Period of Exploration

SUMMARY

artram began his long journey from Philadelphia aboard the brigantine Charles Town Packet in the spring of 1773.(33) After a rough and perilous sea voyage, and a few days of rest in Charleston, he set off by schooner for Savannah, Georgia. Here he bought a horse and equipped himself for the rest of his journey. After almost a year of exploration in Georgia (where he was accompanied on occasion by a John McIntosh of Darien), Bartram made his way south to Florida. His friend having stayed behind in more civilized terrain, William went on alone to explore the St. Johns River, where he and his father had traveled almost ten years before. Here Bartram encountered fierce alligators whose violent attacks he vividly described in his account of the trip which was published in 1791 under the lengthy title: Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws…

In addition to the plants and animals of the area, which he recorded with great accuracy, Bartram was interested in native populations. He attended a conference with the Indians held on the borders of the Alachua Savanna. At the meeting, Chief Cowkeeper gave the Quaker “unlimited permission to travel over the country for the purpose of collecting flowers, medicinal plants, etc.” and saluted him by the “Puc Puggy” or flower hunter.(34) Bartram was fascinated by the mixture of Spanish and Indian customs evidenced in the Alachua tribe and described them in some detail. Taking advantage of Chief Cowkeeper's permission, Bartram spent the rest of the summer exploring the unusual terrain around his trading post headquarters. He made frequent trips through East Florida for the purpose of collecting natural specimens which he had seen on his earlier expedition.

Long periods of Bartram’s southern trip were, unfortunately, omitted from his Travels. The fall and winter of 1773–1774 was one of these. In a brief chapter of nine pages, Bartram passes over the entire period from July 1773–March 1774 with few descriptions of his specific whereabouts except to say that he spent the remaining part of this season in botanical excursions to the low countries, between Carolina and East Florida.”(35) The summer of 1774 was spent in Florida and in late autumn, after sending some seed packages to London, Bartram returned to Charleston to spend the winter.

Charleston was an important cultural center in the eighteenth century, and Bartram was pleased to take advantage of its intellectual stimulation. Most notable among his friends there were Dr. Lionel Chalmers, Fothergill’s agent, and Dr. Alexander Garden, an avid horticulturist (and the man for whom the Gardenia was named by John Ellis in 1761).

In the spring of 1775 (incorrectly dated a year later in his Travels), Bartram “set off from Charleston for the Cherokee nation,” where he explored the mountains of present-day South and North Carolina and Tennessee.(36) It was on this trip that the lone naturalist met Attakullakulla, the Little Carpenter, Chief of the Cherokee (c.1700–1780) with his retinue. The chief spoke fluent English, for he had traveled to England several years before as part of the important Indian delegation of Sir Alexander Cuming. While there, the “grand chief” had dined with the King of England and been painted (in court costume) by William Hogarth in 1730. He welcomed Bartram as “friend and brother” and bid him safe passage through Cherokee lands.

Having recorded and collected many of the plants of this region, Bartram traveled south across Georgia and through Alabama, following an old Indian trading path (and eventual Federal Road) to Mobile. Traveling along the Gulf Coast, first east to Pensacola (where he met the Royal Governor), then west toward the Mississippi River; Bartram was afflicted by an unidentified illness (possibly scarlet fever) which left him severely weakened and partially blind.

Poor health notwithstanding, Bartram continued his Gulf Coast travels by boat, this time heading west with traders bound for Baton Rouge. So debilitating was his illness that at times Bartram was “incapable of making any observations for my eyes could not bear the light.”(37) By the time he arrived at the Pearl River, he was suffering “excruciating pain” and was “almost frantic and stupefied for want of sleep.”(38) Fortunately, a local French land owner was able to render some assistance, and an Englishman named Rumsey took care of the ailing naturalist on Pearl Island until his health returned several weeks later. Though Bartram did eventually reach the Mississippi and travel up it as far as Pointe Coupee, he decided to cut his trip short at that point, and return to the Carolinas by retracing his overland route.(39)

After his “return to the Creek nation,” Bartram employed himself “during the spring and fore part of summer, in revisiting the several districts in Georgia and the East borders of Florida.”(40) It was during this period, the summer of 1776, that Bartram is said to have joined the patriots' cause in the American Revolution by temporarily enlisting in General Lachlan Mclntosh’s military force “raised to repel a supposed invasion…from St. Augustine by the British.”(41) The rumor of invasion proved to lack foundation, and, although offered a lieutenant's commission, the Quaker pacifist refused to stay on. By this time, after four years of travel and with news of battles raging close to home, Bartram was anxious to return to Philadelphia. Stopping briefly in Charleston, he continued northward to Cape Fear, where he visited his uncle’s plantation for the last time. (His uncle, aunt, and cousin had died during Bartram’s earlier stay there from 1770–73.) Traveling on over land, Bartram arrived at his father’s house in January, 1777 (not a year later as the Travels erroneously suggest).

