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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781461707837 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Taylor Trade Publishing |
| Publication date: | 03/25/2005 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 260 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Early American Naturalists
EXPLORING THE AMERICAN WEST 1804-1900By John Moring
Cooper Square Press
Copyright © 2002 John MoringAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0815412363
Chapter One
THE EARLY NATURALISTS* * *
It was Meriwether Lewis who first coined the term barking squirrel to describe the black-tailed prairie dog. Lewis's friend and co-leader of the famous Corps of Discovery Expedition, William Clark, called the curious animal a "ground rat," because of its extensive burrows and tunnels. But it was one of the other members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Sergeant John Ordway, who first used the term prairie dog.
In a sense, all three terms were partly accurate. This was an animal of the prairies. It lived in extensive prairie-dog "towns" constructed of elaborate burrow systems. The creature was about the size of the common gray squirrel of the East, and it barked like a dog.
But the name that eventually stuck-black-tailed prairie dog-confused scientists in the East. This small mammal was not a dog, nor a rat, nor a squirrel. It was a species new to science, and it was Lewis and Clark who first recognized the sociable, curious animals as being unique. The explorers even sent a live "barking squirrel" back to President Thomas Jefferson in the spring of 1805, and the animal (still very much alive) became the star attraction at Peale's Museum in Philadelphia.
What swayedeastern scientists concerning this animal discovery was not just a vague description of a curious animal. Rather, it was the detailed notes that Lewis and Clark kept of their encounters and their examination of the prairie dog, skins that the explorers sent back east, and the live specimen that was viewed by scientists when it was placed on display in Philadelphia.
Lewis and Clark were primarily explorers, but their place in western history as naturalists is secure. Despite the lack of formal training by either man-or any member of their party-they were able to provide meticulous notes on their collections of flora and fauna. Those who followed Lewis and Clark into the lands of the American west often did have such formal scientific training, and the American west was an Eden for naturalists. As Samuel Bowles wrote in Our New West in 1869, "Nature, weary of repetitions, has in the New West, created originality, freshly, uniquely, majestically." Rather than picking through familiar forms, naturalists in the west could ply their trade in virgin territory.
Scientific discovery became an important component of many of the government-sponsored exploring expeditions into the west in the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Naturalists often participated as important members of the exploring parties. Such scientists made important contributions in an era where Darwin's theories and the concepts of species and evolution also were evolving rapidly.
The west was a vast, beckoning ghost. In one sense, to someone crossing the Mississippi River, it felt familiar and comfortable. The land did not suddenly change when one stepped ashore on the west side of the river. But, to a trained eye, it did. Vast grasslands whistled when alerted by gentle winds and moved like any peaceful sea. The Shining Mountains, as some fur trappers called the Rocky Mountains, rose abruptly from the long, rolling plains. And great rivers swept eastward and westward, sometimes through deep canyons and, in other places, through valleys filled with rich, dark soil.
Here, the living plants and animals were often different from any seen in the east, or elsewhere in the world. There was a vast doorway that opened into this world, and it enticed dozens of brave souls who answered its siren call. As the frontier slowly moved westward, accompanied by the sounds of axes and wagon wheels, the era of new biological discoveries moved with it.
Those who traveled the uncharted lands of the west were quite varied in personality, but almost all had a passion for natural history that often had little to do with money. Some, like Thomas Nuttall and David Douglas, often wandered the country alone or attached themselves to groups of fur trappers and other armed parties who could provide some protection. It was a dangerous time, and more than a few naturalists were killed while pursuing science. Many others courted near disaster. As guides became more familiar with the new lands, European adventurers joined the pursuit of plants and, particularly, animals. Some were simply hunters who were seeking new thrills and new types of game. But others combined their collecting skills and personal finances to further scientific knowledge.
As the Civil War approached, railroad surveys and larger collecting expeditions mapped their way across the west and resulted in lengthy treatises on the region's flora and fauna. Before and after the Civil War, there were dozens of professional collectors who knew enough about natural history to seek out new forms of life and send bird skins, eggs, insects, plants, fossils, and other biological collectibles back east to government and academic notables. Spencer Baird, John Torrey, and others paid some of the collectors for their specimens. The collectors made money and the eastern scientists made their reputations. Other field collectors did it solely for science, or possibly to have some plant or animal named for them.
