Comunidad de Navarra

In his teenage years, Francis Parkman began to study nature rather than simply living in it. Instead of roaming aimlessly through the woods fighting imaginary Indians and hunting make believe buffaloes, he began to record topographical data, collect plants, and visit historical sites. Little did Parkman know that the leather journal that he began to carry on his excursions would soon become the single most valuable resource for his geo-historical narratives. He had, of course, always been a boy who enjoyed the outdoors and was blessed with ample opportunity to exercise his inquisitive imagination and desire for physical activity in the extensive forests of Middlesex Fells. While attending Chauncy Hall and later Harvard, Parkman continued to vacation predominantly in Maine and Canada to fulfill his desire for the great American wilderness and to scout the sites of the French and Indian War that would come to dictate his life. Between 1841 and 1843 alone, he scaled Red Hill, Mount Clinton, Pleasant, and

Washington in New Hampshire, took several trips to the White Mountains and Greene Mountains in eastern Maine, and visited Lake Champlain, Montreal and Quebec. At a visit to Lake George during his sophomore year, for instance, Parkman spent several weeks surveying the area, ―scaling its mountains, and studying all the historic places, the battle-fields where French, English, and savages shed so much blood to so little purpose‖ (Frothingham 9).

Observing and experiencing the sites of his grand history allowed Parkman to develop meticulously detailed descriptions of the geographical make up of the area. This obsession over accuracy would in turn allow the reader, as Howard Doughty put it, to let ―recreation and interpretation fuse in a totality‖ (247). To capture his impressions from sites and locations, Parkman would often resort to his journal and then rework and expand his journal entries to

chapters in his books (Doughty 242). It is therefore no stretch to assert that the Boston historian, as many New England Transcendentalists of his time, was also a writer of the portfolio.

But his interest for places and people was not limited to the American continent. After his junior year at Harvard, Parkman took a lengthy trip to Europe (12 November 1843-17 June 1844). On November 12th 1843 he boarded the barque Nautilus at Boston‘s Central Wharf. Once

seaborne, Parkman found himself in a ―cabin dark as Hades‖ and at the mercy of a ―devil of a sea‖ (Wade Journal Vol. 2 107). Clearly not an experienced sailor, Parkman ―grew sea-sick by the time [they] were fairly out of sight of land‖ (Wade Journal Vol.2 107).With Parkman

battling the effects of sea sickness throughout, the Nautilus sailed via Gibraltar to Malta, then on

to Sicily. After over a month at sea Parkman was relieved and anxious to set foot on solid ground again and to experience the marvels of Europe. During his seventh months stay he visited many of the glorious sites of the Old World: Milan, Basel, Paris, Strasbourg, Geneva, Pompeii and Herculaneum, London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Bologna, Parma, and Lake Como. With the Transcendentalist clergyman Theodore Parker he climbed the Vesuvius and marveled at the spectacle of Holy Week in Rome. In the Eternal City, Parkman stayed for two months, joining a vibrant community of American expatriates that included the painter William Morris Hunt and Parkman‘s cousin J. Coolidge Shaw, a recent convert to Catholicism. While in Rome, Parkman was particularly interested in collecting material on Catholic orders and monasteries. After visiting several convents he eventually was granted permission to spend some time in a Capuchin monastery. The observations from his stay in the monastery are meticulously recorded in his

journal and would later influence his portrayal of the Catholic priests and missionaries in The

Jesuits in North America.14

In a letter to his mother from April 5th 1844, Parkman praises his hosts as ―a very good kind of men‖ and is quick to emphasize that the ―Passionists [are] the strictest order in Rome, —who thrash themselves daily with iron lashes, wear hair shirts,—get up at midnight to make

procession and prayer—and live on peas and fish‖ (Letters Volume 1 16). Although Parkman

was not a particularly religious man, in fact in the same letter he describes his cousin‘s recent conversion to Catholicism as a ―farce‖ (16), he most certainly admired the monks‘ discipline, dedication, and their capability for suffering. Moreover, Parkman understood that in order to fully comprehend and represent the history of the American continent he had to acknowledge the fundamental importance of Christianity as a force of history. His stay at the convent is therefore not simply a result of his curiosity for ancient practices, but also an attempt to understand and experience the very spirit that had driven the Catholic conquest of the New World: a theme that would feature prominently in almost all of his volumes on France and England in North

America. His first-hand observations of Catholic monks would serve as a main source for his depiction of Jesuit missionaries in works such as The Jesuits in North America, La Salle and the

Discovery of the Great West, and Montcalm and Wolfe. For Parkman, firsthand experience of

Jesuit determination and devotion was, undoubtedly, an integral part of his methodology and would ultimately aid him in portraying the very essence of the part of American history he was going to write.15

14

The experience was, in fact, so formative to Parkman‘s work that he would commemorate his visit to the monastery more than forty years after the event in an essay entitled ―A Convent in Rome,‖ which appeared in the August issue of Harper’s Magazine in 1890.

