The canon of American Nature Writing has developed around the works of an eclectic group of writers who share no common specialization but gain their authorial authority through reading the text of nature. In the contemporary scene, nature writers are both natural historians, such as Terry Tempest Williams, and English professors like Annie Dillard. Their divergent fields as well as the multidisciplinary manner of their works and those of other American nature writers is grounded in early attempts to define nature’s place in the New World in relation to the self, society, and religion. Early Americans largely turned to religion to explain the mysteries of the wildness of nature with which they were confronted in the New World, while later nineteenth century Americans looked to nature to explain the mysteries of the self which had been lost in the wilds of the newly industrialized landscape.

The shift from a religious way of seeing nature to an individualized spiritual way of seeing is representative of changes in the American anxieties during the last decades of the eighteenth century. In an untamed wilderness, Puritans were concerned with group unity. The natural world was a primary threat to their survival. Seeing God’s word reflected in it, and calling it perfect was an attempt to calm the fears of a civilized people surrounded by savage wilderness. By the middle of the nineteenth century, nature was no longer the primary threat to American society. In the face of the threat of industrialization, nature was a refuge. Through it, the Transcendentalists sought to regain the self that the industrial landscape had alienated. Between finding God and finding the Self was an American movement to endow the natural world with political meaning in which to define national identity. It is in this movement that William Bartram emerges as a figure who converted ideas of nature as Biblical text into a secular revision or nature symbolism.

After the Revolution America, who first defined itself as a land of religious freedom, had to define itself in political terms. It became necessary to see in nature not explanations of the divine, but of the political. The anxieties of the new government needed calming and nature, because of the example of the Puritans, was a sensible place to go for answers and explanations. When national anxieties switched form religion-based to politic-based, seeing nature became a way to see culture, not God.

Thomas Jefferson portrayed his ideal government in the form of a pastoral agrarian landscape, placing upon every real and imagined pastoral scene something of a national cause that became a defining trait of the national identity. Jefferson’s sentiment shifted American meaning and use of nature from religious to political. In the early to mi-nineteenth center, writers and artists concerned with Nature and national identity sprouted from Jefferson’s pastoral ideal and created meaning for entire landscapes. They were ramblers who observed framed scenes with macroscopic vision and imposed meaning upon landscapes, not minutia.

Washington Irving, Thomas Cole, and William Cullen Bryant performed this artistic work of giving America associations for its scenery and endowing the American landscape with political meaning. They sough tot create Jefferson’s pastoral ideal through their art and to give history and mythology to a nation without a previous identity. Cole painted landscapes while Irving wrote mythic characters, both attempting to define American identity in non-British terms. Coles’ “Course of Empire” series used the architecture of Greece to ally America with other democratic nations thereby disassociating it with England. In order for Irving’s Rip Van Winkle to wake up to the new nation, he journeyed back in time to meet Henry Hudson in a mythical reconstruction of history with non-British characters and locations.

In his Travels, Bartram took a similar route, by representing the ruins of former Native American localities in a romantic light to suggest a landscape history. In his natural world, mythical association is made through these ruins as well as through exaggeration of his fire-breathing alligators. Bartram precedes and employs both Cole’s course of empire historicization and Irving’s creation of mythology. Such strategies of landscape representation pushed nature further away from its religious associations an surrounded it in secular and political meaning.

This conversion of nature from the divine to the secular was possible, in part, because of scientific advances in the eighteenth century which began to demystify the natural world. Although science was capable of giving knowledge about nature, it could not give meaning to it. This was now the territory of art and politics. Still, it is to a man of science that we must look to illuminate the new method of seeing meaning in nature that was taking hold during this period. As one of America’s first natural historians, Bartram represents a middle ground of seeing nature that lies somewhere between the Puritanical, the Political, and the Transcendental not only chronologically, but ideologically and methodologically, as well.

