CALVIN T. RYAN LIBRARY
Welcome to the guide for North American Frontiers 1500-1850. This is intended as a starting point, not an exhaustive list.
This guide focuses mostly on primary sources relevant to your final paper - for help finding secondary sources, or primary sources that cover areas outside this class's area, please consult the general History Subject Guide, or make an appointment with me.
Note: Pay close attention to the date on your intended source, as not all materials in every database fall within the class scope.
There are numerous primary source accounts, both in print and online, that reveal the history of North American frontiers and borderlands.
Look for words like "diary", "journal", "travels", "tour", "account", "exploration", and the like.
Below are a few selections. There are many more in the book stacks (2nd floor of the library - look particularly at F200-F600) and online.
If you aren't finding something that interests you, please contact me for assistance.
The Small Details of Life : Twenty Diaries by Women in Canada, 1830-1996
This anthology presents twenty diary excerpts written between 1830 and 1996, covering the upper-class travails of nineteenth-century travelers and settlers to the workday struggles and triumphs of twentieth-century students, teachers, housewives, and writers.
The Mountains We Have Crossed by
This edition contains the very personal diary of Sarah Smith, "the weeping one" as the Indians remembered her. When read in chronological sequence with the nearly one hundred letters written by her husband, Asa, a compelling picture of their journey to Oregon and subsequent life at the mission emerges. Other letters, documents, and biographical sketches enhance the volume.
Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico in the Years 1599-1602 by
Brief Narrative of the Most Remarkable Things that Samuel Champlain of Brou-Age, Observed in the Western Indies; -- During the Voyage Which he Made to the Same, In the Years One Thousand Five Hundred and Ninety-Nine to One Thousand Six Hundred and Two
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, written in 1789, details its writer's life in slavery, his time spent serving on galleys, the eventual attainment of his own freedom and later success in business. Including a look at how slavery stood in West Africa, the book received favorable reviews and was one of the first slave narratives to be read widely.
Cherokee Sister by
Catharine Brown (1800?–1823) became Brainerd Mission School’s first Cherokee convert to Christianity, a missionary teacher, and the first Native American woman whose own writings saw extensive publication in her lifetime. After her death from tuberculosis at age twenty-three, the missionary organization that had educated and later employed Brown commissioned a posthumous biography, Memoir of Catharine Brown, whichnbsp; enjoyed widespread contemporary popularity and praise. In the following decade, her writings, along with those of other educated Cherokees, became highly politicized and were used in debates about the removal of the Cherokees and other tribes to Indian Territory. Although she was once viewed by literary critics as a docile and dominated victim of missionaries who represented the tragic fate of Indians who abandoned their identities, Brown is now being reconsidered as a figure of enduring Cherokee revitalization, survival, adaptability, and leadership. In Cherokee Sister Theresa Strouth Gaul collects all of Brown’s writings, consisting of letters and a diary, some appearing in print for the first time, as well as Brown’s biography and a drama and poems about her. This edition of Brown’s collected works and related materials firmly establishes her place in early nineteenth-century culture and her influence on American perceptions of Native Americans.