15

Parkman‘s European tour has been documented well in his own journal and by his

Parkman‘s secular pilgrimage to Europe, as much as his inner-American expeditions to New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and other eastern frontiers during his early adulthood, are more than biographical incidents in the life of a young historian who enjoyed travelling. They would set the stage for the greatest adventure of his life, his trip on the Oregon Trail, while the journals and observation reports of these excursions would lay the foundation for the vivid character sketches and spectacular landscape descriptions characteristic of Parkman‘s histories. Especially in later years when his failing health prevented him from new expeditions, the records from his past endeavors would become invaluable resources for his descriptions of the natural world and its inhabitants. On the Europe trip Parkman had the opportunity to carefully examine the vast differences between European conceptualizations and uses of space in comparison to American geography. Most notably, Europe appeared to him as a continent that was historically complete and thoroughly industrialized, with a carefully tamed countryside that was the site of leisurely play rather than dangerous exploration. In contrast to the still primordial wilderness of the far western and northern frontier, even the European Alps must have seemed like a pastoral garden to Parkman. Spoiled by his frequent exposure to the untamed forests and savage mountains of the northeastern frontier, even ―the highest, wildest Alpine pass he could find, the Splügen,

disappointed him, and he compared it unfavorably with his beloved Notch in the White

Mountains‖ (Gale 42). Although the Alps couldn‘t quite match the seemingly endless wilderness see Frothingham‘s Parkman: A Sketch, Gale‘s Francis Parkman, Wade‘s Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian, and Doughty‘s Francis Parkman. Recently, Parkman‘s travels have received

attention by scholars investigating American attitudes toward Catholicism in the nineteenth century. Such studies include Jenny Franchot‘s Road to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism and Luca Codignola‘s ―Francis Parkman‘s Roman Experience.‖ After describing Parkman‘s trip to Europe, Frothingham comes to the conclusion that Parkman‘s travel accounts show an ―indifference to music, of which he says no word, and [a] comparative indifference to architecture, which impresses him mainly by its vastness, and general grandeur of effect‖ (14). However, ―his appreciation of power, space, dignity, and of human greatness is universal‖ (14).

of his home country, Parkman nonetheless discovered places of ―utter savageness‖ (Journal

Vol.1 211). Clearly moved by his discovery of a scenery ―like ours of New England,‖ he was thankful for the change from the polished ―Italian beauties of the Lake Como‖ and could even fancy himself ―in the American woods with an Indian companion‖ (Journal Vol.1 212).

While the European landscape could provide Parkman with a sense of ancient history and a possible glimpse into America‘s industrialized future, the inhabitants of the Old World offered him a trans-historical vision of cultural practices and intellectual development. Similar to his study of the Native American tribes inhabiting the Great Plains in The Oregon Trail, Parkman

was interested in the common people of Europe and what he perceived as the remnants of primitive existence. Fascinated by the religious mysticism of the devoutly Catholic Italian monks, he recognized his stay at the convent, for example, as an opportunity to capture the spirit of another epoch. There in the autarkic cosmos of the Capuchin‘s an age of mystical wonder and dutiful devotion had survived in the midst of an increasingly rational world. Here, Parkman was allowed to glimpse at the very historical essence that he was seeking to express in his work.

Chapter 2: “WESTWARD THE COURSE OF EMPIRE TAKES ITS WAY:” FRANCIS PARKMAN’S THE ORGEON TRAIL

―Wer weit gereist, wird oftmals Dinge schauen, Sehr fern von dem, was er für Wahrheit hielt. Erzählt er‘s dann in seiner Heimat Auen, So wird ihm oft als Lügner mitgespielt. Denn das verstockte Volk will ihm nicht trauen, Wenn es nicht sieht und klar und deutlich fühlt. Die Unerfahrenheit, ich kann mir‘s denken, Wird meinem Sange wenig Glauben schenken.‖ Hermann Hesse Die Morgenlandfahrt