I Wonder If He Dropped in at the Florabama?

Between 1773 and 1776, a Quaker named William Bartram traveled by boat, horseback and foot through Georgia and what was then East Florida (now just Florida) and West Florida (now part Florida and part Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana). His sponsor, Dr. John Fothergill, commissioned him to take the journey to draw (Bartram was a talented artist) and take samples of the plant life of this relatively unexplored -- or at least undocumented -- part of North America. But like Alexis de Toqueville, whose commission was merely to inspect American prisons to get ideas for improving French prisons, Bartram didn't allow his sponsor's limited designs to curtail his human and scientific interest in all the unusual things he saw on his journey, not the least of which was the native Americans (a/k/a "savages") that were the predominant population in the area at the time.

Bartram is read fondly today for his detailed observations of nature, his beautiful drawings, and his enlightened-for-the-time attitude toward the "indigenous peoples". I appreciated the humanizing effect his account has on these people so many years later. I've spent a fair amount of time in the areas Bartram traveled, and reading about what went on here and who lived here so long ago is a lot like reading about exploration of an alien culture on an alien planet. The times they have certainly changed.

The book pictured isn't Bartram's entire work, to which he assigned the wonderfully eighteenth century title "Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogules, or Creek Confederacy, and the County of the Chactaws; Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Production of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians." Instead it is an edited compilation of selections from that work and some other Bartram writings on the Southeastern Indians with an extended background introduction and footnotes. So if you're looking for the plant stuff, you'll have to find a different edition!

The guy on the cover is the "Long Warrior", who was the "Mico-chlucco" [literally "big ruler"], the "King of the Muscogulges or Cricks [i.e., Creek Indians]". He lived in north central Florida.