The Last Empty Places
Page 36
It’s been nothing but pure pleasure to work with the editors at Random House and Ballantine who made this book possible and nurtured it to fruition. I can’t express enough gratitude to Jennifer Hershey, editorial director at Random House, and Courtney Moran, assistant editor, who worked together on the manuscript and whose editorial suggestions invariably were graceful, thoughtful, and wise. Allison Dickens, formerly of Ballantine Books, originally commissioned the book and played an instrumental role in its conception and overall shape. John McGhee copyedited the manuscript in meticulous detail and, with a firsthand knowledge of Nova Scotia, clarified some blurry geography. I owe a huge debt to my agent, Stuart Krichevsky, for so many things both literary and business that I don’t even know where to begin except to express my deep gratitude for his tremendous knowledge, judgment, and support.
Finally, my gratitude and love to Amy, Molly, and Skyler, who accompanied me every paddle stroke and footstep of the way, even when I was alone.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. John Rudberg, one of the first Swedes to immigrate to Wisconsin Territory William F. Stark, Pine Lake, p. 88.
2. “For many years,” wrote Thoreau, “I was self-appointed inspector of rainstorms and snowstorms…” From Thoreau’s Journals.
3. Emerson, his friend and mentor, bought forty acres along the pond to save it from being logged Walter Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau, p. 179.
PART I. WHERE THE ACADIANS DISAPPEARED IN NORTHERN MAINE
1. All men and “lads” John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 343.
2. “They can do no harm at Baccalaos” Francis Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 223.
3. Baccalaos was the Spanish and Portuguese name Ibid., pp. 191–92.
4. Cartier was put out to pasture Ibid., p. 226.
5. the region known to the French as “L’Acadie” (and origins of the name Acadia). Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 6. Several different theories account for the name Acadia. It may have been given by the Italian seafarer Verrazano, who, exploring the North American coast in 1524 in the service of France, called the lush shorelines “Arcadia,” after the mythical pastoral region of ancient Greece, and the “r” was later dropped from maps and references. On the other hand, the name possibly derives from a Micmac Indian word meaning “place of abundance,” akadie. Or “Acadia” may have been a blending of these two words. Originally the French used it to refer to a huge part of North America but later the term “New France” came into more common use for the greater holdings and Acadia more specifically defined the coastal and inland regions around present-day Maine, Nova Scotia, and the other Maritime provinces. (See the Acadian Genealogy Homepage for more theories of the origin of the word Acadia at http://acadian.org/acadian.html.)
6. L’Acadie or La Cadie took in everything Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 247.
7. King Henri IV had granted Marc Lescarbot, The History of New France, vol. II, pp. 211–16.
8. “From the Spanish settlements northward” Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 256.
9. “fly from a corrupt world” Ibid., p. 263.
10. “…there came from the land odors” Ibid., p. 266. (Translation differs slightly in Lescarbot, vol. II, p. 309.)
11. St. John River The St. John River, according to Marc Lescarbot, the Parisian lawyer who accompanied the earliest settlers, was so named because during their coastal explorations of Acadia, the French arrived at the mouth of this unknown river on June 24, the day of the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, naming it in his honor. (See Lescarbot, History of New France, vol. II, p. 239.)
12. “as if we sucked at the very teats” Henry David Thoreau, “Ktaadn,” in The Maine Woods, p. 35.
13. “I do not recognize your authority” Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau, p. 41, quoting original Harvard report.
14. Harvard’s new president, Josiah Quincy Ibid., p. 33.
15. The Romantic spirit was channeled Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness, p. 116.
16. “American Scholar” address quoted from “The American Scholar” address given by Ralph Waldo Emerson at the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 31, 1837, as it appears at www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm.
17. “his grave Indian stride” Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau, p. 40, quoting John Weiss, “Thoreau” in Christian Examiner LXXIX (1865), p. 98.
18. “…it was a wondrous sight” Lescarbot, The History of New France, vol. II, p. 312.
19. “Land of the Porcupine” History of Madawaska, reprinted on Acadian website at http://acadian.org/Indians.html.
