Wednesday, January 28, 2004

WRITER: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu
SOURCE: Mark Williams, 706/542-1616, jmw@uga.edu

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA ANTHROPOLOGY FACULTY MEMBER DISCOVERS RARE COPY OF NOW-LOST WILLIAM BARTRAM MANUSCRIPT

>> View manuscript

ATHENS, Ga. – Generations of nature and history lovers in the Southeast have read and re-read a book published in 1791 by naturalist William Bartram and usually called by the truncated name of Travels. This seminal work describes in depth the flora and fauna of North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Fewer people know that Bartram’s descriptions of Indian culture remain to this day extremely important. Now, a University of Georgia professor has discovered what is probably a rare copy—one of three known—of a now-lost Bartram original manuscript of a book published as Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians. The copy adds an important chapter to the legacy of Bartram, which remains undiminished more than two centuries.

“I continue to hope that the original Bartram manuscript will be discovered,” said Dr. Mark Williams of the UGA department of anthropology. “But in the absence of that document, this newly discovered copy is a welcome addition to a growing collection of documents about Bartram, who seems, to many of us, like an old friend.”

The manuscript, which Williams uncovered in the Charles C. Jones, Jr. Collection in UGA’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, is already drawing interest from scholars. The copy, almost certainly made by an important scholar of Native American history, Ephraim G. Squier (1821-1888), is important for a number of reasons.

Drs. Gregory Waselkov and Kathryn Braund, of the University of South Alabama and Auburn University respectively, co-wrote William Bartram on Southeastern Indians, which the University of Nebraska Press published in 1995.

“Mark's discovery of the Squier manuscript of Bartram is important for several reasons,” said Waselkov. “As one of only three extant copies of William Bartram's Observations manuscript, Squier's tracings of Bartram's drawings of prehistoric mounds, Creek towns and Cherokee and Creek structures contain some new details previously not shown on our other copies of these ethnographically important but long-lost originals. Ephraim Squier first brought Bartram's Observations to print in 1853, and his notations indicate how he edited Bartram's original text. In other words, we can now be certain what is Squier and what is Bartram. Squier's 1853 publication saved Bartram's Observations from oblivion. Mark Williams's discovery of Squier's working copy of what must have been a badly damaged original gives us a first-hand look at Squier's efforts to interpret a critically important 18th-century account of the southeastern Indians.”

Braund agrees, calling Williams’s work “a great sleuthing job.”

Just how Williams came to find the manuscript is a detective story in itself. Charles C. Jones, Jr., in whose collection the manuscript resides, was a Princeton and Harvard-trained lawyer originally from Savannah and a colonel for the Confederacy during the Civil War. After the war, he conducted business in New York City for a decade before moving back to Georgia and locating in Augusta.

During this time, he became very much interested in Indian archaeological sites in Georgia and published several books and papers on the topic. In the early 1980s, Williams, who is an archaeologist whose work has focused on Georgia’s Oconee River Valley, was searching the Jones collection for notes and data about several sites that Jones examined during his work in the 19th century.

“In one folder, I noticed a hardback book with black leather and colored paper covers,” said Williams, “and the book’s spine is labeled with both the title MSS American Antiquities and the name Squier in gold lettering.”

Inside the book, Jones’s personal crest and family motto in Latin were on the left inside cover, but on the first page of the book was the signature “E. Geo. Squier” in pen along with his New York address. Further down the same page is written, “Presented to Coln [Colonel] C. C. Jones, Jr.” While one section of the book mentioned the name Bartram, Williams presumed it was just something that Squier had copied from well-known publications such as Travels.

Williams forgot about the book until 1998 when a noted 1848 book by Squier and Edwin H. Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley was reprinted. Williams at the time considered re-examining the manuscript at UGA, but it wasn’t until 2002 when he read the Waselkov and Braund book that he realized that the manuscript he had seen could be a copy of the long-lost Bartram document called Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians.

The story of how Squier obtained the Bartram manuscript and copied it into his notes was detailed by Williams in a paper presented at the Bartram Trail Conference in Montgomery, Al., and at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Charlotte, both in November.

Waselkov and Braund were aware of the two previous early copies of Bartram’s Observations. One was owned by the son of Edwin Davis, Squier’s co-author, and given to the Smithsonian Institution in 1898. The other copy was found in the possession of John Howard Payne (1791-1852) after his death. Payne was an actor, author, adventurer and government official, but is best known as the author of the song “Home, Sweet Home.” Williams also suggests in his paper how Payne could have come to own the copy.

A remaining scholarly question, for which Williams has theories but no answers yet, is how the Squier copy of the Bartram manuscript wound up in the possession of Charles C. Jones, Jr. At any rate, the Jones collection was sold to the University of Georgia Library in the 1960s where it has since resided.

“The job of comparing this newly discovered copy to the Payne and Davis copies is now underway,” said Williams. “This, of course, is not what I usually do. I’m an archaeologist, and this is the work of a historian. But it has been incredibly rewarding, and we continue to hope that the original Bartram manuscript will turn up.”

In addition to being a research scientist and teacher in the department of anthropology, Williams is director of the Georgia Archaeological Site File, the official repository for information about known archaeological sites of all periods in the state of Georgia. Since its founding in 1976, it has become the primary source for documentation about Georgia archaeology and is located at UGA’s Riverbend Research Center.