CHAPTER III 



STUDIES OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 



Among the many literary productions on the American 

 Indian, Bartram's work occupies a place of its own. He gath- 

 ered his information at first hand; he traveled in parts of the 

 country inhabited by Indians who, in his day, were still prac- 

 tically untouched by civilization; he lived among them, studied 

 their languages and customs, and learned to distinguish be- 

 tween tribes and individuals. What is the value of Bartram's 

 testimony, of his contribution to our knowledge of the Indians ? 



Benjamin Bissell, in his study of the American Indian as an 

 object of literary idealization,^ refers to Bartram's Travels for 

 illustration of his thesis. Intent on proving Professor Babbitt's 

 doctrine that eighteenth-century romanticism, or Rousseauism, 

 tended to confuse " the supernatural or super-rational with the 

 natural," he cites Bartram's description of '" the Indian's " gov- 

 ernment as an instance " where the naturalistic Utopia appears 

 full-blown." ^ Admitting that Bartram's descriptions of the 

 beauties of external nature '" have been much admired, and are 

 of some importance, because of their influence upon Words- 

 worth," he quotes long passages from the Travels to prove that 

 '" Sentimental exoticism seems to reach its height in William 

 Bartram." ^ He concludes his chapter on " Civilization as Seen 

 by the Savage " with Bartram's " fanciful portrait of a noble 

 savage ": 



I saw a young Indian in the nation, who when present, and behold- 

 ing the scenes of mad intemperance and folly by the white men in the 

 town, clapt his hand to his breast, and with a smile, looking aloft as 

 if struck with astonishment, and wrapt in love and admiration to the 

 Deity, as who should say, O though Great and Good Spirit, we are 

 indeed sensible of thy benignity and favour to us red men. We did not 

 know before they came amongst us that mankind could become so 



^ The American Indian in English Literature of the Eighteenth Century, Yale 

 Studies in English, LXVIII, 1925. ''Ibid., p. 21. "" Ibid., 46-48. 



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