20. “the Beautiful River” C. Gagnon, “Native Peoples in the Upper St. John River Valley,” at www.upperstjohn.com/history/natives.htm.
21. hunting in the forest with the Micmac Lescarbot, The History of New France, vol. II, p. 344.
22. “Our sons will marry your daughters” Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 47.
23. “The Nature Conservancy” from oral interview 11.13.06 with Bruce Kidman of the Nature Conservancy staff and written history of St. John purchase, “The Defining Moment for Maine Conservation,” at www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/maine/about/art22181.html.
24. Deacon Ball, of the school committee Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau, pp. 52–53.
25. “‘What are you doing now?’” Ibid., p. 70.
26. “To the Maiden in the East”: Ibid., p. 107.
27. “short, explicit and cold manner” Ibid., p. 102.
28. “a wild, irregular, Indian-like sort of character” Ibid., p. 140.
29. “traveling, trucking, and marrying with the savages” Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 41, quoting Richard Guthry, “A Relation of the Voyage and Plantation of the Scotts Colony in New Scotland under the conduct of Sir William Alexander the Younger” (1629).
30. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Lescarbot, History of New France, vol. II, p. 67.
31. soft, luxurious coats of marten and otter M. A. MacDonald, Fortune & La Tour, p. 12.
32. The young Frenchmen learned Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 36.
33. “wives, children, dogs, kettles, hatchets, matachias” Lescarbot, History of New France, vol. III, p. 192.
34. the supreme spirit was Manitou MacDonald, Fortune & La Tour, p. 14.
35. “strange hissings” Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 36, quoting Champlain’s memoirs.
36. “…[V]igorous and tough” Intendant Jean Bochart de Champigny; the Marquis de Denonville; and a French officer, in W. J. Eccles, The Canadian Frontier (New York, 1969), pp. 90, 92, as quoted in MacDonald, Fortune & La Tour, p. 12.
37. [A] waste and howling wilderness Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, p. 36.
38. Helen Leidy was the eldest of six children Helen Hamlin, Nine Mile Bridge, p. x.
39. “The ice is going out!” Ibid., pp. 229–31.
40. Thoreau traveled by steamship Thoreau, The Maine Woods, p. 1.
41. marked with the king’s sign interview with Galen Hale, 6.18.06.
42. a great knob of granite from Maine Geologic Survey website at www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mgs/explore/bedrock/katahdin/glacial.htm.
43. “most childlike, unconscious and unblushing egotist” Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau, p. 150, quoting Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, p 49.
44. “I have had no help or relief” MacDonald, Fortune & La Tour, p. 18, quoting La Tour’s letter to the king, “Charles de la Tour au Roi, July 25, 1627.”
45. Claude had risen from modest beginnings Ibid., pp. 19–23.
46. his ex-tutor William Alexander Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 39.
47. “This answer,” writes Nicolas Denys Nicolas Denys, The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America (Acadia), pp. 133–36.
48. richest source of furs in this entire region MacDonald, Fortune & La Tour, pp.
38–39.
49. “good sense, discretion, fidelity, experience and great industry” Ibid., p. 39.
50. On the morning of September 7, 1846 Thoreau, The Maine Woods, p. 59.
51. “…inhuman Nature has got him at a disadvantage” Ibid., p. 85.
52. “It is difficult to conceive of a region uninhabited by man” Ibid., p. 94.
53. A quart of arbor-vitae Ibid., p. 55.
54. La Tour agreed, in 1633, to split the fur-trade profits in half MacDonald, Fortune & La Tour, p. 51.
55. After the formal marriage ceremony Ibid., p. 77.
56. a paltry four hundred or so in New France’s Ibid., p. 91.
57. Françoise Jacquelin fell ill and died Ibid., pp. 170–71.
58. He died, probably at Port Royal Ibid., p. 180.
59. The Acadian population had soared Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme, p. 65.
60. “They Lavish, Eat, Drink, and Play” Ibid., p. 72.
61. Six days later, on September 11, 1755 Ibid., p. 353.
62. Le Grand Dérangement from “Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture,” at www.cajunculture.com.
63. probably escaped detection by the fledgling United States “Deane and Kavanaugh’s Survey of the Madawaska Settlements, July–August 1831,” posted on www.upperstjohn.com/aroostook/dkobservations.htm.
