CAPTAIN JONATHAN CARVER
In reading the record of Thoreau’s 1862 visit to Minnesota, bear in mind that Thoreau was not traveling blind, but had carefully considered the record of previous visits to that region.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Jonathan Carver HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1710
April 13, Thursday (Old Style): Jonathan Carver was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts. The family would relocate to Canterbury, Connecticut. He would prepare to become a cordwainer.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Jonathan Carver “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1746
Jonathan Carver got married with Abigail Robbins. This couple is believed to have produced 7 children. Eventually he would abandon his family in America and in London would begin a new family, producing two additional children.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Jonathan Carver “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1755
Jonathan Carver joined the colonial militia at the start of the French and Indian War. During the conflict in America he would study surveying and cartographic techniques.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Jonathan Carver HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1761
Jonathan Carver became captain of a Massachusetts regiment.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Jonathan Carver HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1763
At the end of the Seven Years’ War, having served in the English Channel and then the Mediterranean, Samuel Hearne left the British navy. His activities during the following three years are unknown.
Jonathan Carver quit the colonial army with a determination to explore the territories that had been acquired by the British as a result of the French and Indian War.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Jonathan Carver HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1766
Spring: Initially Jonathan Carver had been unable to find a sponsor for his proposed explorations of the territories that had been acquired by the British in consequence of the French and Indian War, but in this year he obtained a contract from Royal Governor Major Robert Rogers authorizing him to lead an expedition to find a western water route to the Pacific Ocean — a Northwest Passage that would win the vast gold prize held out by King and Parliament. The expedition embarked from Fort Michilimackinac in large fur-trading canoes, to travel along the well-utilized trade routes that had been established by the French. The expedition passed along the northern coast of Lake Michigan, cut across what has now become the Door County peninsula of Wisconsin, and proceeded along the western edge of a bay until reaching the small French settlement at what has now become Green Bay, Wisconsin. They were able to resupply at a French monastery near what is now De Pere, and continued up the Fox River to a native village at the north end of Lake Winnebago at what has now become Appleton. Continuing up the Fox River, the canoes eventually arrived at “Grand Portage” (what has now become Portage, Wisconsin), linking the Fox River with the Wisconsin River (thus enabling fur cargoes to pass down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and be shipped to Europe). The expedition crossed to the Wisconsin River and then traveled down the Mississippi River, emerging at the great trade encampment of Prairie du Chien. Rather than turn south towards New Orleans, the expedition then turned north into what has now become Minnesota.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
May 20, Tuesday: Jonathan Carver left Boston for Fort Michilimackinac on the Great Lakes, as draftsman and mapmaker for the expedition into the territories acquired by the British in consequence of the French and Indian War.
Late Summer: The expedition of Jonathan Carver reached the Saint Anthony Falls at what has now become Minneapolis, Minnesota. After spending some time with the tribe near the falls it turned south and traveled down the Mississippi River toward a suitable place to spend the winter.
Jonathan Carver “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
December 7, Sunday: The expedition of which Jonathan Carver was a member reached the Minnesota River.
Winter: The expedition of Jonathan Carver waited out the cold weather in a Lakota tribal village of the region that has now become eastern Iowa (in his journal he termed these natives “Naudowessies”). HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1767
Spring: The expedition of Jonathan Carver was joined by James Tute and James Stanley Goddard, sent to accompany them on their exploration. They visited what is now known as “Carver’s Cave”
and proceeded up the Mississippi River through what has now become Minnesota and Wisconsin, winding up at Grand Portage on Lake Superior in the expectation that the Royal Governor Major, Robert Rogers, would have supplies waiting there for them. Instead of supplies they got handed a chiding letter about their expenses. Unable to proceed, they were forced to return toward Fort Michilimackinac.
August 29, Saturday: The Jonathan Carver party arrived back at Fort Michilimackinac. There they became aware that their sponsor, Royal Governor Major Robert Rogers, was being suspected of a treasonous plot against Britain.
December 6, Sunday: Royal Governor Major Robert Rogers was arrested on a charge of treason and clapped into solitary confinement in irons. He would endure the winter in the unheated guardhouse while in all likelihood Jonathan Carver was nearby, writing up a manuscript journal of the expedition to explore the former French territories. HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1768
Spring: The first ship of the season took Jonathan Carver and Robert Rogers from Fort Michilimackinac to Detroit, with Carver travelled in a passenger cabin while Rogers sat in the hold of the ship upon its ballast rocks. Rogers would be court-martialed in Montréal and although he would be cleared of all charges, would never be able to return to his position as Royal Governor. Carver would return in this year to Boston. Although Carver would submit an invoice of his expenses, payment would be refused with the explanation that Rogers in commissioning such an expedition had acted outside his authority.
