Showing posts with label exploration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exploration. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Kalispel Encampment to Commemorate David Thompson
As part of an ongoing commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the initial encounter between explorer David Thompson and the native peoples of the northwest, there will be a Kalispel 
Encampment [PDF] June 24th through the 27th near the site of the original Kullyspel House in northern Idaho.
The four-day event will feature a teacher's workshop, educational activities, demonstrations of traditional skills, and a scholarly symposium titled “Tribes and Traders.”
For more details read the press release for the event or go to www.DavidThompson200.org to sign up.
Image: Detail from "Kalispel encampment with tepees among scattered trees" from the UW Digital Collections.]
Encampment [PDF] June 24th through the 27th near the site of the original Kullyspel House in northern Idaho.The four-day event will feature a teacher's workshop, educational activities, demonstrations of traditional skills, and a scholarly symposium titled “Tribes and Traders.”
For more details read the press release for the event or go to www.DavidThompson200.org to sign up.
Image: Detail from "Kalispel encampment with tepees among scattered trees" from the UW Digital Collections.]
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842
The United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 is a Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Collection of interest to historians of the northwest. (You can see additional digital collections here.)
The four-year expedition to explore and document the Pacific Ocean was by far the grandest (and most expensive) scientific endeavor undertaken by the United States government before the Civil War. This map of the expedition's route gives a sense of the scale of the project. Another way to explore the expedition geographically is to look at the "About this Book" page on Google Books Search to see a map of all the place names mentioned:
But back to the Smithsonian digital exhibit. The site has the full text of the expedition narrative and all the scientific reports, as one would expect. There are also a series of very good essays, commissioned for the project, led off by an excerpt from Nathaniel Philbrick's book Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery - The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842. There are also some excellent supplemental materials, including rosters of the crew of each vessel and a very sophisticated searchable database of "Cultural Artifacts Collected During the U.S. Exploring Expedition." The wonderful illustrations from the reports are in another searchable database and available in extremely high quality downloads. The illustration below is of "A Kalapaya lad. A native of Oregon."
This website is a nice example of a focused digital presentation that takes a very well-know set of primary sources and makes them searchable and useable in new ways, while linking the sources to other resources such as the cultural artifacts database.
The four-year expedition to explore and document the Pacific Ocean was by far the grandest (and most expensive) scientific endeavor undertaken by the United States government before the Civil War. This map of the expedition's route gives a sense of the scale of the project. Another way to explore the expedition geographically is to look at the "About this Book" page on Google Books Search to see a map of all the place names mentioned:
But back to the Smithsonian digital exhibit. The site has the full text of the expedition narrative and all the scientific reports, as one would expect. There are also a series of very good essays, commissioned for the project, led off by an excerpt from Nathaniel Philbrick's book Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery - The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842. There are also some excellent supplemental materials, including rosters of the crew of each vessel and a very sophisticated searchable database of "Cultural Artifacts Collected During the U.S. Exploring Expedition." The wonderful illustrations from the reports are in another searchable database and available in extremely high quality downloads. The illustration below is of "A Kalapaya lad. A native of Oregon."
This website is a nice example of a focused digital presentation that takes a very well-know set of primary sources and makes them searchable and useable in new ways, while linking the sources to other resources such as the cultural artifacts database.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Common-place: A Native American Scoops Lewis and Clark
Gordon M. Sayre's article A Native American Scoops Lewis and Clark offers a popular presentation and analysis of the story of
Moncacht-apé, a Yazoo Indian who may have crossed the continent a century before Lewis and Clark. Moncacht-apé's adventures were recorded for posterity in Le Page du Pratz's Histoire de la Louisiane (first published in 1758, though the link is to a later translation at Project Gutenberg). Du Pratz was a French colonial official in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734, and it was in Natchez, Mississippi that he met the elderly Moncacht-apé. Du Pratz often interviewed natives for his history and for the important map or North America which accompanied the volumes.
Moncacht-apé said that in his youth he had taken two great journeys. The first was to Niagara Falls and then the Atlantic Ocean. The second journey was up the
Missouri, across the mountains, and to the Pacific.
Did it really happen? I will let you read Sayre's excellent analysis of the tale. (And don't miss his own translations of Du Pratz and additional commentary at his own website.) But I do want to suggest that if Moncacht-apé did not make the journeys, other Indians surely did. A man can walk across the North American continent in one long season. (Your own sturdy blogger once walked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, 2100 miles in five months, a typical time for that journey.) If the person were a respected healer, a native diplomat, or simply sufficiently quick-witted, they could travel along native trade routes easily enough. The narrative of Cabeza de Vaca, who traveled across northern Mexico while serving as a shaman to the natives, suggests what was possible.
The essay by the way is from Common-Place, a wonderful internet journal of early American history.
Moncacht-apé, a Yazoo Indian who may have crossed the continent a century before Lewis and Clark. Moncacht-apé's adventures were recorded for posterity in Le Page du Pratz's Histoire de la Louisiane (first published in 1758, though the link is to a later translation at Project Gutenberg). Du Pratz was a French colonial official in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734, and it was in Natchez, Mississippi that he met the elderly Moncacht-apé. Du Pratz often interviewed natives for his history and for the important map or North America which accompanied the volumes.Moncacht-apé said that in his youth he had taken two great journeys. The first was to Niagara Falls and then the Atlantic Ocean. The second journey was up the
Missouri, across the mountains, and to the Pacific.Did it really happen? I will let you read Sayre's excellent analysis of the tale. (And don't miss his own translations of Du Pratz and additional commentary at his own website.) But I do want to suggest that if Moncacht-apé did not make the journeys, other Indians surely did. A man can walk across the North American continent in one long season. (Your own sturdy blogger once walked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, 2100 miles in five months, a typical time for that journey.) If the person were a respected healer, a native diplomat, or simply sufficiently quick-witted, they could travel along native trade routes easily enough. The narrative of Cabeza de Vaca, who traveled across northern Mexico while serving as a shaman to the natives, suggests what was possible.
The essay by the way is from Common-Place, a wonderful internet journal of early American history.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)