For years William Bartram’s biographers accepted the published 1778 return date to Philadelphia and assumed that William missed seeing his father alive by three months. After exhaustive research on the chronology of Bartram’s Travels, however, Dr. Francis Harper has established that William’s homecoming was in 1777 and that, in fact, he and his father shared more than nine months together(42) before the latter’s death in September. This must have been an especially happy time for John. He had, originally considered William’s southern trip a “wild notion,”(43) but now, four years later, undoubtedly appreciated its tremendous significance.

After his father’s death, William continued to live in the house at Kingsessing. His brother took him into partnership, and together the two Bartrams operated the flourishing botanical garden. It may be assumed that William spent much of his time with the plants, while John handled most of the business aspects of the garden.

Footnotes

33. The schematic itinerary of Bartram’s trip which follows, is derived from his own accounts which appear in two forms: Bartram’s Journal from 1773–74, “Travels in Georgia and Florida, A Report to Dr. John Fothergill,” published in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. XXXIII, Part II, Philadelphia 1943; and Bartram’s Travels as reprinted with commentary by Francis Harper in The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalist’s Edition, New Haven, 1958. Since many of Bartram’s own dates are inaccurate or presented in a disordered sequence, they have been reordered in the most probably way based on Bartram Trail Conference staff research and the exhaustive research of Dr. Francis Harper. More specific details concerning Bartram’s physical route may be found in Section II of this report.

34. Bartram’s Travels, p. 185; Harper, p. 119. NB. Page numbers for all Bartram quotations will be given in the following way: The first page number cited will be the page on which the passage appears in the first (Philadelphia, 1791) edition of the book; the second page number will be the page on which the passage appears in Francis Harper’s Naturalist’s Edition. For convenience in checking the original source, Harper’s edition provides both systems of pagination. When third or fourth page numbers appear, they refer to Harper’s commentary also in the Naturalist’s Edition.

35. Bartram’s Travels, p. 48; Harper, p. 31 and 344.

36. With this trip Bartram begins Part II of his Travels. Bartram’s Travels, p. 308; Harper, p. 195.

37. Bartram’s Travels, p. 420; Harper, p. 266.

38. Ibid.

39. It has been suggested by at least one historian that evidence exists to indicate that Bartram’s trip to the Mississippi was prompted by political considerations and not merely scientific curiosity. Mr. Fred G. Benton, Jr. of Baton Rouge believes that Bartram was commissioned by Governor Brown and the colonial government of West Florida to examine and report on the Brown' Cliffs and White Plains area which was then being considered as a possible site for a relocated West Floridian capital. He cites Bartram’s meetings with Governor’s Chester and Brown and his willingness to travel to these locations despite an extremely severe and dangerous medical condition as evidence for his hypothesis. For a further discussion of this theory, see Fred Benton, “Location of Bartram’s Travels in Louisiana,” Bartram Trail Technical Study, 1978, on file with the Bartram Trail Conference. See also: Cecil Johnson, British West Florida 1763–1783, New Haven, 1943; Clinton N. Howard, The British Development of West Florida 1763–1769, Berkley, 1947; Linda K. Williams, “East Florida As A Loyalist Haven,” Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. LIV, No. 4, April 1976.

40. Bartram’s Travels, p. 467; Harper, p. 295.

41. Although Bartram makes no mention of this in his Travels, the assertion was made in the first biography of William Bartram, written (anonymously) in 1832, by his friend George Ord. For a discussion of Bartram’s military activities, see Francis Harper, “William Bartram and the American Revolution.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 97, No. 5, October 1953; and Harper’s Naturalist’s Edition, op. cit., pp. 416–417.

42. See Harper’s Naturalist’s Edition, op. cit.

43. Kastner, A Species of Eternity, op. cit., p. 86.