The Last Empty Places (48 page)

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; and 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.

  
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.

  
7.
“Mc[lure]. was Sick. & discouraged”
Menefee and Tiller, “Cut-Off Fever—Part IV,” p. 233.

  
8.
“Bright and early next morning we struck out”
Ibid., pp. 244–45.

  
9.
“Oh what visions of Bred butter pies Cakes”
Menefee and Tiller, “Cut-Off Fever—Part V,” p. 300.

10.
“I think I was never so glad to see any human”
Ibid., p. 311.

11.
“[While it was] still in a state of pristine wildness”
Nash,
Wilderness and the American Mind
, pp. 72–73, quoting a letter to Irving’s brother.

12.
“We send our youth abroad to grow luxurious and effeminate in Europe”
Andrew Burstein,
The Original Knickerbocker
, quoting
A Tour on the Prairies
.

13.
The nervous, hyperintellectual Parkman
Francis Parkman,
The Oregon Trail
(Wisconsin), p. 29a.

14.
In the spring of 1872, Dr. Glenn financed Pete French
George Francis Brimlow,
Harney County, Oregon, and Its Rangeland
, p. 58.

15.
“I’ll fight any man”
Ibid., p. 215.

16.
Titled “Long Drive for a Latte”
map produced by InfoGraphics lab at Department of Geography, University of Oregon,
Oregon Quarterly
(Autumn 2007), p. 13.

17.
The Donner und Blitzen River
Origin of name from website of Oregon Natural Desert Association at
www.onda.org/
.

18.
“This sudden plash into pure wildness”
John Muir,
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
, p. 63.

19.
“Come! Come, mother!” shouted Father Muir
Ibid., pp. 205–6.

20.
Soon after Darwin, George Perkins Marsh
Oelschlaeger,
The Idea of Wilderness
, pp. 106–8.

21.
“I don’t know anything about botany”
Muir,
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
, pp. 282–83.

22.
His first epic adventure was a draft dodge
Stephen Fox,
John Muir and His Legacy
, pp. 42–43.

23.
“They were alone”
Ibid., p. 43, quoting Muir’s account in
Boston Recorder
, Dec. 21, 1866.

24.
“the harmony, the oneness, of all the world’s life”
Ibid., p. 38, quoting Muir’s autobiographical papers housed at the University of the Pacific.

25.
“[I am] a woman whose life seems always to be used up”
Ibid., p. 47.

26.
“John Muir, Earth-Planet, Universe”
Linnie Marsh Wolfe,
Son of the Wilderness
, p. 110.

27.
“oh! that is horribly unorthodox”
Fox,
John Muir and His Legacy
, p. 52, quoting Muir’s journals.

28.
“Well, keep pouring in the quinine”
Thurman Wilkins,
John Muir: Apostle of Nature
, p. 54.

29.
“The world, we are told, was made specially for man”
Wolfe,
Son of the Wilderness
, p. 115.

30.
“Nature’s object in making animals and plants”
Fox,
John Muir and His Legacy
, p. 53.

31.
“Creation,” as Fox puts it, “belonged”
Ibid.

32.
“Where do you wish to go?”
Wilkins,
John Muir: Apostle of Nature
, p. 57.

33.
He first gazed on the Sierra Nevada Mountains
Frederick Turner,
Rediscovering America
, p. 164.

34.
somehow unworthy of such grandeur
Ibid., p. 165.

35.
“preach Nature like an apostle”
Ibid., p. 170.

36.
“We are now in the mountains”
Ibid., pp. 172–73.

37.
On the full moon of April 3
Wilkins,
John Muir: Apostle of Nature
, pp. 76–77.

38.
“Do not thus drift away with the mob”
Fox,
John Muir and His Legacy
, p. 5.

39.
“No, it would never do to lie in the night air”
Wilkins,
John Muir: Apostle of Nature
, p. 78.