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Tag Archives: Indians

Ioyfvll newes out of the new-found vvorlde [order]

03 Tuesday Jul 2018

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American, Americas, apothecaries, armadillos, Atlantic, Bonham Norton, Book Arts Program, bookseller, botanists, Bristol, British, calf, cancer, cassava, cigars, cocoa, common cold, cure, De Jonge Amerikaan, disease, docks, English, entrepreneur, Europe, ginger, gold, handmade, herbs, Indians, Inquisition, iron, John Frampton, Jonathan Sandberg, London, medicine, merchants, minerals, monks, Native American, nephrite jade, Netherlands, New World, Nicolás Bautista Monardes, nicotain, papermaking, papers, paradise, physician, plant, poison, print culture, quinine, rhubarb, sasparilla, sassafras, Seville, silver, smoking, soldiers, Spanish colonies, syphilis, tobacco, tobaco, trade, vernacular, woodblock, woodcuts


“This is the substance which I haue gathered of this hearb, so celebrated and called Tobaco for that surely it is an hearb of great affirmation for the excellent vertues that it hath…”

Ioyfvll newes out of the new-found vvorlde
Nicolás Bautista Monardes (ca. 1500-1588)
London: E. Allde, by the assigne of Bonham Norton, 1596
Third English edition

Translated by John Frampton (fl. 1577-1596) from several treatises first published in 1565 by Nicolás Monardes, the son of a bookseller, and a distinguished physician of Seville. Monardes, who never traveled to the Americas, wrote several treatises  on healing, medicine, and trade with the Spanish colonies on the Atlantic. He learned most of what he wrote about from spending time at the Seville docks, where he gathered information from sailors, soldiers, merchants, monks, royal officials, and even women.

Monardes described the cultivation and use of quinine, sassafras, cassava, rhubarb, ginger, and sasparilla. He wrote about cocoa, armadillos, minerals and metals (iron, silver, nephrite jade), and diseases like syphilis.

He wrote a lengthy description of an American plant introduced to Europe, calling it “tobaco” or “nicotain,” which he claimed was an antidote to poison. He wrote of more than twenty conditions, including the common cold and cancer, that could be cured with the use of tobacco.

“The Indians of our Occidental Indias, doo use the Tobaco for to take away the wearinesse, and for to make lightsomnesse in their Labour, which in their Daunces they bee so muche wearied, and they remaine so wearie, that they can scarcely stirre: & because that they may labour the next day, and returne to do that foolish exercise, they receiue at the mouth and nose, the smoke of the Tobaco, and they remaine as dead people: and being so, they be eased in such sorte, that when they be awakened of their sleepe, they remaine without weariness, and may return to their labour as much as before, and so they doe alwaies, when they have need of it: for with that sleepe, they do receiue their strength and be much the lustier.”

John Frampton, a Bristol merchant, had been imprisoned by the Inquisition. He translated several Spanish texts about the New World while in confinement. The British looked upon the New World as long-lost paradise with its vegetative bounty and ancient wisdom regarding human ailments, beneficial not just for its precious metals but for its plants. Being published in the vernacular, first in Spanish, then in English, meant that common readers, along with botanists and apothecaries, bought the publications. Frampton, ever the entrepreneur, re-titled the work “joyful news,” counting on brisk sales of the book and the trade in plants from the Americas. The “trade” print culture disseminated new data targeted toward popular practicality but also imagination, circulating news of an “other” ready reality just waiting ’round the bend. Such was the miracle of discovery, such was the miracle of plants, such was the miracle of print.

Illustrated with twelve woodcuts depicting herbs and plants. Rare Books copy bound in 19th century calf, ruled in gold.


De Jonge Amerikaan
Netherlands, ca. 1800
NE1154 J66 1800z

Woodblock depicting a Native American in a feather headdress and loincloth smoking a long clay pipe in a coastal setting with two ships behind him. Around this scene are a crown, trident, winged-staff, cigars, snuff jar, tobacco leaves and baled tobacco. It is likely that this woodblock was printed on paper used for tobacco wrappers, a practice that began as early as 1660 in Holland, one of the world’s great shipping centers.

