PREFACE TO VOLUME IV
We devote the fourth volume of our series of Western Travels to the reprint of Fortescue Cuming’sSketches of a Tour to the Western Country—the tour having been made in 1807-1809, the publication itself issuing from a Pittsburg press in 1810.
Of Cuming himself, we have no information save such as is gleaned from his book. He appears to have been an Englishman of culture and refinement, who had travelled extensively in other lands—notably the West Indies, France, Switzerland, and Italy. It is certain that he journeyed to good purpose, with an intelligent, open mind, free from local prejudices, and with trained habits of observation. Cuming was what one may call a good traveller—he endured the inconveniences, annoyances, and vicissitudes of the road, especially in a new and rough country, with equanimity and philosophic patience, deliberately making the best of each day’s happenings, thus proving himself an experienced and agreeable man of the world.
The journeys narrated were taken during two succeeding years. The first, in January, 1807, was a pedestrian tour from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. Arriving in the latter city on the second of February, after twenty-seven days upon the road, the remainder of the winter, the spring, and the early summer were passed at Pittsburg. On the eighteenth of July following, our traveller took boat from Pittsburg, and made his way down the Ohio to the Kentucky entrepôt at Maysville—where he arrived the thirtieth of the month. Mounting a horse, he made a brief trip through Kentucky as far as Lexington and Frankfort, returning to Maysvilleon the fifth of August. The following day, he crossed the Ohio, and after examining lands in the vicinity, proceeded partly on foot, partly by stage and saddle, over the newly-opened state road of Ohio, through Chillicothe, Lancaster, and Zanesville to Wheeling; thence back to Pittsburg, where he arrived the evening of August 21.
The following year (1808), Cuming begins his narrative at the point on the Ohio where he had left the river the previous year—at Maysville, whence he embarked on the seventh of May for Mississippi Territory. With the same fulness of detail and accurate notation that characterize his former narrative, Cuming describes the voyage down the Ohio and the Mississippi until his arrival at Bayou Pierre on the sixth of June, after a month afloat.
Starting from Bruinsbury, at the mouth of Bayou Pierre, August 22, he took a horseback trip through the settlements of Mississippi Territory lying along the river and some distance inland on its tributaries—Cole’s Creek, St. Catharine’s Bayou, the Homochito, etc.—penetrating the then Spanish territory of West Florida as far as Baton Rouge, and returning by a similar route to Bruinsbury, where he arrived the fifteenth of September.
At this point Cuming’s tour is concluded. In order to give completeness to the work, however, the first editor added the journal of a voyage taken in 1799 “by a gentleman of accurate observation, a passenger in a New Orleans boat.” From just above Bayou Pierre, this anonymous author departed on the ninth of February for New Orleans, where he arrived on the twenty-third of the same month. Embarking therefrom March 12, he reached Philadelphia after a month’s voyage via Havana and the Atlantic shore. His narrative is far less effective than that of Cuming.
Like a well bred man of affairs, Cuming never intrudes his private business upon our attention; but incidentally welearn that his first Western journey from Pittsburg was undertaken at least in part to observe some lands in Ohio, which he had previously purchased in Europe, and with whose situation and location he was agreeably surprised. The journey to Mississippi appears to have been undertaken with a view to making his home in that territory. The place and date signed to the preface—“Mississippi territory, 20th Oct. 1809”—would indicate that he had decided upon remaining where he had found the social life so much to his taste, and some of his former friends and acquaintances had settled.
It is the natural impulse of almost every traveller to record the events of a somewhat unusual tour. Cuming wished, also, to afford information to Europeans and Eastern men of “a country, in its infancy, which from its rapid improvement in a very few years, will form a wonderful contrast to its present state.” His attitude was sympathetic towards the new and raw regions through which he travelled; nevertheless this fact does not appear to have unduly affected his purpose of giving an accurate picture of what he saw. He does not slur over the disadvantages, nor extenuate any of the crudeness or vulgarity; but at the same time portrays the possibilities of the new land, its remarkable growth, its opportunities for development, and the vigor and enterprise of its inhabitants.
In plain, dispassionate style, he has given us a picture of American life in the West, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that for clear-cut outlines and fidelity of presentation has the effect of a series of photographic representations. In this consists the value of the book for students of American history. We miss entirely those evidences of amused tolerance and superficial criticism that characterize so many English books of his day, recounting travels in the United States—a state of mind sometimes developinginto strong prejudice and evident distaste, such as made Dickens’sAmerican Notesa caricature of conditions in the new country.
It is essentially a backwoods life to which Cuming introduces us, although not in the first stages of its struggle for existence. Indian alarms are a thing of the past, a large percentage of the land is cleared, the people have better dwellings than in the log-cabin days, there is now rude abundance and plenty, and the beginnings of educational opportunities, social intercourse, and the amenities of civilized life. The pioneers themselves—Indian fighters and skilful hunters—have become rare. Here and there Cuming encounters a former Indian captive, like Andrew Ellison, or a scout and ranger, like Peter Neiswonger; but as a rule it is the second generation whom he meets, or members of the second tide of emigrants that came in after the Revolution—officers in the army, younger sons of the better classes, who by energy and capacity bettered their fortunes in the West, built for themselves good homes, laid out towns, developed orchards, farms, and plantations, and were living in that atmosphere of prosperity which heralded the ultimate fortunes of the new land.
