60 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



Bartram's narrative gives, not merely the history of the Oconee, but a 

 good account also of the beginnings of the Seminole as distinct from 

 the Creeks.i^ 



Bartram's contribution to the literature on the American 

 Indian has generally been discussed in terms of his Travels. 

 What he has to say of the Indians in that book constitutes the 

 largest part of his contribution on the subject, but it is only a 

 part. Another is a series of answers he wrote in 1789, before 

 the publication of the Travels, to specific queries on Indians, 

 presumably by his friend Dr. Benjamin S. Barton. The manu- 

 script of these answers has had a complicated history. One 

 version is contained in John Howard Payne's Commonplace 

 Book, written in Bartram's handwriting and entitled "Answers 

 to Queries about Indians by William Bartram." '^^ Another 

 version was published by E. G. Squier in 1853.^^ The two ver- 

 sions differ only in the sequence and arrangement of the ques- 

 tions and answers; the material is essentially the same, except 

 that the published version was evidently edited by Squier with 

 the intent of securing greater unity and coherence. 



Squier in his Prefatory Note states that while he was writing 

 a work on "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi," the Bar- 

 tram manuscript was placed in his hands. It had belonged to 

 Dr. Samuel George Morton, of Philadelphia, who had received 

 it from Mobile through the courtesy of " a gentleman whose 

 name is forgotten, but who received it amongst the waste paper 

 used as stowage, in a box of books, from some northern city." 

 Squier believed that Dr. B. S. Barton, who " in his Memoir on 

 the ' Origin of the American Nation,' p. 46, refers to a MS. by 

 Bartram, on these subjects, in his possession," . . . was " the 

 author of the inquiries submitted to Bartram, and the original 

 proprietor of the MS. in question." ^® The American Ethnologi- 



^^Ibid., pp. 12, 23, 106-7, 129, 169, 180-81. 



^* Among the Bartram Papers in the Library of the Pennsylvania Historical 

 Society, Philadelphia. 



^^ '" Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians." By William Bartram. 

 1789. With Prefatory and Supplementary Notes. By E. G. Squier. Transac- 

 tions of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. Ill, Part I. New York. 1853. 



" Ibid., 4. 



