STUDIES OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 57 



base, and fall so below the dignity of their nature. Defend us from 

 their manners, laws and power.* 



The portrait is fanciful, to be sure, for Bartram could not 

 definitely have known what the young Indian was thinking. 

 And yet the meaning the passage conveys is not fanciful at all. 

 Bartram had lived long enough among the Indians to know that 

 a large element among the tribes looked with extreme displeas- 

 ure upon the introduction by the white traders of what Colonel 

 William Byrd, more than half a century before Bartram, had 

 called "' Kill Devil " rum,° and while this particular Indian may 

 not at the moment have thought of the " mad intemperance " 

 of the white man, the spirit of '" the portrait " is nevertheless 

 realistic. 



The fundamental error that Dr. Bissell falls into in his dis- 

 cussion of Bartram' s contribution to our knowledge of the 

 American Indian lies in his failure to distinguish between Bar- 

 tram's manner and his matter. Bartram does reflect certain 

 tendencies that Professor Babbitt would call Rousseauistic ; he 

 was a romantic naturalist; sentimental exoticism is to be found 

 in his writings; but he could also serve as a capital illustration 

 of the late Professor Greenlaw's statement " that classic and 

 romantic traits are inextricably mingled not only in the litera- 

 ture of the [eighteenth] century as a whole but in the work of 

 individual writers." ® Bartram' s exuberant style, his enthusiasm 

 for nature and primitive simplicity, may have led him to as- 

 cribe to his Indians " fanciful " soliloquies, but these " roman- 

 tic " tendencies do not invalidate the facts he presents of the 

 lives of the Indian tribes he came in contact with; while in his 

 conclusion and judgments, based on these facts, he observes a 

 rational restraint thoroughly "' unromantic." 



The manner of Bartram may have led Dr. Bissell to look 

 upon him merely as an example of " sentimental exoticism," 

 but it has not prevented other commentators from attaching 



* Ibid., 11. The quotation is from the Travels, p. 492. 



° History of the Dividing Line, Publications of the North Carolina Historical 

 Commission, 1929, p. 92. 



° Edwin Greenlaw, " Modern English Romanticism." Studies in Philology, 



XXII, -538. 



