Bartram's Travels

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Title page of Bartram's Travels with frontispiece "Mico Chlucco the Long Warrior"

Bartram's Travels is the short title of naturalist

American South and encounters with American Indians between 1773 and 1777. The book was published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1791 by the firm of James & Johnson.[1]

The book's full title is Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws. Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions; Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians.

The travels

William Bartram was a

Creek Indian settlements on the Tallapoosa River. In January 1776 Bartram returned to Georgia, shipped the last of his plant specimens to London from Savannah
, and returned home to Philadelphia. The sequence of his journey is not reproduced exactly in Bartram's Travels.

Between 1774 and 1776 Bartram sent 59 drawings and 209 dried plant specimens to Fothergill, along with a two-part report of his travels. This report was not published during Bartram's lifetime and is not to be confused with the book.

The present-day Bartram Trail system, including the Bartram Canoe Trail, commemorates William Bartram’s journey by marking segments of his approximate route in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Publication history

Bartram remained in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War. There he wrote the manuscript of his book while restoring the

subscribers. Finally in 1790 James and Johnson issued a second proposal to publish the Travels, and among the subscribers were President George Washington, Vice President John Adams, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Bartram dedicated the book to Pennsylvania governor Thomas Mifflin.[4]

The book was deposited for

royalties.[5]

Bartram expressed dissatisfaction with the first edition of his book, which contained many errors, especially in the spelling of scientific names. He enclosed a list of 28

errata in a copy he gave to a neighbor. No second American edition was published in his lifetime.[5]

Significance

Bartram's Travels is significant as a scientific work, as a historical source concerning

American South, and as a contribution to American literature.[citation needed] The reviewer in the Massachusetts Magazine found Bartram's literary style "rather too luxuriant and florid",[6]
but overall the book was praised highly in the United States and Europe.

Early readers were sometimes skeptical about the accuracy of Bartram's description of what was then an exotic part of the world. But as the regions became more familiar to scientists in the nineteenth century, Bartram's accuracy was confirmed. He is considered the scientific discoverer of several plant species, including the

Franklin tree (Franklinia
alatamaha), which was rare when Bartram described it and later became extinct in the wild. Because of the sixteen-year delay between the completion of his travels and the publication of his book, Bartram missed the opportunity to be recognized as the first describer of several more species. German botanists considered Bartram to be the only noteworthy American botanist of his time.

Critics were often skeptical of Bartram's sympathetic description of the

Creek, Seminole, Cherokee, and Choctaw
Indians, which challenged presumptions that the Indians were primitive "savages." In addition to the Travels Bartram wrote other documents concerning his impressions of the southern Indians and the necessity of a humane public policy toward them.

Among Bartram's admirers in England were the poets

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.[7] In Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge, Coleridge is noted as having said, "It is a work of high merit every way." (March 12, 1827)[8]

European editions

Bartram's Travels appeared in Europe when an edition was published in London in 1792, and another in Dublin in 1793. Also in 1793, the Travels appeared in German as William Bartram's Reisen, translated by Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann.[9] The book was published almost simultaneously in Berlin and Vienna.

A second London edition of the Travels appeared in 1794, and this is the edition owned by Wordsworth and Coleridge. In the same year, Jan David Pasteur's Dutch translation was published in Haarlem.[10] It was published again in 1797.

A French translation by Pierre Vincent Benoist, Voyage dans le parties sud de l'Amérique septentrionale, appeared in 1799 in Paris, followed by a second edition in 1801.[11]

Modern editions

  • The Travels of William Bartram: Naturalist's Edition. Edited by Francis Harper. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958. Reprint, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998.
    ISBN 0-8203-2027-7
  • Travels and Other Writings. Thomas P. Slaughter, editor. New York: Library of America, 1996.
    ISBN 978-1-883011-11-6
  • Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country.... Introduction by James Dickey. New York: Viking Penguin, 1996.
  • Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida: A facsimile of the 1792 London edition embellished with its nine original plates. Introduction by Gordon DeWolf. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980.
  • Travels. Introduction by
    ISBN 0-486-20013-2

References

  • "Chronology," in Travels and Other Writings, ed. Thomas P. Slaughter, 599–604.
  • Francis Harper, "Introduction," in The Travels of William Bartram: Naturalist's Edition, ed. Francis Harper, xvi–xxxv.

Notes

  1. ^ Bartram, William (1791). Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws. Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions; Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians. Philadelphia: James & Johnson. Retrieved August 25, 2018 – via The Library of Congress.
  2. JSTOR 2709478
    .
  3. ^ Francis Harper, "Introduction," in The Travels of William Bartram: Naturalist's Edition, xxi.
  4. ^ Harper, "Introduction," xxii–xxiii.
  5. ^ a b Harper, "Introduction," xxiii.
  6. ISBN 978-0-8122-0619-7
    .
  7. ^ Harper, "Introduction," xxi–xxvii.
  8. ^ "Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge".
  9. ^ William Bartram, Reisen durch Nord- und Süd-Karolina, Georgien, Ost- und West-Florida, das Gebiet der Tscherokesen, Krihks und Tschaktahs, nebst umständlichen Nachrichten von den Einwohnern, dem Boden und den Naturprodukten dieser wenig bekannten grossen Länder, ed. E.A.W. von Zimmermann (Berlin: In der Vossischen Buchhandlung, 1793). WorldCat
  10. ^ William Bartram, Reizen door Noord- en Zuid-Carolina, Georgia, Oost- en West-Florida; de landen der Cherokees, der Muscogulges, of het Creek bondgenootschap en het land der Chactaws, trans. by Jan David Pasteur (Haarlem: F. Bohn, 1794). WorldCat
  11. ^ William Bartram, Voyage dans les parties sud de l'Amérique septentrionale; savoir: les Carolines septentrionale et méridionale, la Georgie, les Florides orientale et occidentale, le pays des Cherokées, le vaste territoires des Muscogulges ou de la confédération Creek, et le pays des Chactaws, ed. Pierre Vincent Benoist (Paris: Carteret et Brosson, an VII [1799]). WorldCat

External links

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