The New World that confronted the Puritan settlements was an unknown wilderness filled with seemingly savage men and ferocious beasts. They were a people united by religion and looked directly to scripture for explanations of earthly mysteries. In 1728, Jonathan Edwards wrote in “Images of Divine Things”:

The Book of Scripture is the interpreter of the book of nature in two ways: viz. by declaring to us those spiritual mysteries that are indeed signified or typified in the constitution of the natural world; and secondly, in actually making application of the signs and types in the book of nature as representations of those spiritual mysteries in many instances.

In Edwards’ account of nature, “[t]he silkworm is a remarkable type of Christ” and “Christ became a worm for our sakes.” While nature is symbolic of God, God can also be embodied in nature in what Edwards refers to as the shadow and the antitype. The antitype is the spiritual event itself and the shadow is something in the material world that represents the antitype, this is Spring the shadow of the antitype of the resurrection.

The repetition of shadows created in nature a pattern of these antitype-shadow pairs of religious symbolism that function to the Puritans as reminders of their God. Edwards could not look at nature without seeing the divine. God was the direct agent of all that took place in the material world. Edwards wrote of God’s infallible agency:

Again, it is apparent and allowed that there is a great and remarkable analogy in God’s works…God does purposely make and order on thing to be in an agreeableness and harmony with another. And if so, why should not we suppose that he makes the inferior in imitation of the superior, the material of the spiritual, on purpose to have a resemblance and shadow of them?

These Puritan views instilled great respect for nature in the early American consciousness and provided the basis for using nature as symbolic text with deeper than surface meaning. Bartram was a botanist, not a Puritan or a politician, but his way of seeing nature extended beyond his role as knowledgeable scientist in a way that blurred the boundaries between science, spirituality, and society. In Travels, nature inspires Bartram to reflect on God’s work and he acknowledges God as creator, but objects in the natural world are no longer embedded with strict scriptural meaning.

Often when confronted with beauty in nature, Bartram will expound his praise of God then abruptly return to his narrative. After a series of ecstatic paragraphs praising “Ye vigilant and faithful servant of the Most High!” and exclamations of “O universal Father!” and “O sovereign Lord!,” without transition Bartram switches to “The morning being fair…” and continues with his narrative. These abrupt switches do not blend God and nature. Instead, they emphasize the fact that God is not the primary reason for Bartram’s narrative, nor is nature a reflection of spiritual or scriptural events. Bartram is balancing the sacred and the secular, attempting in these sermon-like passages to reconcile religious sentiment with the political. He is not ready to expel God from his appreciation of nature, but he is ready to acknowledge that nature is not perfections and is not embedded with religious meanings beyond inspiration.

Although Bartram did not find comparison to scriptural stories in nature he did use natural scenery as a way to spirituality and, when observing episodes in nature, he saw symbolic insight into culture. To Bartram, God is perfect but nature is not and it is these imperfections of nature that provide a lens to the problems of culture.

The social turmoil of Bartram’s time was that of the Revolution and the inherent problems of creating a new government and a new nation. Bartram’s representation of the natural world critiques these processes on two levels. First, many scenes can be read as political allegory and, second, these same scenes work to reinforce his belief that nature and culture function on the same base instincts. Not only does Bartram refer to the natural world with cultural language, where plants have “tribes” and the sounds of birds are “musical compositions,” but when he writes of the world of animals and plants, he wonders aloud at the possible presence of a transcendental consciousness, soul, or sentience within the beings of the natural world.

Bartram acknowledges the “general opinion of philosophers” who do not believe that the moral system of man and the world of nature are the same, but he continues to question the issue and is constantly confronted with wonder at the seeming similarity of action and intelligence between nature and humanity.

If we bestow but very little attention to the economy of the animal creation, we shall find manifest examples of premeditation, perseverance, resolution, and consummate artifice, in order to effect their purposes.

