Barton, undated draft of letter [1787], Jane Gray's Autograph Collection, item 104a, Gray Herbarium, Harvard University.

9. See Ewan, ed., William Bartram: Drawings, for a full discussion of the fate of the botanical specimens. Peck, “William Bartram and His Travels,” pp. 40-42.

10. William Bartram to Mrs. M. L. Thomas, July 15, 1786, Misc. W. Bartram Collection, New York Historical Society. Previously, Mary Lamboll Thomas had shipped Bartram several plants native to the South, at Bartram's request. Mary Lamboll Thomas to William Bartram, May 11, 1785, bp, hsp, vol. 4, folder 111.

11. Robert Parrish to William Bartram, New York, 6 month 1790, Misc. Darlington Collection, New York Historical Society.

12. Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, July 24, 1790. For advertisements of Travels, see the issues for July 30, 1790, and August 2, 1790. The St. Tammany's Society, or the Society of the Sons of Saint Tammany, also called the Columbian Order, was one of many social-political organizations that originated during the Federal period. That the Sons of Saint Tammany found Bartram's work interesting is not surprising, for they dressed like Indians, referred to their leader as the “Grand Sachem,” and called their meeting hall a “Wigwam.” Donald A. Grinde and Bruce E. Johansen, Exemplar of Liberty, pp. 169-89.

13. Francis Harper could find “no conclusive evidence” that Travels was published in 1791, but he accepted the date on the verso of the title page—August 26, 1791. Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, p. xxiii.

14. Bartram evidently returned to Savannah from his excursion with the New Purchase survey team sometime in December. He stated in his report to Dr. Fothergill, “Soon after my return from the Tugilo journey to Savanah the country was alarmed by an express from Augusta, that the Indians were for war, & had actually murdered Several Families not far from Augusta. …” (Bartram, “Travels in Georgia and Florida,” p. 144). Harper incorrectly dated this part of Bartram's journey to the fall of 1773. However, Bartram was referring to the White-Sherrill murders, which occurred in late December 1773. Bartram's description of the Altamaha is not that of the winter months. Harper assigns that part of the journey to 1776, which he dates by an eclipse of the moon described by Bartram. See Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, pp. 346, 417. Further confusing the issue, Bartram sent “one trunk and one box” of goods to East Florida in August 1773, in anticipation of a “Tour of the St. John's River.” According to James Spalding, who made sure that Bartram's luggage reached East Florida, Bartram himself was expected in the area “about the month of October.” Perhaps Bartram consigned the material to Spalding prior to leaving for Augusta (James Spalding to Charles McLatchy, August 15, 1773, bp, hsp, vol. 4, folder 103). At any rate, it is generally believed, as Bartram himself states in Travels (p. 57), that he left Savannah in March 1774 for East Florida.

15. This is documented by Bartram's letters to his father and to Lachlan McIntosh. Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, pp. 353, 361.

16. Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, p. 346. The extent of Bartram's travels between April 1773 and January 1777 is shown on the endpapers map in this volume and in figures 6-8. These maps are based on Lester J. Cappon, Atlas of American History, pp. 108-9; Harper, ed., “Travels in Georgia and Florida,” maps 1 and 4; and Robert M. Peck, ed., Bartram Heritage.

17. William Bartram to Lachlan McIntosh, July 15, 1775 [1774], Dreer Collection, Scientists, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

18. Francis Harper set the standard by which all scholars evaluate Bartram's chronology. See also Lester J. Cappon, “Retracing and Mapping the Bartrams' Southern Travels [Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 118, no. 6 (1974): 507-513].” The routes of both John and William Bartram are detailed in Cappon, Atlas of American History, pp. 108-9.

19. Universal Asylum and Columbia Magazine, vol. 1 (1792). The quotes are from the April issue, p. 267 (first quotation) and p. 266 (second quotation). Other excerpts appeared in January (pp. 8, 22), February (pp. 91-97), March (pp. 195-97), and April (pp. 255-67). Modern zoologists have since confirmed the accuracy of Bartram's alligator account, as well as most of his other observations.

20. Quoted in Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, p. xxiv. As William Hedges has noted, Bartram's prose is characterized by “Latinate poeticisms and elaborate syntactical sonority.” Hedges, “Toward a National Literature,” p. 191.

21. Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, p. xxviii.

22. Harper, ed., Travels of William Bartram, p. xxvii. Harper thought there may have been a Dutch edition as well.

23. In a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, written in 1851, Thomas Carlyle recommended Bartram's work. “Do you know Bartram's Travels? This is one of the Seventies (1770) or so; treats of Florida chiefly; has a wondrous kind of floundering eloquence in it; and has also grown immeasurably old.” Charles Eliot Norton, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, 2:198.

24. The best study of Bartram's influence on literature is Fagin, William Bartram, pp. 128-200. More recent examinations of Bartram's influence on literature and philosophy include Thomas V. Barnett, “William Bartram and the Age of Sensibility” [Ph.D. dissertation]; Mary S. Mattfield, “Journey to the Wilderness”; Bruce Silver, “William Bartram's and Other Eighteenth-Century Accounts of Nature” [Journal of the History of Ideas, 39, no. 4 (1978): 597-614]; L. Hugh Moore, “Aesthetic Theory of William Bartram” [Essays in Arts and Sciences, 12, no. 1, (March, 1983): 17-35] and “Southern Landscape of William Bartram” [Essays in Arts and Sciences, 10, no. 1 (1981): 41-50]; and John Seelye, “Beauty Bare [Prospects: The Annual of American Cultural Studies, 6 (1981): 37-54].”

25. Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Walden, or Life in the Woods, pp. 376-77.