Edward Watts

Castorland Journal: An Account of the Exploration and Settlement of Northern New York State by French Emigres in the Years 1793 to 1797 (review)

was later published (by Ephraim G. Squier in 1853) as Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians. Part 2 of the book includes “Some Hints & Observations, concerning the Civilization, of the Indians, or Aborigines of America,” a manuscript previously published in Kathryn E. Holland Braund and Gregory Waselkov’s William Bartram and the Southeastern Indians. This text reveals how Bartram’s sympathy for the Indians was nonetheless infused with the assumption that they would soon relinquish many aspects of their culture and that “[t]hey want Sheep & horned Cattle & would be happy with arts, and improvements in Agriculture” (371). Part 2 also includes an excerpt of a commonplace book that has never before been published, from a pharmacopoeia that has been attributed to William Bartram but appears to have been used by his nephews who worked in the pharmacy trade in Philadelphia. Finally, there is a garden journal with daily entries on the weather and sprouting of various plants in 1803–04. Not all of these documents will be of equal interest to every reader, but several could be used to great advantage in the classroom to supplement students’ reading of Travels. William Bartram was less of a romantic visionary than his single published work suggests, but his range of talents was even greater than one might have appreciated before reading The Search for Nature’s Design.