Below are three prints made by Jonathan Sandberg using the woodblock, demonstrating different papers, including a paper handmade by students in last spring’s papermaking class offered by the Book Arts Program.



On July 1, 2018 The University of Utah went tobacco free and said farewell to its last cigarette.

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Book of the Week — The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California

30 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week, Donations, Recommended Reading

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California, California Trail, Cincinnati, Conclin, cookstove, Dan Rhoads, deserts, Donner-Reed Party, emigrants, entrepreneur, Fort Bernard, Fort Bridger, Fort Hall, Friends of the Library, grandmother, Great Salt Lake, guidebook, Humboldt River, Illinois, Indians, Jacob Donner, James Reed, Lansford Warren Hastings, Mexicans, Mexico, Michael Wallis, mountains, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, piano, real estate, Roman Catholic Church, San Francisco, Sierra Nevada, Springfield, Sutter's Fort, Truckee Lake, United States, Utah, Virginia Reed, Wasatch Mountains, Weber Canyon


“Remember, never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.” — Virginia Reed

The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California
Lansford Warren Hastings (1819-1870?)
Cincinnati: G. Conclin, 1845
F864 H345

On April 29, 1847 the nearly three month-long rescue of survivors of the now-infamous Donner-Reed Party ended. The last surviving member arrived at Sutter’s Fort more than a year after the original party had departed from Springfield, Illinois. The first of the lost souls, located near Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada, had been found on February 18. Dan Rhoads, one of the rescuers wrote, “They were gaunt with famine and I never can forget the horrible ghastly sight they presented. The first woman spoke in a hollow voice very much agitated and said ‘are you men from California or do you come from heaven?'”

To get from Illinois to California, the Donner-Reed party had relied, in part, on a bestselling book called The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California. The author was Lansford Warren Hastings, a young real-estate entrepreneur from Ohio who had financial and political interests in California. Hastings, at age twenty-three, had made a trip west in 1842.

The book had almost no practical advice, in spite of the crowing in its preface of providing “a description of the different routes; and all necessary information relative to the equipment, supplies, and the method of traveling” with the caveat that “all excrescences have been cautiously lopped off, leaving scarcely any thing more than a mere collection of interesting, important and practical facts.”

To make up for the lack of “excrescences,” Hastings regaled the reader with lengthy and snarky anecdotes regarding “Californians,” gamblers and drunks all. “How different are the priests of California from those of the same denomination of christians in our own country?”

In his “guide” he depicted Indians as lazy and Mexicans as dishonest, blaming much of the latter on the priests of the Roman Catholic Church.

“At times, I sympathize with these unfortunate beings, but again, I frequently think, that perhaps, are thus ridden and restrained and if they are thus priest ridden, it is, no doubt, preferable, that they should retain their present riders. ”

As for Indians, Hastings’ wrote, with no irony, that they “in numerous instances, abandoned their old haunts, and re-established in other portions of the country, but for what cause, it is difficult to ascertain, with any degree of certainty, for the sites which have been thus abandoned, appear in many instances, to possess advantages much superior, to those which have been subsequently selected.”

Hastings’ “little work,” as he called it, was inspirational to those wishing to escape the crowded conditions and poor economy of the east and Midwest. Hastings’ book promoted the land and climate of California as ideal companions for hardworking “Americans.” His book was read by one of the drivers of the Donner family wagons. A copy of the book, owned by Jacob Donner, much-handled, was found in the saddlebag of one of the travelers.

Hastings’ guidebook had bad information and good.