Nevertheless, the inheritances of the older days of struggle and primitive society are still in evidence—the lack of facilities at the small country inns, the coarseness and rudeness of the manner of living, the heavy drinking and boisterous amusements of the young, the fighting, the incivility to travellers, the boorishness of manners. All these are relics of the early days when the rough struggle with the wilderness developed the cruder rather than the finer virtues of men. On the other hand, as we have already pointed out, Cuming shows us the hopeful elements of this new land: not only its wonderful material prosperity, its democratic spirit and sense of fairness, but its adaptability,its hospitality for new ideas, the beginnings of the fine art of good living, and eagerness to promote schools, churches, and the organizations for the higher life.
Some of the particular features recorded by Cuming, that are now obsolete, are the use of lotteries for raising money for public purposes, and the prevalence of highway robbery in the unsettled parts of the country. The restlessness of the population is also worthy of note—the long journeys for trivial purposes, the abandoned settlements in Kentucky and Illinois.
Especially valuable for purposes of comparison, is Cuming’s accurate account of the towns through which he passed—their size and appearance, number and kind of manufactures, business methods and interests. Characteristic of the period also, is the enterprise of the inhabitants—townsites laid out at every available position, speculation in lands, and large confidence in the future of the region. In that confidence Cuming appears fully to have shared. Already, he tells us, food-stuffs were being exported to Europe, the growth of the cotton industry promised large returns, the richness of the soil and the resources and fertility of the land fostered high hopes.
In regard to social conditions, our author writes at a time when the formerly uniform and homogeneous character of the Western population was beginning to break up, especially in the slave states and territories, and when the professional classes and large land-owners were taking a leading position in affairs. He notes particularly the importance and assumption of leadership on the part of the lawyers. The virulent excitement of political life is one of the features of his observations that his first editor attempted to excuse and modify. It was doubtless true that the incidents attendant upon the arrest and trial of Burr had especially aroused the section through which Cuming passed. Itis probable, however, that his portrayal of the animosity of political divisions is substantially accurate; and that not only did “politics run high” at the tavern and political club, but it controlled the social coterie, and in early American society adjusted lines of relationship more strictly than is evident to-day.
The areas which Cuming visited were those, with the exception of Tennessee, in which were to be found the most characteristic features of Western life. Western Pennsylvania and Northwestern Virginia comprised a homogeneous population, living under similar conditions. Closely allied was Kentucky, although it was beginning to be modified by settled conditions, the prosperity of low, rich pasture lands, and its distance from Eastern markets. In Ohio, however, Cuming encountered the New England element—but well mixed with Southerners on the Virginia bounty lands, French of the Gallipolis settlement, and New Jersey and Middle States emigration to the region of the Miamis. His narrative, continued down the Ohio, shows the scarcity of population in Indiana and Illinois, and in Kentucky below Louisville; also the frontier character of that region as far down the Mississippi as the Natchez district. Here again, Cuming meets with an area of settlement begun under the British rule of West Florida, and continued under Spanish authority, until a few years before his voyage. In Mississippi, he portrays to us the beginnings of plantation life—the large estates, with gangs of negroes; the hospitality, cultivation, and charm of the upper classes, jostled by the rude waifs and strays that the river traffic wafted to their landings. In spite of diversities, the characteristics of Western life had much sameness—the mingling of the population, the shifting of people from all sections, and the dependence upon the rivers as the great arteries of Westerncommerce, with its ultimate outlet by way of the Mississippi and New Orleans.
Cuming’s work was not immediately published after writing. The manuscript passed into the possession of Zadok Cramer, a Pittsburg printer who was particularly interested in Ohio and Mississippi navigation, for which he published a technical guide calledThe Navigator, that ran through numerous editions. Cramer annotated Cuming’s manuscript, adding thereto a considerable appendix of heterogeneous matter—collected, as he says in his advertisement, “from various sources while the press was going on with the work, and frequently was I hurried by the compositors to furnish copy from hour to hour.” This material, much of it irrelevant and reprinted from other works, the present Editor has thought best to omit. It ranges from a description of the bridge at Trenton to Pike’s tour through Louisiana—embracing such diverse matter as “Of the character of the Quakers,” “Sculptures of the American Aborigines,” and “Particulars of John Law’s Mississippi Scheme.”
The hope of Cramer that a second edition would soon be called for, was not fulfilled. Put forth in 1810, the book has never been reprinted until the present edition, which it is believed will be welcomed by students of American history.
As in former volumes of the series, Louise Phelps Kellogg, Ph.D., of the Wisconsin Historical Library, has assisted in the preparation of the notes. The Editor desires, also, to acknowledge his obligations to Mrs. Frances C. Wordin, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, for valuable information concerning her grandfather, Dr. John Cummins, of Bayou Pierre, Mississippi.
R. G. T.
Madison, Wis., April, 1904.