Naturalist & Spokesman for America

ccording to Charlotte Porter, Bartram’s influence (both directly and through his students) was instrumental in the creation of a distinctly American school of natural history.(77) Although he had begun his career as an English citizen living in the Colonies and had been sponsored by British patrons in his early years, William Bartram developed an intense national pride soon after the Revolution. His decision to publish Travels first in Philadelphia and then in London is itself significant, for it reflects a nationalistic attitude soon to dominate natural history study in America. With Bartram’s encouragement, Wilson, Say, Ord, Nuttall and others at the Academy of Natural Sciences began to locate, collect, name and publish American species in their own American books and scientific journals.

In addition to its place of publication, the contents of Bartram’s Travels served as a self-conscious statement about the positive qualities of the North American continent. By praising the beauty of wild creatures he encountered and the high moral character of the Indians, Bartram was openly challenging the widely publicized view of French philosopher George Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788).(78) Buffon, in his Histoire Naturelle general et Particuliere of 1749–1789, had claimed that the plant and animal species of the New World were degenerated versions of Old World equivalents.(79) Even the climate and quality of life in America were doomed to inferiority, according to the jingoistic Frenchman.

Americans were understandably enraged by such suggestions, but until they could disprove them with specific evidence to the contrary, they had little hope of discrediting Buffon’s highly regarded claims. John Adams, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin all attacked the Frenchman's erroneous assertions, while Thomas Jefferson, in his Note on the State of Virginia (1787), refuted them with specific examples of American fauna. William Bartram, with his characteristic Quaker diplomacy, did not mention Buffon by name, but effectively undermined many of his claims by eloquently describing the plants and animals of the Southeast in his Travels. He did not believe birds and animals to be the “beast machines” Buffon suggested, and went out of his way to document signs of their intelligence. He even went so far as to suggest that one American plant (the Venus fly trap or ‘tipitiwichet’) had “some sensible faculties or attributes similar to those that dignify animal nature.”(80)

For personal and patriotic reasons, Bartram must have quietly resented the foreign naturalists who appended their names to Bartram’s own discoveries and those of his father. What they had done was justified under the system of universal taxonomic classification developed by Linneaus (wherein the describer and first publisher of each new species is credited for its existence), but it must have been frustrating, nonetheless. (In similar frustration, Alexander Garden lashed out at the “dictatorial power” of European botanists in the naming of American species.)(81) Plant genera now known as Balduina, Befaria, Chapmannia, Chaptalia, Elliottia, Glottidium, Macranthera, Mayaca, Pinckneya and Polypteris were all Bartram discoveries, but, unfortunately, do not bear the name of Bartram as author.(82)

More troublesome still was the European tendency to ignore some of Bartram’s American finds in favor of more exotic species then coming in from the South Pacific. One of the rare pieces of evidence to indicate Bartram’s feelings on this issue is a letter to Mr. Robert Barclay of London dated 1788. In it, Bartram expresses his concern about the omission of many of his discoveries from European publications. The letter accompanied a duplicate set of the specimens Bartram' had provided Fothergill during his southern trip:

“I collected these specimens amongst many hundred others about 20 years ago when on Botanical reserches in Carolina Georgia and Florida duplicates of which I sent to Doctor Fothergill; very few of which I find have entered the Systema Vegetabilium, not even in the last Edition.

The number of specimens that I sent were submited to the examination of Doctor Solander which by the returns I received from the Doctor (the nos. corresponding with those of my own duplicates) appear’d most of them to be either New Genera of Species; soon after Doctor Solander deceas’d & Doctor Fothergill soon after followed him. I have never learn'd what became of the specimens.

These remaining with some more that I have kept by me to this time, which I cheerfully offer for the inspection & amusement of the curious, expecting or desiring no other gratuity than the bare mention of my being the discoverer, a reward due for traveling several thousand miles mostly amongst Indian Nations which is not only difficult but Dangerous, besides suffering sickness cold & hunger. But with a perfect Sence of gratitude I with pleasure acknowledge that the Noble Fothergill liberally supported me whilst in his employ with ample pecuniary assistance.”(83)

William’s long delay in publishing the Travels (14 years after his return) was undoubtedly caused, at least in part, by his hope of receiving the “approved” names of his discoveries from Dr. Solander. Solander’s failure to provide this information cost Bartram the official credit for many botanical discoveries in two ways: First, during the period of time between Bartram’s trip and the publication of the Travels, several other botanists published his botanical finds in their own books, thus receiving official recognition for their discovery. Second, since Bartram was relying on his European colleagues to provide the information, his own classification of plants was frequently inconsistent with the ever-changing European systems. For this reason, even some of the plants he did identify and publish first were ruled invalid and renamed. According to Dr. Kraig Adler of Cornell University, the same is true of Bartram’s herpetological discoveries.(84) Although Bartram provided the first detailed observations on the reptiles and amphibians of the Southeast and recorded at least forty different species, many of them new to science, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (1957) has rejected Bartram’s identifications. Had Bartram been better versed in taxonomic procedures, reports Dr. Adler, many of our commonest Eastern amphibians and reptiles would bear his imprimatur.(85)

Bartram’s credit for discovering the warmouth or yellow bream (Lepomis gulosus) has also been rejected by the International Commission.(86) Despite this loss of personal recognition, Bartram’s influence in the history of American ichthyology, through his association with others, is generally acknowledged. Constantine Rafinesque (1783–1840) and Charles Alexandre Lesueur (1780–1840), who together are credited with beginning the serious study of North American freshwater ichthyology, were friends and frequent visitors of the versatile naturalist.(87)

Through his own pioneering field research and his personal encouragement of so many pivotal figures, William Bartram might well be considered the single most important figure in the development of American natural history study, but the scope of his influence does not stop there. Bartram’s impact on science and literature through his writing went well beyond his personal contacts.

Footnotes

77. For a further discussion of the ideas suggested here, see Porter, “Excursive Naturalists,” op. cit.

78. That Bartram was very familiar with Buffon’s writings can be seen from his remarks in the Travels, but also from the notes in his “Commonplace Book” (in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania) where he mentions the Frenchman by name and discusses some of his theories.

79. For a penetrating discussion of Buffon’s theories and their application to America, see: William Penden, Ed., Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Chapel Hill, 1954, also Arthur A. Ekirch, Man and Nature in America, New York, 1963; and Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World, Pittsburgh, 1955.

80. Bartram’s Travels, Introduction; Harper, p. liv.

81. Kastner, Species of Eternity, op. cit., p. 77.

82. Joseph Ewan, A Short History of Botany in the United States, New York, 1969, p. 34.

83. Francis Harper, “Travels in Georgia and Florida,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. XXXIII, part II,. 1943, p. 130.

84. Kraig Adler, Bartram Trail Conference Technical Study, op. cit.

85. Ibid., p. 4.