September 12, Monday: Jonathan Carver put an advertisement in the Boston Chronicle, to raise funds to publish his journals. HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1769
February: Jonathan Carver sailed to dun the British government for compensation for his expenses in exploration, and also for the grand golden reward for having traced out a potential Northwest Passage. Abandoning his wife Abigail Carver with his family in the colonies, he would never see her again. He would spend the balance of his life in England, perennially dunning anyone in the government who would grant him an audience, and would in fact achieve two separate crown grants although he would not set eyes on the grand golden reward that had been offered by King and Parliament for identifying a Northwest Passage. While struggling at this lobbying endeavor in London, he would author his travel book and begin a new family. HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1774
In London, Jonathan Carver married bigamously with a widow, Mrs. Mary Harris, by whom he would produce two additional children.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Jonathan Carver “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1778
Jonathan Carver’s TRAVELS THROUGH THE INTERIOR PARTS OF NORTH AMERICA IN THE YEARS 1766, 1767, AND 1768, an immediate success. We must now notice, however, that the book as published differs remarkably from its still-existent manuscript. In particular he never mentions that he had been hired to conduct this exploration, and entire chapters that are absent from the narrative manuscript amount to nothing better than his notes from reading the accounts of Charlevoix, Adair, and La Hontan. JONATHAN CARVER HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1779
A 2d London edition of Jonathan Carver’s TRAVELS THROUGH THE INTERIOR PARTS OF NORTH AMERICA IN THE YEARS 1766, 1767, AND 1768 (more than 30 such editions have now seen publication, which is at least 29 more reprintings than this suspect material is worth). In addition, the London publication of his A TREATISE ON THE CULTURE OF THE TOBACCO PLANT; WITH THE MANNER IN WHICH IT IS USUALLY CURED ADAPTED TO NORTHERN CLIMATES AND DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF THE LANDHOLDERS OF GREAT BRITAIN, which urged repeal of two acts dating to the time of King Charles II which still prohibited the cultivation of tobacco in Britain. In addition, the London publication of his THE NEW UNIVERSAL TRAVELLER; CONTAINING A FULL AND DISTINCT ACCOUNT OF ALL THE EMPIRES, KINGDOMS, AND STATES, IN THE KNOWN WORLD ... COMPRISING ALSO AN INTERESTING DETAIL OF THE MANNERS, CUSTOMS, CONSTITUTIONS, RELIGIONS, LEARNING, ARTS, MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE, AND MILITARY FORCE, OF ALL THE COUNTRIES THAT HAVE BEEN VISITED BY TRAVELLERS OR NAVIGATORS, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD TO THE PRESENT TIME: ACCOMPANIED WITH A DESCRIPTION OF ALL THE CELEBRATED ANTIQUITIES, AND AN ACCURATE HISTORY OF EVERY NATION. FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS ... (Printed for G. Robinson, in Paternoster-row). HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1780
January 31, Monday: Jonathan Carver died in poverty in London. HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1781
An illustrated edition of Jonathan Carver’s TRAVELS THROUGH THE INTERIOR PARTS OF NORTH AMERICA IN THE YEARS 1766, 1767, AND 1768:
Such belated inventive illustrations, however amusing, are of no particular historical or ethnographic merit. HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
Of more relevance is this volume’s map: HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1802
Republication of Jonathan Carver’s THREE YEARS TRAVELS THROUGHOUT THE INTERIOR PARTS OF NORTH AMERICA, FOR MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND MILES, CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT LAKES, AND ALL THE LAKES, ISLANDS, AND RIVERS, CATARACTS, MOUNTAINS, MINERALS, SOIL AND VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS OF THE NORTH WEST REGIONS OF THE VAST CONTINENT. WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE BIRDS, BEASTS, REPTILES, INSECTS, AND FISHES ... TOGETHER WITH A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE GENIUS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE INDIANS INHABITING THE LANDS ADJACENT TO THE HEADS AND TO THE WESTWARD OF THE GREAT RIVER MISSISSIPPI. AND AN APPENDIX, DESCRIBING THE UNCULTIVATED PARTS OF AMERICA, THAT ARE THE MOST PROPER FOR FORMING SETTLEMENTS (4th American, from the 3d London edition of 1781 done with the editorial assistance of John Coakley Lettsom. Charlestown, Massachusetts: Printed for Samuel Etheridge, for West and Greenleaf, no. 56, Cornhill, Boston). This edition would be in the personal library of Henry David Thoreau. HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
READ THE FULL TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1852
June 13, Sunday: Charles Wesley Slack wrote from Baltimore, Maryland to Evelina E. Vannevar Slack in Boston, about travel plans, giving an account of relatives.