This quality of intention is present in Bartram’s incarnation of the vegetable world as well. He conveys this idea in a two-tiered metaphor of colonization that reveals both his belief in the “sensible faculties” of plant life and his disapproval of the domineering nature of government colonization.

While discussing the possibility of human like intelligence in the plant and animal worlds, Bartram addresses the seemingly obvious difference that animals are locomotive, while plants are not. “[Y]et vegetables…,” he writes, “have the means of transplanting and colonizing their tribes almost over the surface of the whole earth…even across seas.” Similarly, the British government transplanted itself onto American soil; governments, like the vegetable world seem as if they cannot move, but find ways of spreading their kind. Thus are the survival strategies of nature and culture one and the same.

In his “Introduction” Bartram writes that humans and animals are differentiated by “instinct, a faculty we suppose to be inferior to reason in man.” Whereas Edwards felt sure in asserting man’s superiority over nature, writing that inferior the animal world is made in imitation of the superior human one, Bartram refuses to claim a higher place for culture. Bartram hints that he believes the animal world acts on something more than instinct and the humanity, though capable of much more, often uses little else than its predatory impulses. Throughout his text, Bartram reflects amazement at just how reasonable and intellectual animals seem to be, pointing out that relationships within families are “as active and faithful as those observed in human nature.” But the examples of natural familial relations he gives are not faithful at all. By saying that animals and vegetables are as faithful as humans but showing very unfaithful relationships in the natural world, Bartram shows little faith in the faithfulness of human relationships. In the case of the colonizing plant, for example, family relations end in child abandonment.

Such parent-child analogies cross over into the politicization of nature in the form of government-citizen relationships. Bartram relates a tale of his travels in which he is nearly eaten by alligators who are the authority figures by sheer strength and size of his natural world. The alligators seem ready to pursue him but redirect their attention onto more helpless prey—an entire school of fish entering a pond from a stream. Authority may change direction and work to one’s advantage, as it does for Bartram in this case, but it is still abusive and manipulative towards some lesser power. It matters not whether Britain is preying upon America or America preying upon Native American nations, any government will use its strength against whoever is the weaker other. The savagery Bartram saw between the different animal tribes is all too similar to his views on the state of political international relations in his time.

Although many of his creatures are arbitrarily picked to symbolize culture, there is one that Bartram uses as a direct critique of the problems of governmental authority, from which America thought it would be exempt. Early in the narrative, while he is in Georgia, he describes “[t]he bald eagle…a large, strong, and very active bird, but an execrable tyrant [who] supports his assumed dignity and grandeur by rapine violence.” America gained its independence from Britain through warfare but that does not mean they had the right to displace or, as Bartram puts it, “extort…unreasonable tribute and subsidy from all the feathered nations,” those feathered nations being not those of bird, but of Indians. Through the nation’s own symbolic image, Bartram critiques the American government for assuming political power through the violence of the Revolution and for its current exploitative treatment of the Indian nations. This, like the alligator incident, is merely a passing of abusive authority from one nation to another—a predatory pattern from which the bald eagle of America is not exempt.

One of Bartram’s critiques of government is that they operate on artificial laws. He opposes this with the natural law of nature but it seems that the end result in both systems is a consummation of base instinct. He attributes sentience to animals and plants, but they do not operate in a manner that is any more intelligent than humanity. Plants, after all, abandon their children in the same way that nations turn against their colonies and alligators prey upon the vulnerable masses. By saying that culture and nature are the same, Bartram is not elevating nature to a level of sophistication, but de-elevating the institutions of western culture.

This combination of nature and culture on the same scale, plays out in the central pond scene when Bartram describes a pool of water that is so clear that predatory relationships are paralyzed by their very visibility. The clear waters of the pond and the seeming peace of its inhabitants would, to a Puritan such as Edwards, represent God’s goodness and reflect the perfection of his creation, but to Bartram it is a “mere representation” of the Edenic paradise. It is a scene of paralyzed evil intent, not of sacred perfection. What formerly would have reflected God is, in Bartram’s reality, a façade that masks deeper truths about humanity.