PART II. THE WILD LANDS OF WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
1. Early on October 16, 1755 Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger, “The Narrative of Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger,” p. 429.
2. Karondinhah, as the Indians knew it Paul A. W. Wallace, Indian Paths of Pennsylvania, p. 126.
3. They either shot or tomahawked him Kim Adair Mattern, “The Leroy Incident, and Observations.”
4. “We are Allegheny Indians, and your enemies!” Le Roy and Leininger, “Narrative,” p. 429.
5. Far more than the Revolutionary War Fred Anderson, Crucible of War, p. xvi. Anderson here addresses the significance of the Seven Years’ War on a continental and global scale.
6. In the autumn of 1753 Ibid., p. 43.
7. reached Fort Le Boeuf, near Lake Erie, on December 11, 1753 George Washington, The Diaries of George Washington, vol. I, pp. 148–52
8. “The lands upon the River Ohio” Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 44.
9. what the Iroquois believed was only the Shenandoah Valley Ibid., p. 23.
10. “place of the setting of the sun” Solon J. Buck and Elizabeth Hawthorn Buck, The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania, p. 56.
11. The Ohio Company then gave stock to Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 30.
12. hile an older and more confident commander might have considered his options Ibid., p. 51.
13. “amounted to an invitation to start a war” Ibid.
14. written by a young officer covering up his lack of control of the situation Ibid., p. 53. Washington’s account of the event is as follows: “We were advanced pretty near to them, as we thought, when they discovered us; whereupon I ordered my company to fire; mine was supported by that of Mr. Wag[gonn]er’s, and my Company and his received the whole of Fire of the French, during the greatest Part of the Action, which only lasted a Quarter of an Hour, before the Enemy was routed.
“We killed Mr. de Jumonville, the commander of that Party, as also nine others; we wounded one, and made Twenty-one Prisoners, among whom were M. la Force, M. Drouillon, and two Cadets. The Indians scalped the Dead, and took away the most Part of their Arms…” (From Anderson, p. 53, quoting Jackson, The Diaries of George Washington, vol. I, p. 195.)
15. But a careful reconstruction based on several other eyewitness accounts Anderson, in Crucible of War (pp. 53–59), carefully weighs accounts by a French Canadian named Monceau who slipped off into the woods at the first fighting and watched it; from a young Irishman in Washington’s regiment who, while not actually present, heard corroborating accounts of the battle from several survivors and gave a sworn statement; and, most significantly, from Denis Kaninguen, apparently an Iroquois Indian, who had been part of the Washington camp during the Jumonville fight. Kaninguen directly witnessed Jumonville’s death and heard Tanaghrisson’s remarks. Within a few weeks, he had deserted to the French side and gave his report of the battle to Captain Contrecoeur at the Forks.
16. shrewdly calculated political move on his part Ibid., pp. 56–57.
17. “All North America will be lost” Ibid., pp. 68–70.
18. Franklin wasn’t so sure Winthrop Sargent (ed.), The History of an Expedition Against Fort Du Quesne in 1755.
19. Braddock replied, “The English should inhabit” Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 95.
20. a contingent of camp women Ibid., p. 97.
21. “Whenever he saw a man skulking behind a tree” Sargent, History of an Expedition Against Fort Du Quesne, p. 230.
22. a story persisted that Braddock had been shot by one of his own troops Ibid., p. 246.
23. “Who would have thought it?” Ibid., p. 237.
24. “He looked upon us as dogs” Ibid., p. 173.
25. “Nothing is more calculated to disgust the people of those Colonies” Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 151.
26. taking extensive notes on The Morals of Confucius Thomas P. Slaughter, The Natures of John and William Bartram, p. 16.
27. Slave to no sect Ernest Earnest, John and William Bartram, p. 147.
28. “It is through the telescope” Ibid., p. 140.
29. led the girls to the top of a nearby high hill Le Roy and Leininger, “Narrative,” p. 430.
30. “what is commonly called a gentleman” Earnest, John and William Bartram, p. 92.