Late in the nineteenth century, the personal competition among several major paleontologists became legendary, each trying to beat the others to discoveries of new bones-dinosaurs and other creatures. Yet, amid this intense competition, new types of naturalists were emerging. There was a curiosity about plants and (especially) animals that would start to spread across the United States and has yet to diminish to this day. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people wanted to see animals-the more unusual, the better. Soon, it became fashionable for the professional collectors to turn their attention to the capture of animals for zoos or the hunting of specimens that could be preserved and displayed in museums of the east and Europe.
This marked a change in the role and function of the naturalists. Whereas such men and women once focused on killing animals in order to study the creatures and their taxonomy in detail, now there were those afield who brought back live specimens, or seeds or cuttings for eastern or European zoos and botanical gardens. At the least, collections of birds and mammals were made with exhibition in mind-often the only opportunity for many people to see unusual and common plants and animals. As the nineteenth century ended, naturalists became something quite different. There were artists who depicted animals in natural settings. And, there were scientists who studied life history and behavior. These new naturalists observed the activities of animals for extended periods of time. As the century turned, quite often, new amateurs-reborn in the image of Lewis and Clark-started to make their marks on local scales. They now conducted meticulous observation and examination of plants and animals in their natural settings. Some made outstanding contributions to their fields, even though natural history was their avocation, not their vocation. Elam Bartholomew, a Kansas farmer, became an expert on plants and fungi. William Hammond was a physician whose passion was the natural history found near his army post. And Gideon Lincecum, who was a marginally trained country doctor in Texas, became noted for his biological collections and observations.
From these times emerged a new breed of naturalists. These were insightful, reflective writers, like John Muir and John Burroughs, who immersed themselves in nature and reflected on the place of humans amongst the flora and fauna and majesty of the land.
As the nineteenth century ended, the days of the early naturalists were long gone. Those observing nature had little to fear from the dangers of following game paths into roadless wilderness. Wild animals, hostile tribes, rugged terrain, and extremes of weather were no longer concerns of the new naturalists. Yet, their passion for discovery remained very much the same as it had been for Peter Custis, Thomas Nuttall, Thomas Say, Robert Kennicott, John Le Conte, and all the others who risked life and limb to discover something unique-a plant or animal that had remained hidden from the eyes of science.
Why did they do it? What leads one person to commit his or her energies to the accumulation of money through trade or business and another to spend hours exploring the woods or fields, watching a bird, examining a flowering plant, or collecting a beetle? It is a passion that sometimes defies description. Yet, Samuel Rafinesque, one of the country's most prolific describers of animals, tried to do just that:
Every step taken into the fields, groves and hills, appears to afford new enjoyments.... Here is an old acquaintance seen again; there a novelty or a rare plant, perhaps a new one! greets your view; you hasten to pluck it, examine it, admire and put it in your book. Then you walk on thinking what it might be, or may be made by you hereafter. You felt an exultation, you are a conqueror, you have made a conquest over Nature, you are going to add a new object, or a page to science. The peaceful conquest has cost no tears, but fills your mind with a proud sensation of not being useless on earth, of having detected another link to the creative power of God.
Excerpted from Early American Naturalists by John Moring Copyright © 2002 by John Moring
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Preface | ix | |
| Chapter 1 | The Early Naturalists | 1 |
| Part 1 | Traveling in the Wild Lands | |
| Chapter 2 | Lewis and Clark: Enthusiastic Amateurs | 9 |
| Chapter 3 | Peter Custis and the Red River Expedition | 29 |
| Chapter 4 | Thomas Nuttall and the Wilderness Collectors | 48 |
| Chapter 5 | Thomas Say and Edwin James: The Long Expedition | 69 |
| Chapter 6 | Visitors from Europe | 89 |
| Part 2 | Collectors and Interpreters | |
| Chapter 7 | Wilkes's "Scientifics" | 111 |
| Chapter 8 | The Painter | 124 |
| Chapter 9 | In the Field before the Great War | 136 |
| Chapter 10 | Collecting the West | 160 |
| Part 3 | The New Naturalists | |
| Chapter 11 | Martha Maxwell and Her Museum | 171 |
| Chapter 12 | John Muir and the New Naturalists | 187 |
| Chapter 13 | Digging Up Bones | 201 |
| Chapter 14 | The New Enthusiastic Amateurs | 217 |
| Further Reading | 227 | |
| Index | 231 |