Bartram writes that the clearness of the water in this particular pond adds to the beauty of the scene; it is also the sole agent preventing mass slaughter. Every fish can clearly see his prey and his predator. This perfect visibility to both see and be seen instills a paralyzing fear that prevents any movement because every predator is aware of his own vulnerability. Thus they sit in a perpetually static state that represents a balance of terror—not, as the American government would call it—a balance of power.

Bartram’s disgust at this stagnant pond reveals his distrust of the seemingly well intentioned structure being set up by the founding fathers. The separate branches of their democratic government were meant to balance power and create equality but to Bartram this seemingly idyllic state could only foster stagnation and impotence. Without some sort of authoritative leader, Bartram saw an ineffective government.

The original incarnation of the American president gave him no power and little authority. He was more a symbol of national pride than an active leader and was, as Bartram would have it, paralyzed within a stagnant pond. The founding fathers feared the monarchical power of the kingship of England and set up a system in which absolute authority was not possible for any one person or branch of government. The royal system of England was what American did not want to be. They knew not how to have authority without abuse of power, so they abolished authority. With the negative experience of the British monarch as their only first hand experience of government, Americans did not have any example of good government to use as a model, so they created the government from a system of negatives.

Through his representation of Indian culture, Bartram presents an alternative to both European monarchy and the powerless position of the first American presidency. He presents as idealized view of Indian morality and government. They seem free from want or desires…Thus contented and undisturbed, they appear as blithe and free as the birds of the air, and like them as volatile and active, tuneful and vociferous.

He writes that Indian nations do not need to be civilized in the European fashion and place them in “the first rank amongst mankind.” They are naturally moral and put “in practice those beautiful lectures delivered…by the ancient sages and philosophers.” What European culture preaches but is unable to follow, the “uneducated” Indian embodies.

Beyond morals, Bartram praises the political system of the Indians that does not “derive its influence from coercive laws, for they have no such artificial system. Divine wisdom dictates, and they obey. He claims that the supposedly savage Indians other Europeans have met with are renegades who had been banished from the utopian government of the organized Indian nations.

The crowning glory of Indian government, however, is the mico, or king who embodies all idealism of governing authority, as opposed to the savage authority in nature and in Europe. The king, although he is acknowledged to bet the first and greatest man in the town or tribe, and honoured with every due and rational mark of love and esteem, and when presiding in council, with a humility and homage as reverent as that paid to the most despotic monarch in Europe or the East, and when absent, his seat is not filled by any other person, yet he is not dreaded; and when out of the council, he associates with the people as a common man, converses with them, and they with him, in perfect ease and familiarity.

In Bartram’s alternative model of the ideal political system the authority figure is able to create social order and demand respect from his people while maintaining humility and love among them. Bartram respects the Indian culture (or his fabrication of it) so much that he declares: “Do we want wisdom and virtue? let our youth then repair to the venerable council of the Muscogulges.”

By critiquing the early American government through nature symbolism and presenting an ideal through description of Indian government, Bartram both exposes and presents a solution to cultural problems through the lens of nature and its more “natural” cultures. Through nature, he expresses the anxieties of the new nation and the distrust of government shared by many of his contemporaries. He critiques the whole process of the making of America—from colonization and the preying of Britain upon Americans, to the formation of American government and their consequent preying upon Native American nations.

With Bartram, the American landscape is no longer a Biblical landscape, but a national one that does not praise America, as does the politicized landscape of Jefferson, but one that creates associations through social critique. He saw meaning not in whole landscapes but in close examination of elements of nature itself. He describes pastoral scenes of agriculture as well as sublime vistas, but goes beyond the scenic appreciation of landscape in the surface Jeffersonian sense delving into nature to gain insight into American politics through minutia. In this way he follows Edwards’ method of getting at meaning through minutia, but by taking this method out of its religious context and into the secular realm, Bartram follows Jefferson and paves the way for the Transcendental method of seeing. Like Bartram, Henry David Thoreau does not take a vista and write of it in a nationalistic flow, but looks beneath the surface for individualized meaning and social critique in nature.

