Looking for a special person to honor in our first ever "Eyes on
Appalachia" Public Art Series, Catch the Spirit of Appalachia’s Board of
Directors decided on William Bartram. My job was to paint a large scene of this
most impressive explorer of the mountains. So my research brought me to some
intriguing stories about Bartram and his sole journeys throughout the
southeast.
Most widely known for the published accounts of
his "Travels" in the south east colonies of what became the United States during
the period from 1773-1776, William Bartram is today recognized as one of the
first spiritual naturalists. He was the first American born botanist and the
first naturalist to use the term "sublime" in describing nature. His accounts of
the joy he experienced in the power and beauty of nature were in his day
ridiculed as overly romantic although his descriptions of specific flora and
fauna were always highly regarded. After more than 200 years the sole published
work of enigmatic William Bartram is still for sale. Bartram’s journals recount
the early naturalist’s travels through the Southeast at a time before the United
States existed.
Born in 1739 alongside the Schuylkill
River (now Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), William Bartram was the fifth son of
Royal Botanist John Bartram.
William’s solo journey
spanned four years beginning in 1773 and covered parts of present-day Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Sailing to Charles Town (now
Charleston) South Carolina, he used this city as base for the next four years.
In April of 1775 he left Charleston for Augusta and continued north from Augusta
into Cherokee country. He reached the village of Cowee Watauga (in present-day
Western North Carolina) in May, 1775.
During his "walk in
the woods" Bartram recorded many observations in his personal journals, diaries
of a sort that inspired many noted authors including Henry David Thoreau,
William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Brockden Brown, James
Fenimore Cooper and John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. He is one of the
first people to whom the term "naturalist" is applied.
In
addition to the scientific aspects of the journals, William Bartram’s writing
also serves as some of the earliest descriptions of the culture of both the
Cherokee and Creek Indians. At this time, the Cherokee were so plentiful in the
southern Appalachians that Bartram refers to them as the Cherokee Mountains on
occasion. He also expresses beliefs, unusual for the time, about man’s
interrelation with nature, believing that man shares certain emotional and
intellectual bonds with all living things. During the trip he sketched more than
200 previously undiscovered species of birds alone.
For
more than 10 years these journals languished in Bartram’s ancestral home on the
Schuylkill River. Unhappy with the writing and suffering from a motivation
disorder, the journals might never have published had he not been pressured by
friends to do so.
Today many of us recognize our
attachment to nature and its importance to our own well-being, but it is largely
owing to the likes of Bartram, and the native peoples, that we’ve come this far
in our appreciation of nature.
Very moved by Bartram’s
descriptions of our beloved mountains; I brought this appreciation to the first
ever "Eyes on Appalachia" Public Art Series with my painting entitled "Bartram’s
Inspired Journeys." First unveiled at the Greening Up the Mountains Festival, it
is now available as a limited edition print. Please email me at Doreyl Ammons
Looking for a special person to honor in our first ever "Eyes on
Appalachia" Public Art Series, Catch the Spirit of Appalachia’s Board of
Directors decided on William Bartram. My job was to paint a large scene of this
most impressive explorer of the mountains. So my research brought me to some
intriguing stories about Bartram and his sole journeys throughout the
southeast.