William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings (LOA #84)
Artist, writer, botanist, gardener, naturalist, intrepid wilderness explorer, and self-styled "philosophical pilgrim," William Bartram was an extraordinary figure in eighteenth-century American life. The first American to devote himself to what we would now call the environment, Bartram was the most significant American writer before Thoreau and a nature artist who rivals Audubon. He was also a pioneering ethnographer whose works are a crucial source for the study of the Indian cultures of southeastern America. The Library of America presents the first collection of his writings and the largest gathering of his remarkable drawings ever published. Long recognized as an American classic, Bartram's Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791) recounts his journeys through the wilderness from 1773 to 1776 in prose famous for its celebratory intensity and lyrical profusion. In the forests, rivers, swamps, and savannahs of the South, Bartram collected botanical specimens and made wildlife drawings, observing the natural abundance around him with a vision shaped by both science and Quaker spirituality. His great descriptive passages reveal him as a poet of the landscape, finding sublime vistas in every shift of light and weather. Whether watching a roaring alligator emerging from a lake, spending the night on an uninhabited island, exuberantly cataloguing the flora of the wilderness, or enjoying the hospitality of Indian tribes, Bartram presents a moving, detailed vision of many living in harmony with nature. Thoreau, Emerson, Cooper, Chateaubriand, Coleridge (in "Kubla Khan"), and Wordsworth drew extensively on the lush imagery of the Travels, which was the most influential pieces of American nature writing before Walden. Also included in the volume is the sparer and more factual original report of Bartram's Southern travels that he sent to his English patron, John Fothergill, as well as a comprehensive collection of his scientific and ethnographic papers. Especially fascinating is his sympathetic and vividly detailed Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians, long unavailable. A special feature of this edition is a rich selection of Bartram's drawings, which share with the Travels a capacity for finding wonder in the simplest manifestations of nature. Many of the drawings are privately owned and had been seen previously by only a handful of collectors. Some of the most beautiful are produced in full color. Extensive notes, a glossary of botanical terms, a newly researched chronology of Bartram's life, a map tracing the route of his travels, and an index guide the reader. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Surveying the Early Republic by
In Surveying the Early Republic, Robert D. Bush contextualizes the firsthand account of Andrew Ellicott, the United States Boundary Commissioner appointed by President George Washington in 1796. Ellicott and his Spanish counterparts established the boundary line between the United States and Spanish territory in North America after the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo, opening the door to navigation of the Mississippi River and the export of American goods from the Spanish-held port of New Orleans. Over the course of this multiyear surveying project (1796?1800), Ellicott found himself entangled in the politics of these frontier lands, including an insurrection by inhabitants who favored the United States against the existing Spanish regime. He also reported to his superiors on various rumors, plots, and political intrigues as well as on the secret activities of individuals in the pay of Spain, including U.S. Army General James Wilkinson. Regrettably, the widespread acclaim that followed the publication of Ellicott?s journal in 1803, a year prior to the commencement of Lewis and Clark?s expedition, faded over time. In this first edited and annotated version of that journal, Bush illuminates the commissioner?s day-to-day narrative of events in what later became the Mississippi Territory and thus deepens our understanding of early American expansionism. In addition, Ellicott?s accounts of personalities, plots, counter-plots, and Indian affairs depict with unparalleled clarity the tumultuous diplomatic experiences faced by President John Adams?s administration as it pushed the bounds of America?s frontier. Bush?s deft treatment of this valuable primary source provides a critical contribution to the study of the history of early America.
The Forgotten Expedition 1804-1805 by
At the same time that he charged Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the great Northwest, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned William Dunbar and George Hunter to make a parallel journey through the southern unmapped regions of the Louisiana Purchase. From October 16, 1804, to January 26, 1805, Dunbar and Hunter, both renowned scientists, made their way through what is now northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas, ascending the Ouachita River and investigating the natural curiosity called "the hot springs." Though Dunbar and Hunter's journals have the same value and appeal as Lewis's, theirs have long been out of print and have never been published in a single volume. Their daily accounts now appear together, enhanced by a wealth of useful notes. The team of the "Grand Expedition," as it was optimistically named, was the first to send its findings on the newly annexed territory to the president, who received Dunbar and Hunter's detailed journals with pleasure. They include descriptions of flora and fauna, geology, weather, landscapes, and native peoples and European settlers, as well as astronomical and navigational records that allowed the first accurate English maps of the region and its waterways to be produced. Their scientific experiments conducted at the hot springs may be among the first to discover a microscopic phenomena still under research today. The Forgotten Expedition completes the picture of the Louisiana Purchase presented through the journals of explorers Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis. It is a treasure of the early natural history of North America and the first depiction of this new U.S. southern frontier. "Set out at half past six a.m. The morning very foggy on the river & not so cold as yesterday. The banks still rising in height by slow degrees & the land more & more intermixed with sand.... Found on the bank a young Fawn just killed by a Panther, the throat being tore very much. We took it on board & made a hearty meal of it, or two for all hands."
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