Indian Studies

Bartram’s Quaker Spirit

Bartram’s first sympathetic introductions to the American Indian may have come from Dr. Cadwallader Colden, the influential politician and intellectual whom William visited with his father on their 1753 trip to the Catskills.(23l) Colden, a Scottish immigrant, was the first Surveyor General of the Colonies, Master of the Chancery, a member of the King’s Council of New York, and a fellow correspondent of Peter Collinson.(232) In 1724, he had written a History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada which are dependent on the Province of New York and which are the barrier between the English and the French based on his study of Indian history and customs. It was the first authoritative work in English on American aborigines and proved so popular, that he published a new enlarged edition of the work in 1747. In the book, which Bartram must have seen and discussed during his New York trip or during the author’s occasional visits to Kingsessing, Colden expressed a sympathy for the Indians quite similar to that Bartram evidenced in his own publications. They “are a poor barbarous people bred under the darkest ignorance,” Colden wrote.

Independent but similar views of the Indian were held by William’s Philadelphia Academy instructor Charles Thomson (whom John Adams described as “the Sam Adams of Philadelphia…the life of the cause of liberty.”)(234) Thomson’s “commentaries” and observations of Indian customs, compiled from years of personal experience, were excerpted and published by Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia as further evidence against Buffon’s critical views of America and her native inhabitants. “Mons. Buffon has indeed given an afflicting picture of human nature in his description of the man of America,” wrote Thomson. “But sure I am there never was a picture more unlike the original.”(235) The Quaker doctrine by which Bartram was raised called for mutual respect and peaceful coexistence among all men. No doubt this (and the influence of the men mentioned above) prompted the sympathetic attitudes toward Indians reflected in Bartram’s Travels. They may also have saved Bartram’s life.

During the first year of his trip, while traveling alone and unarmed beyond “the utmost frontier of the white settlements,” Bartram encountered a hostile Indian. Realizing that a confrontation was inevitable, Bartram “resigned myself entirely to the will of the Almighty,” and “resolved to meet the dreaded foe with resolution and cheerful confidence.”(236) Bartram’s faith in God and in the Quaker spirit of friendship successfully transformed a potentially fatal episode into a positive, if not pleasant event, as his own words explain:

Foremost in Bartram’s portrait of the Indians in the Travels is their cordial relations with white men. With the exception of the hostile individual mentioned above, the Indians greet him with cheerful generosity, as equals who do not fear any newcomers to their land. Since most of these tribes formerly lived west of the Mississippi River,(238) they greet the Europeans, now emigrating from the east, as equal partners in the task of settlement. When the Creeks give Bartram his famous appellation, “Puc Puggy or the Flower Hunter,”(239) they have recognized his compatibility with their own views of the earth and welcome him as a partner in its cultivation. The travels of this Flower Hunter are themselves Indian-like, meandering across the land, living off its fruits without undue waste or exploitation, searching out its natural wonders, and deriving practical knowledge from his findings. Whenever he explains “the nature and design of my peregrinations” to the Indians, they welcome him to their country and assure him that everywhere he will meet with friendship and protection. He is leading an Indian life; they can only welcome him as a brother.(240)

Yet Bartram is not a fair-skinned Indian; often he asserts his strong differences from their way of life. He clearly does not favor intermarriage between whites and Indians, for that bond often creates problems, as in the example of the white trader who married a beautiful Indian woman whose people looked upon her “as a harlot.'”(241) Intermarriage is to Bartram’s eyes an unnatural alliance; his depiction of a drunken sexual orgy between “white and red men and women without distinction”(242) strongly expresses moral disapproval of what he considers miscegenation.

In other, more subtle ways, he stresses the cultural differences between red and white men. He learns. to master their rhetorical locutions, debating on equal terms with an Indian chief, bluffing and counter- bluffing like an experienced politician.(243( The Indians also test Bartram’s nerves by insisting that he kill a rattlesnake. He agrees, realizing that “the whole was a ludicrous farce to satisfy their people.” a symbolic act that made him separate and distinct because Indians were forbidden to kill the sacred snakes.(244) In stressing his differences from the Indians in the Travels, Bartram preserves his status as an epic persona, depicting his subjects with restraint and objectivity. His role is not to judge the Indians, but to report them honestly, and only by stressing his differences from them can he persuasively argue on their behalf.

