Thus it is seen that the Indians, on their own account, furnished provisions for their own war parties; for the English forays against Americans and Spanish; for explorers like Marquette, Carver, and Lewis and Clark, and the long list of later adventurers who came to spy out the land and eventually to expel the tribesmen from their fields. The traders who ranged the woods and rivers for a century before civilization ruined their traffic, depended in a large measure on the meagre stores of Indian corn and beans; while even the troops which finally hunted the natives from their homes, filled their camp kettles either from the caches or the corn fields of the fugitives. Nor was this all. The earliest settlers seized upon the little cultivated plots as the most desirable ground for their own first plantings, and utilized the native-grown seed, since it was known to be adapted to the soil and climate. It is interesting to note that the two crops which the Indians prized most highly, corn and tobacco, are at present two of the foremost products of Wisconsin.
Benjamin Horace Hibbard, Ph. D.
(Communicated by Wisconsin Historical Society.)
THE AUTHENTICITY OF CARVER’S “TRAVELS”
In his paper on “The Travels of Jonathan Carver,” read before the American Historical Association in Chicago, December 29, 1904, Prof. E. G. Bourne of Yale University, presented the results of an investigation as to the originality and authenticity of the second part of this famous book, which is devoted to giving a systematic account of the manners and customs of the Indians in the Northwest, and of the animals and products of the soil.
The Professor brought to light the fact that as early as 1792 Oliver Wolcott, then Comptroller of the Treasury in Philadelphia, wrote the geographer Jedidiah Morse, that he had been informed on good authority that the book was written under very inauspicious circumstances; adding that Carver was an ignorant man, incapable of writing such a work, and that there was reason to believe it to be a compilation from other authors.[[26]]
Next, he cited contemporaneous but entirely independent criticisms by Schoolcraft in 1823,[[27]] and by Keating in 1824,[[28]] both of whom assert that the author of the Travels drew considerably from Lahontan. In addition, Schoolcraft declared that material was also derived from Charlevoix’s Travels. More detailed and more positive still, were the assertions of Greenhow, the historian of Oregon, that the second part of Carver’s Travels was a compilation from Charlevoix, Hennepin, and Lahontan.[[29]] Greenhow was familiar with Keating’s views, but apparently not with Schoolcraft’s, whose Memoirs were published in 1851, or with Wolcott’s, whose letter first saw light in 1846. These early criticisms appear to have escaped the notice of later writers who have written upon Carver’s Travels, for neither Moses Coit Tyler, in his History of American Literature, nor the authors of the articles on Carver in the various cyclopædias, breathe any suspicion as to the authenticity of the work.
In the second part of his paper, Professor Bourne gave the results of his attempt to test the correctness of the assertions of Wolcott, Schoolcraft, Keating, and Greenhow. He cited a few passages showing how the author of the Travels, whoever he might be, drew from books information which a genuine traveller would not think of going to books for. For example, the description of the personal appearance of the Indians was taken from Lahontan; of their keenness in detecting a trail, from Charlevoix; of their game of lacrosse partly from Charlevoix and partly from Adair’s History of the American Indians. The description of the Indian sled (or toboggan), with which the real Carver must have been perfectly familiar, is taken word for word from Charlevoix. Again, the real Carver must have many times seen Indians scalp prisoners, for he was a veteran of the French and Indian War, and one of the survivors of the Fort William Henry massacre; but notwithstanding such presumable personal observation, the author of Carver’s Travels borrows word for word Adair’s account of the process of scalping. The accounts of the animals are largely from Charlevoix. “The short vocabulary of the Chippeway Language” is almost entirely taken from Lahontan’s “Dictionary of the Algonkin Language.” Some of the changes are pure blunders of hasty transcription, which one familiar with the language, as Carver pretended to be, could not have made; as, for example, where Carver gives Sheshikwee for “dart,” when Lahontan gives it as the name of a particular kind of dance; or again, where Carver gives the word for “heart” which Lahontan gave for “hart.”
Professor Bourne’s conclusion was, that the second and larger part of Carver’s Travels is not an original work, but a literary compilation, like Sir John Mandeville’s Travels or Benzoni’s History of the New World; and that the first part was probably put together by the same writer, from Carver’s notes or oral recollections. As to the extent or reality of Carver’s journey up the St. Peter’s (or Minnesota) River, Professor Bourne felt disposed to accept the view of Keating, who apparently had studied the question very thoroughly on the ground, that Carver had entered the river but did not ascend it as far as he pretended.