Good: In Chapter XV Hastings discussed “The Equipment, Supplies, and the Method of Traveling.” First, “All persons, designing to travel by this route, should, invariably, equip themselves with a good gun.” (Indians and/or buffalo.) Second, “It would, perhaps, be advisable for emigrants, not to encumber themselves with any other, than those just enumerated; as it is impracticable for them, to take all the luxuries, to which they have been accustomed; and as it is found, by experience, that, when upon this kind of expedition, they are not desired, even by the most devoted epicurean.”

The Reed family brought with them an invalid grandmother, a piano and an iron cookstove.

Bad: Hastings, eager to sell land in California, encouraged travelers to forget about Oregon and make their way to California, suggesting a cutoff through the Wasatch Mountains, passing to the south of the Great Salt Lake and then across the salt flats to rejoin the California Trail at the Humboldt River. Hastings, who had not, in fact, traveled this route, was sure the shortcut would save travelers valuable time. The passage in Hastings’ guidebook was short and carried no description: “The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing west southwest to the Salt Lake; and thence continuing down to the bay of San Francisco, by the route just described.”

The Donner-Reed Party, stopping at Fort Bernard, were warned not to take the route. Still, they had been delayed for one reason or another almost from the start and needed to make up time. The shortcut would enable them to do so. A meeting with an emissary of Hastings, on his way back to Ohio, convinced the Donner-Reed Party even more of this need. In a letter, Hastings warned of the war between the United States and Mexico and advised travelers to take his shortcut of about two hundred miles, promising to meet the emigrants at Fort Bridger and to guide them over the deserts and mountains of his new route, crossing what would become the states of Utah and Nevada. It was a convincing proposal. Hastings never met them. The party found another guide to take them as far as the salt plain west of the Great Salt Lake. Again, others warned against taking this route.

At the mouth of the Weber Canyon the Donner party found a note from Hastings, now guiding another group, advising them that the canyon was impassable with wagons and offering to provide them with yet another route. The company waited while James Reed rode ahead to meet Hastings, who refused to act as guide but showed Reed a potential route to follow. No one in the party saw Hastings again, although they heard from him one more time in the form of a wind-ripped note that warned of two days and nights of hard driving across the desert to reach water. The company plodded on, ignoring a sentence buried only pages away from the cutoff passage in the Hasting guide: “…for, unless you pass over the mountains early in the fall, you are very liable to be detained, by impassable mountains of snow, until the next spring, or, perhaps, forever.”

Thank you, Friends of the Library, for your many gifts to Rare Books over the years, including this historic guide.

Recommended reading:
Wallis, Michael. The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017
General Collection, Level 2
F868 N5 W36 2017

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Book of the Week – Madoc

20 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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America, Azteca, English, engraved, Indians, Lake Poets, London, Madoc, Mandan, marbled endpapers, Missouri River, morocco, North Dakota, Ohio River, poem, poet, poet laureate, Robert Southey, Romantic Movement, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Susquehanna River, United States, utopian community, Welsh


MADOC
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and A. Constable and Co. Edinburgh, 1805
First edition
PR5464 M2 1805

Robert Southey was an English poet, a follower of the Romantic Movement, one of the “Lake Poets.” He was appointed poet laureate in 1813. Together with his good friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), he planned to found a utopian community on the Susquehanna River in the United States. While this plan never came to fruition, it is probable that Madoc was inspired by this dream. The four hundred and forty-nine page poem, accompanied by one hundred and four pages of notes is the story of a Welsh king, who, around 1169, settled on the Missouri River in America and founded a great race of Indians, the “Aztecas.” The legend of Madoc is more familiarly associated with the Mandan tribe of North Dakota. During the eighteenth century, white explorers and trappers heard stories of a small, peaceful tribe living in Western North Dakota, some of whom had blue eyes, blonde hair and spoke Welsh. It was believed that this tribe was descended from a Welsh settlement on the Ohio River in the mid-fourteenth century. Engraved title-page. Bound in contemporary three-quarter green morocco with marbled endpapers and edges.

alluNeedSingleLine

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