Henry Thoreau obtained, from the library of the Society of Natural History in Boston, Professor Samuel George Morton’s CRANIA AMERICANA; OR, A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE SKULLS OF VARIOUS ABORIGINAL NATIONS OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA: TO WHICH IS PREFIXED AN ESSAY ON THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. ILLUSTRATED BY SEVENTY-EIGHT PLATES AND A COLOURED MAP (Philadelphia: J. Dobson). CRANIA AMERICANA
He registered a negative impression as to the actual amount of usable information that might be extrapolated from Jonathan Carver’s extensive writings about his travels:
June 13. Sunday. 3 P.M. —To Conantum. A warm day. It has been cold, and we have had fires the past week sometimes. Clover begins to show red in the fields, and the wild cherry is not out of blossom. The river has a summer midday look, smooth to a cobweb, with green shores, and shade from the trees on its banks. The Viburnum nudum. The oblong leaved sundew, but not its flower. Do the bulbous arethusas last long? What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went strawberrying years ago! It is as i£ all meadows were filled with some sweet mint. The Dracæna borealis (Bigelow) (Clintonia borealis (Gray)) amid the Solomon’s-seals in Hubbard’s Grove Swamp, a very neat and handsome liliaceous flower with three large, regular, spotless, green convallaria leaves, making a triangle from the root, and sometimes a fourth from the scape, linear, with four drooping, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped (?) flowers. Not in sun. In low shady woods. It is a handsome and perfect flower, though not high-colored. I prefer it to some more famous. But Gray should not name it from the Governor o£ New York. [It was named by Rafinesque.] What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. Rhode Island botanists may as well name the flowers after their governors as New York. Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers. Mosquitoes now trouble the walker in low shady woods. No doubt woodchucks in their burrows hear the steps of walkers through the earth and come not forth. Yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), which, according to Gray, closes its leaves and droops at nightfall. The woolly aphides on alders whiten one’s clothes now. What is that palmate(?)-leaved water-plant be the Corner causeway, The burl-bean grows in Conant’s meadow. Lambkill is out. I remember with what delight I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings. All things in this world must be seen with the morning clew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. Saw four cunning little woodchucks nibbling the short grass, about one third grown, that. live under Conant’s old house. Mistook one for a piece of rusty iron. The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries. The Smilax herbacea, carrion-flower, a rank green vine with long-peduncled umbels, with small greenish or yellowish flowers just opening, and tendrils, at the Miles swamp. It smells exactly like a dead rat in the wall, and apparently attracts flies (I find small gnats on it) like carrion. A very remarkable odor; a single minute flower in an umbel open will scent a whole room. Nature imitates all things in flowers. They are at once the most beautiful and the ugliest objects, the most fragrant and the most offensive to the nostrils, etc., etc. The compound-racemed convallaria, being fully out, is white. I put it down too early, perhaps by a week. The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter. The delicate maidenhair fern forms a cup or dish, very delicate and graceful. Beautiful, too, its glossy black stem and its wave-edged fruited leafets. I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them. Young robins peep. I think I know four kinds of cornel beside the dogwood and bunchberry: one now in bloom, with rather small leaves with a smooth, silky feeling beneath, a greenish- gray spotted stem, in older stocks all gray (Cornus HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
alternifolia? or sericea?); the broad-leaved cornel in Laurel Glen, yet green in the bud (C. circinata?); the small- leaved cornel with a small cyme or corymb, as late to be [sic] as the last, in potter’s hedge and on high hills (C. paniculata); and the red osier by the river (C. stolonifera), which I have not seen this year. Mosquitoes are first troublesome in the house with sultry nights. Orobanche uniflora, single-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray). C. found it June 12 at Clematis Brook. Also the common fumitory (?), methinks; it is a fine-leaved small plant. Captain Jonathan Carver commences his Travels with these words: “In June, 1766, I set out from Boston, and proceeded by way of Albany and Niagara, to Michillimackinac; a Fort situated between the Lakes Huron and Michigan, and distant from Boston 1300 miles. This being the uttermost of our factories towards the northwest, I considered it as the most convenient place from whence I could begin my intended progress, and enter at once into the Regions I designed to explore.” So he gives us no information respecting the intermediate country, nor much, I fear, about the country beyond. Holbrook says the Emys pitta is the first to be seen in the spring. N. A. HERPETOLOGY
(While at that library Thoreau had consulted Volume IV of the 2d edition of Dr. John Edwards Holbrook’s NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY: OR A DESCRIPTION OF THE REPTILES INHABITING THE UNITED STATES.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1867
May 1, Wednesday: In Minnesota, some locals with nothing better to do celebrated the 100th anniversary of the expedition of Jonathan Carver’s tour of a big cave on the bank of the Mississippi River.
(Did Carver make some treaty with any of the natives? — There’s no record of anything like that.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1906
E.G. Bourne summarized, in the American Historical Review, the current perspective on Jonathan Carver’s travel narrative: “[M]uch of the work in this volume is an abridgement or adaptation of historical writings by Charlevoix, Adair, and La Hontan. Entire chapters read as near verbatim text from one or more of these other authors.” JONATHAN CARVER
(One need not marvel that Thoreau had considered these Carver writings to be of no particular usefulness.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
1976
In an effort to recover whatever historical accuracy could still be reclaimed, the John Parker edition of THE JOURNALS OF Jonathan Carver AND RELATED DOCUMENTS, 1766-1770 (Minnesota Historical Society Press) presented the original account of the expedition of Jonathan Carver from which his TRAVELS THROUGH THE INTERIOR PARTS OF NORTH AMERICA IN THE YEARS 1766, 1767, AND 1768 had been extrapolated.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Jonathan Carver HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: June 16, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
JONATHAN CARVER JONATHAN CARVER
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with