George Gibbs (ethnologist)
George Gibbs | |
---|---|
Ravenswood, New York, U.S. | |
Died | April 9, 1873 New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | New-York Historical Society Smithsonian Institution |
George Gibbs (1815–1873) was an American
Early life
Gibbs was born 1815 in
Early professional life
Gibbs graduated Harvard in 1838 with a law degree and returned to New York City to practice law with (Jonathan) Prescott Hall.[2] In 1840, he was instrumental in reviving the New-York Historical Society[3] where he worked as the librarian from 1842 through 1848.[4][5] He was a supporter of the Whig Party, which led to a later appointment by President Millard Fillmore.[6]
Early western travels – Oregon and California
In the spring of 1849, weary of practicing law, Gibbs was drawn to the West by the
Gibbs may also have met
Shortly thereafter, Redick McKee hired Gibbs to accompany him on his portion of the California treaty excursion in the Humboldt Bay/Klamath River region,[17] at which time Gibbs presumably sailed to San Francisco to meet McKee, embarking on the excursion in the early part of August, 1851. At the end of the excursion late in October 1851, Gibbs traveled with McKee back to San Francisco, arriving on December 28, 1851.[d] He stayed in Benicia, California through the early months of 1852 transcribing his journal of the expedition for McKee, and also preparing a map of the excursion.[e] On February 23, 1852, he sent the transcript and map to McKee, who was to take them to Washington, D.C. and give them to Henry Schoolcraft, whom Gibbs knew through their mutual association in the New-York Historical Society.[18] He corresponded with Schoolcraft to ensure that the vocabularies sent with the transcript were correctly spelled[19] (Schoolcraft published the transcript, which referenced "the Smith map" several times, in 1853.[20]). While waiting for the spring rains to ebb, Gibbs wrote Observations on the Indians of the Klamath River and Humboldt Bay, Accompanying Vocabularies of Their Languages[21] archived in the Smithsonian Institution. He then traveled to back to the Klamath/Rogue River region and finally pursued his original objective in coming west; prospecting for gold. He also collected stories of travels of other explorers and settlers through the region he traveled with McKee; the notebook with those stories is also in the Smithsonian.
In late 1852, Fillmore appointed Gibbs as the Collector of Customs, and he returned from the Klamath River region to Humboldt Bay and took a ship to San Francisco, then back up the coast to Astoria, Oregon where he arrived in mid-December. In April, 1853, while at Fort Vancouver, he received news that the newly inaugurated Franklin Pierce planned to reappoint the previous Customs Collector.[22] Also, while there, he conferred with Ogden on a matter on which Schoolcraft had requested information.[23]
Washington Territory – the Pacific Railroad Survey, the Treaty Expeditions of 1854–1855, and the Indian Wars
Midway through 1853, Gibbs moved to
Upon his return to Steilacoom, Gibbs wrote two reports, Indian Tribes of Washington Territory and The Geology of the Central Part of Washington Territory[26] for McClellan on his observations of the Indian Tribes of Washington Territory. He sent the report in early March 1854, and soon thereafter he was hired by Governor Stevens to assist him with negotiating treaties with the Washington Indian tribes.
He earned a reputation as the "most apt student of the Indian languages and customs in the Northwest", because his skills with Governor Stevens helped convince the natives to sign the treaty. Before the treaty was signed, there was a vigorous debate about how many reservations should be built. Gibbs brought an argument to the table that because there was much variety in the Indians' customs and languages, and in their needs for fishing rights, amongst others, many small reservations should be built.[24]
He also was given a job of sending out a census on the Washington Territory's tribes. That resulted in a report that showed marked population decline, comparing to Hudson's Bay Company information, which was a bit older. The decrease in the population may have been due to epidemics which wiped out a large portion of the tribal population.
In early 1855, the Territorial Legislature appointed Gibbs Brigadier General of the Militia.[27] No funds were appropriated for the position, and he never actively led a militia. He was, however, an active opponent to Governor Stevens' reaction to the skimishes.
The Northwest Boundary Survey 1857–1862
In 1857 Gibbs joined The Northwest Boundary Survey of the Canada–United States border, which began on the Pacific coast and included in its ranks Joseph Smith Harris. He served in the field until 1860, then relocated to Washington D.C. where he continued to work for the survey until mid-1862. The Smithsonian collection of Gibbs' papers from that time period includes the notes of his research on the growth of forests in the Washington Territory, dated to 1860.[28] Three journal notebooks with notes from the Pacific Railroad Survey and the Northwest Boundary Survey are at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.[29] John Strong Newberry wrote an article about the fossil plants Gibbs collected on the survey.[30]
Later life
Gibbs returned to New York for a short time in 1862. He volunteered to defend the home of
Notes
- ^ Alfred was not currently with the regiment; after having been wounded in the Mexican–American War he was assigned as aide-de-camp to Smith until 1856[9] and presumably was in California at the time George Gibbs was with the Regiment.
- ^ At some point later, Gibbs erased his notations on Fremont's map of the Regiment's march and instead used it to annotate a map of the explorations of Jedediah Smith.[12] Carl I. Wheat speculated that it was at Fort Vancouver that Gibbs found the original "Smith map"[13] at which point he copied it onto his Frémont map.