Bartram reinforces this objective mode by squarely facing many aspects of Indian culture that his contemporaries saw as “vices.” He judiciously evaluates stories about their quarrels with white traders;(245) he frankly notes that “no Indian can be compelled to work against his own inclinations”;(246) he agrees that in sexual relationships they are promiscuous, forming “temporary marriages” with traders when advantageous;(247) and he also provides a whole catalogue of “their vices, immoralities, and imperfections,” which includes murder, adultery, fornication, cruelty, gambling, and deceit. Yet this catalogue is somewhat deceitful itself, for Bartram is determined to account for Indian “vices” by posing relative comparisons with his own culture. Hence, the catalogue is actually a defense: “They are given to adultery and fornication, but, I suppose, in no greater excess than other nations of men;”(248) and some of these excesses, like the wasteful killing of deer and bear, he blames on the newly arrived whites, who have “dazzled their senses with foreign superfluities.”(249) Bartram’s later discussion of the Indian propensity for warfare is an ardent defense on relative grounds, which invokes the precedent of epic tradition:

By reminding white readers of their own “savage” past, now regarded as the source of civilized refinement, he has effectively countered the prejudicial view of native Americans.

The main purpose of Bartram’s portrayal of the Indians is not to show their supposed vices, but their many real virtues: Their hospitality to travelers;(251) their generosity in allowing him to roam freely, as in this salute from the White King of Talahasochte:

Although the Indians no longer understand the origin and purpose of their ancestral ruins, those artifacts still reflect “…the work of a powerful nation, whose period of grandeur perhaps long preceded the discovery of this continent.”(253) Bartram’s emphasis on their prehistoric past raises some tantalizing questions, that scholars have not yet investigated: Did Joseph Smith and the other Mormon Founders read Bartram’s Travels? Were they influenced by his descriptions of Indian monuments while writing their own epic history, the Book of Mormon, wherein these mounds and terraces become evidence of a lost tribe of Israel? Bartram’s own speculation would have suggested a fruitful connection to the Mormons:

Bartram’s theories about the mound builders were later refuted by modern archaeology, but the evidence he gathered is reasonably accurate, and free of cultural prejudice.(255)

The mysterious ancient ruins are a suggestive symbol of the Indians' innate virtue, but Bartram finds much evidence even in their current manners to verify his thesis. Wherever they plant a town, a small Eden grows up, situated amidst the earth’s plenty, where men live in a harmonious relationship with nature.(256) Within these villages the Indians live a communal life, united by a spirit of sharing that is truly liberating. Bartram tells of the traditional mode of travel amongst Indians: Wherever one chooses to enter and take a meal, he announces his arrival, “I am come” and receives a handsome response, “You are; it’s well.”(257)

Bartram’s emphasis on the virtues of Indians rankled many of his contemporary readers, and some scholars think his view owes much to the influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau and other eighteenth century philosophers.(258) Rousseau’s celebration of “the natural man” in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754) inspired many 18th century writers to see the Indian as a “Noble Savage,” the antithesis to modern progress in the sciences and arts. This attitude gave rise to “savagist” stereotypes about the Indians, which distorted their historical reality in order to state ideological arguments about civilization.(259) Bartram clearly shares many of these ideas. He believes that the Indian is innately moral, living under special guidance from God, and instinctive rather than educated.(260) This praise is an implicit critique of civilization; it appropriates the Indians' historical reality by using them as rhetorical figures. Some of Bartram’s anecdotes celebrate primitive life a la Rousseau, like “a remarkable instance of Indian sagacity,” in which an Indian guide proves his superiority to a surveyor’s compass.(261) Yet on the whole Bartram is faithful to the actuality of Indian life, and in that respect he anticipates later American writers—Cooper, Longfellow, and Thoreau—who, aided by ethnographic research, began to see the Indian as something more than Edenic man.

The most impressive aspect of Bartram’s Indian portrait is its relative sophistication and complexity. By studying Indians closely, like the other “natural productions” of this area, he gathered evidence that disproved over two centuries of superstition peddled to Europe by most of America’s early traveler-writers. Bartram saw that Indian life was not simple, primitive, and contented, but unimaginably complex, fraught with symbolism and taboos, all physical acts and objects laden with deeper, symbolic meanings. His description of a Cherokee dance, with its elaborate arrangement of semicircular ranks, the motions the dancers made with great exactness and not the slightest confusion, conveys this idea exactly:

In an account of another ceremony, he again emphasizes the symmetry of aesthetic arrangement; this time in the form of spirals of dry cane, which are arranged in symmetrical patterns upon the ground and then lit, burning to provide both light and a timepiece for the meeting.(263) These descriptions of Indian religious ceremonies, remarkable for their detail and clarity, are pioneer works of anthropology, a science that has since revealed to us the complex structures of belief and activity existing within societies once called “primitive.”(264)

In the hieroglyphic and symbolic work of the Indians, Bartram plants himself as an observant eye, hoping to capture all that he can for the benefit of future generations, whose knowledge will probably surpass his own. That mission defines an epic author, to catch a moment of his time in all its fullness and set it down for future generations to read and understand.