Far from describing scenic vistas, Thoreau concerns himself with the smallest elements of nature. He is fascinated by ants at war, but is not content with his observations until he takes a piece of wood and places it under a microscope to get an intricate look at their minute world. Upon closer examination of their activities he can associate them with political meaning in the context of his political atmosphere, that of the Civil War. Through scientific observation, Thoreau also finds social critique in nature.

In Bartram we see both this scientific scrutiny and portraits of whole landscapes; through the former he finds ways to critique political systems, through the latter, he sees God. In his scene of the stagnant pond, he makes the move from vista to minutia within one passage. This central image has him as distant observer, then as scientist with a microscope so that he sees both God and revelations about culture.

Bartram starts with the scene from afar and creatures of land and air, then moves beneath the surface of the pond and names the tribes of fish below in their pseudo-Edenic state. He then observes the activity of the fish who disappear into the depths of the pond. He stands astonished and wonders if they will reappear.

I look down again to the fountain with anxiety, when behold them as it were emerging from the blue ether of another world, apparently at a vast distance; at their first appearance, no bigger than flies of minnows; now gradually enlarging, their brilliant colours begin to paint the fluid.

Thoreau’s pivotal transcendental moment in Walden operates in like manner also gaining transcendence and finding truths through a process of descending depth to achieve elevation. He casts his fishing line into the pond, submerging his activity in concentration of the deep, but fins that after he casts his line, it “interrupt[s] [his] dreams and link[s] [him] to Nature again.” Only through descending the depths of the pond is he brought to transcendental presence. He reflects, “I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element which was scarcely more dense.” To Bartram and Thoreau, nature was not only a matter of decoding a surface, but delving beneath it.

Thoreau asks: “Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?” For him it is not the objects themselves that make the world but the interplay of the objects with each other and the creative self that brings one to a better understanding of the self’s place in the world. This understanding of the objects in the world is found through a combination of microscopic observation of ants and macroscopic contemplation of the stars. The world is made of different objects because through juxtaposing them in new ways, one is brought to truths. For Edwards the world was made of objects because God intended it that way and every object in some way reflected His perfection. Jefferson, Irving, and Cole created scenes with certain objects that interact harmoniously to give the impression of harmony between man and nature to t nation looking for something to be proud of.

In Bartram the answer to this question is less clear. His world is filled with objects which he discovers, names, samples, and classifies in scientific categories. He takes apart and organizes the wild and the unknown in an attempt to scientifically understand it but is constantly overwhelmed by holistic scenes of the sublime hand of God. He finds that through fragmentation and classification, one can know pieces of nature, but when nature operates as a systemic whole, it exhibits the same problems he sees in culture. Yet he sees too much of God in nature to use it as a means of seeing the Self. Bartram fails to blend the revelations of social critique with a positive political message in nature itself, so he looks to Indian culture for the solution to political savagery. Ultimately Bartram cannot balance out the divisions between secular and sacred and his Travels reveals and undefined relationship of his Self with the world.

Bartram’s individual identity is lost in his natural world. He seems pleased with his Indian-given name of Puc Puggy—the flower hunter—but the whole of his narrative reveals an identity and a mission far beyond that of a botanist. His narrative claims a new role for the natural scientist who must aspire, in Bartram’s shadow, to observe nature adeptly and to comment through it on social ills. After Bartram, the religious preacher is no longer the only type of American philosopher. The secularization of nature in Bartram’s Travels brought the ability to discern truths through nature into the realm of the natural scientist who became another trustworthy see-er of cultural truths who would strive to give unity to the realms of secular and spiritual.

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