- ^ By the time the Commission was underway in the spring of 1851, Congress had transferred the duties of the Oregon Commission to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs. They had entered into six treaties before they received this information.[15]
- ^ In Gibbs' journal transcript published by Schoolcraft, he glossed over the events of the trip back to San Francisco, but they are mentioned on page 1804 of the Report of the Chief of Engineers U.S. Army for the year 1879. At Humboldt Bay, McKee and Gibbs had boarded the steamer Sea Gull, hoping to meet the mail steamer Columbia on its way back to San Francisco at Port Orford, Oregon. Apparently, off the coast of Port Orford, bad weather and mechanical problems forced both ships to return to Portland, Oregon, where Gibbs and McKee stayed from December 19 until the 23rd.
- ^ Gibbs' map is in the National Archives, Record Group No. 75, Map 47, Tube 123: "Sketch of the Northwestern Part of California, accompanying a Journal of the expedition of Redick McKee, compiled by George Gibbs in 1851"
Citations
- ^ Stevens, p. 5
- ^ The March of the Mounted Riflemen p. 24
- ^ Collections of the New-York Historical Society. 2. Vol. 1. New York: R. Ludwig. 1841.
- ^ "A Memorial of George Gibbs".
- ^ Proceedings of the New York Historical Society. Press of the Historical Society. 1847.
- ^ Stevens, p. 10
- ^ Stevens, p. 9
- ^ Morton, Charles. "The Third Regiment of Cavalry". US Army Center of Military History. Archived from the original on February 25, 2009. Retrieved May 21, 2016.
- ISBN 0-8071-0822-7.
- ^ The March of the Mounted Riflemen
- ^ The March of the Mounted Riflemen p. 264.
- ^ "Map of an Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-44". World Digital Library. 1844. Retrieved 2013-06-08.
- ^ Wheat, Carl Mapping the American West page 94
- ^ https://journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/WHQ/article/viewFile/7457/6493 [bare URL PDF]
- ^ The Oregon Historical Quarterly, Volume 22, page 54
- ^ Drawings by George Gibbs in the Far Northwest, 1849–1851
- ^ Redick McKee and the Humboldt Bay Region, 1851–1852 pg 203
- ^ Gallatin, Albert (1 January 1843). "Inaugural Address of the Hon. Albert Gallatin, LL. D., on Taking the Chair as President of the New-York Historical Society ...: Feb. 7th, 1843". The Society – via Google Books.
- ^ Vernon Carstensen The Northwest Letters of George Gibbs
- ^ Historical and statistical information respecting the history, condition and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States: Collected and prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs per act of Congress of March 3rd, 1847, Volume 3, pages 100–177
- ^ "SIRIS - Smithsonian Institution Research Information System".
- ^ Vernon Carstensen, The Pacific Northwest Letters of George Gibbs
- ^ "Vol 19 No 2 (April 1928)".
- ^ a b "WEB SERVICE". Archived from the original on 2006-08-19. Retrieved 2006-12-20.
- ^ "WEB SERVICE". Archived from the original on 2015-03-31. Retrieved 2014-10-22.
- ^ United States. War Dept.: Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean Volume 1, Supplement, Pages 402 and 473, respectively, published 1855 by the Government Printing Office
- ^ Gibbs, George (6 January 2010). "Beginning of Militia in Washington". Washington Historical Quarterly. 11 (3): 202 – via journals.lib.washington.edu.
- ^ "Record Unit 7209 George Gibbs Papers, circa 1850-1853, 1857-1862".
- ^ George Gibbs notebooks of scientific observations of the Pacific Northwest, 1853-1858.
- ^ "Description of the Fossil Plants Collected by Mr. George Gibbs". H. O. Houghton. 1 January 1863 – via Google Books.
- ^ a b Stevens, pages 13–14
- ^ Department of the Interior. U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. J.W. Powell, geologist in charge
- ^ Ella E. Clark, "George Gibbs' Account of Indian Mythology in Oregon and Washington Territories," Oregon Historical Quarterly Vol. 56, No. 4 (Dec., 1955), pp. 293–325
Major references
- Cross, Osbourne; Gibbs, George (1989) [1940]. Raymond W. Settle (ed.). The March of the Mounted Riflemen: From Fort Leavenworth to Fort Vancouver, May to October 1849 (paperback ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803291965.
- Stevens, John Austin (1873). A Memorial of George Gibbs ...: Read Before the New-York Historical Society, Oct. 7, 1873. Society.
External links
- Works by George Gibbs at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about George Gibbs at Internet Archive
- "George Gibbs, Indians Tribes of Washington Territory,". Archived from the original on March 18, 2005. Retrieved December 20, 2006.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) United States Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, Washington, 1877. (archive.org copy) note: the statements on this webpage about the original publication of this work is incorrect. It was originally published in Pacific Railroad Survey Reports, 1855. - George Gibbs Papers, circa 1850-1853, 1857-1862, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
- "Federal Indian Relations in the Pacific Northwest..." The Oregon Historical Quarterly Vol. 22 Oregon Historical Society
- George Gibbs biography, "The Treaty Trail: U.S.-Indian Treaty Councils in the Northwest," Washington State History Museum.