31. “[T]hee need not hinder half an hour’s time” Slaughter, The Natures of John and William Bartram, pp. 129–30.
32. “[N]o colouring,” he wrote, “can do justice” Ibid., p. 160.
33. “Go to Renovo” Conversation with Andy Warga, forester, November 2005, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Warga especially recommended the tiny town of Orviston, Pennsylvania.
34. political shock waves roiled out around the entire globe See Anderson, Crucible of War, pp. 170–78, on Britain and France going to war and European treaties unraveling. The complicated web of European treaties is explained on pp. 124–32.
35. didn’t think it right that the regular farmers should pay a tax Ibid., p. 161.
36. The horrified Quakers at this point withdrew Ibid., p. 162.
37. “[T]he Leg and Thigh of an Indian” Ibid., p. 163.
38. The ridgetops were the ancient folds see Wikipedia under “Appalachian orogeny.”
39. “…the first sight of him startled me” William Bartram, Travels Through North & South Carolina, p. 21. Available online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/bartram/bartram.html.
40. “the man who tells the truth” Earnest, John and William Bartram, p. 90.
41. misread a compass in order to cheat the Indians Bartram, Travels, p. 40.
42. to stage a major attack on Fort Duquesne Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 248.
43. “It is plain that you white people are the cause of this war” Ibid., pp. 270–71, quoting Christian Frederick Post’s “Journal.”
44. brief biography of Simeon Pfoutz Nancy C. Werts Sporny, a pamphlet on the Pfoutz family (unpublished).
45. may have been the source of the name Acadia see above, note to p. 9.
46. “I ASCENDED this beautiful river” Bartram, Travels, pp. 48–49.
47. Bartram was one of the first—if not the first—to apply this concept Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, p. 54.
48. Lying under a shade tree to rest and read a newspaper Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, p. 540.
49. captured a new passion between Man and Nature For more on the deep influence exerted by Rousseau in shaping a new way to view nature, see Roland N. Stromberg, An Intellectual History of Modern Europe, p. 149; Richard Bevis, The Road to Egdon Heath, pp. 80–81; Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness, p. 111; a
nd Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, p. 49.
50. “Meditations there take on an indescribably grand and sublime character” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, Or the New Heloise, p. 64.
51. “[We] enjoyed a most enchanting view” Bartram, Travels, pp. 356–57. (Quoted passage also appears in Slaughter, The Natures of John and William Bartram.)
52. As the British advanced in the Ohio Valley Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 258.
53. O bring us safely across the river! Le Roy and Leininger, “Narrative,” p. 434.
54. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was deeply smitten by Bartram’s Travels For more on how Bartram’s imagery (and the African explorer James Bruce’s) appears in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” see The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination by John Livingston Lowes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), p. 8 and pp. 364–65.
55. “the idea of Nature for the idea of God” Earnest, John and William Bartram, p. 34, quoting Harper.
PART III. THE LOST COUNTRY OF SOUTHEAST OREGON
1. He was found in mid-October 1853 Leah Collins Menefee and Lowell Tiller, “Cutoff Fever—Part V,” in Oregon Historical Quarterly (Dec. 1977), p. 304.
2. John Day was a forty-year-old Virginian and crack rifle shot Washington Irving, Astoria, pp. 138, 351–53. Available online at http://quod.lib.umich.edu.
3. “[B]ut his constitution…was completely broken” Ibid., p. 361.
4. A former mountain man by the name of Stephen Meek For Meek’s own account of his life see Stephen Hall Meek, The Autobiography of a Mountain Man, 1805–1889. For an account of the rebellion in Meek’s wagon train and journal entries from its members, see Karen Bassett, Jim Renner, and Joyce White (eds.), “Meek Cutoff 1845.”
5. Their pilot, one Elijah Elliot, had been paid five hundred dollars Menefee and Tiller, “Cut-Off Fever—Part IV,” p. 247.
6. It’s hard to exaggerate just how much water these wagon trains needed daily For example, one settler in the Meek party remarked that “198 wagons, 2299 head of cattle, 811 head of oxen, 1051 souls all consume a heap of water.” See Bassett et al., “Meek Cutoff 1845,” quoting Solomon Tetherow.