For all of his careful descriptions of Indian customs, it is unfortunate that Bartram did not record the physical attributes of their culture with his art. Only one significant Indian-related drawing(265) is known to exist: The original ink portrait of Mico Chlucco, “the Long Warrior,” which was later engraved and used as the frontispiece of Bartram’s Travels.(266) If any other Indian drawings were made on his trips, they have been lost in subsequent years.

Footnotes

231. The Dictionary of American Biography, 11, p. 27 gives the year of this trip as 1755; but the heading of a paper in the Bartram Papers, Vol. 1 (Pennsylvania Historical Society) in John Bartram’s handwriting reads: “A Journey to the Catskill Mountains with Billy, 1753. ” See Fagin, William Bartram, Interpreter, op. cit., footnote p. 9.

232. Earnest, John and William Bartram, op. cit., p. 47; also see: Kastner, A Species of Eternity, op. cit., Chapter One.

233. Cadwallader Colden, The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada, London, 1727, New York, 1902. This passage cited in Kastner, A Species of Eternity, op. cit., p. 20.

234. Earnest, John and William Bartram, op. cit., p. 90.

235. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Chapel Hill, 1954, p. 199.

236. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., p. 21, Harper, p. 15.

237. Ibid.

238. Ibid., p. 54, Harper, p. 35.

239. Ibid., p. 185, Harper, p. 118.

240. Ibid., cf. p. 351, Harper, cf. p. 222.

241. Ibid., pp. 112–113, Harper, pp. 71–72.

242. Ibid., p. 255, Harper, p. 161.

243. Ibid., pp. 258–259, Harper, p. 163.

244. Ibid., pp. 260–263, Harper, pp. 164–166.

245. Ibid., pp. 78–79, Harper, pp. 51.

246. Ibid., p. 115, Harper, p. 74.

247. Ibid., p. 195, Harper, p. 124.

248. Ibid., p. 213, Harper, p. 135.

249. Ibid., p. 214, Harper, p. 135.

250. Ibid., pp. 392–393, Harper, p. 248.

251. Ibid., cf. p. 76, Harper, cf. p. 49.

252. Ibid., pp. 237–238, Harper, p. 150.

253. Ibid., p. 37, Harper, p. 25.

254. Ibid., p. 368, Harper, p. 232.

255. Fagin, William Bartram, Interpreter, op. cit., pp. 58–63. Also see: Joffre Coe, “William Bartram, Anthropologist,” Bartram Trail Conference Technical Study, 1978.

256. See reference to the Town of Cuscowilla, Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., pp. 191–193, Harper, pp. 122–123.

257. Ibid., p. 491, Harper, p. 311.

258. See Cutting, “Writings About William Bartram,” Reference Guide, op. cit., pp. 37–38; Fagin, William Bartram, Interpreter, op, cit., pp. 45–57; and William J. Sullivan, “Towards Romanticism; A Study of William Bartram,” unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Utah, 1969.

259. Robert Sayre, Thoreau and the American Indians, Princeton, 1977.

260. Bartram’s Travels, op. cit., pp. 22–23 and 211, Harper, pp. 16 and 134.

261. Ibid., pp. 39–40, Harper, p. 26. For celebrations of primitive simplicity, see Ibid., pp. 110 and 284, Harper, pp. 71 and 222.

262. Ibid., p. 371, Harper, p. 234.

263. Ibid., p. 451, Harper, p. 285.

264. Ibid., ct. pp. 451–456; Harper, ct. pp. 285–288.

265. A pen and ink sketch in the British Museum (see Ewan, William Bartram Drawings, plate 26) shows a stone pipe bowl of Indian manufacture, possibly the one presented to him by the blind old chief at the Upper Creek town of Muklasa, north of the Tallapoosa River in present Elmore County, Alabama. (See Travels, op. cit., p. 499, Harper, p. 316. )

266. The original portrait sketch is now in the collection of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. The differences between the original drawing and subsequent engravings are subtle but important to recognize. Also worthy of note is the original (?) caption identifying Mico Chlucco as “King of the Muscogulges or Cricks.” The engraved caption is more specific in identifying him as “King of Seminoles,” a subgroup of the larger Creek Nation. For a discussion of the relationship between the various southeastern tribes, see John R. Swanton, “Indians of the Southeastern United States,” Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 37, Washington, 1946; and Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians, Knoxville, 1977.

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