My aim for this project was to begin to investigate how I could use travel narratives to help understand environmental history, particularly of the Upstate NY and Great Lakes region. I chose this because I have moved into environmental history as of late with a focus in this region, which is also where I live and work. I am also hoping to create opportunities for my students to work in the history of current local environmental importance. My aim remains the same, but HOW to exactly go about this has caused me to pause.

I chose travel narratives because they do offer observations of the natural world. The narratives range from 1653 to 1852 including a chapter of a volume from the Jesuit Relations, a narrative from naturalist John Bartram, a narrative from a European explorer in 1818, and the journal of a missionary in 1852. Although they did not help me to really answer any historically significant question regarding environmental history at this point, I believe they can. I also like the idea of using sources in creative ways. I talk about that in the opening of my project. There are also many narratives out there, so it seems that there is a large enough data source to help answer some questions.

I believed the best way to go about this experiment was through using Voyant for basic text mining to see upon what the authors were most focused. This was not so helpful in gaining insight to their environmental observations, but it did give me ideas in how I can teach students that although a source doesn’t cover exactly what we are looking for, it doesn’t mean it is not a valuable source to help answer questions. I believe there is more I can do with the text mining tool, however, as a way of exploring changing attitudes over time, but that was not the intent of this project.

From there I went through the sources to gather data on locations of flora and fauna as observed by the authors. The 1852 journal was probably the “best” source for ease of gathering that data. Place names were clearly presented along with descriptions of animals, trees, and plants observed. I was able to create an excel sheet and then convert it into a csv file to upload to kepler. Just the fact that I did that is a big step ahead in my digital knowledge. It was a very rudimentary point map, but I did what I hoped to do.

Then came the other sources. My European traveler was much more interested in urban development; so after reading through that narrative and getting some data, I decided it wasn’t really worth the effort of the data entry. It was extremely difficult to follow where exactly Bartram was at most points, and even when he gave a name of a town, I had to double check to see if 1. it still existed and 2. if it still had the same name. The Indian town of Shamokin is now Sunbury, PA and there is a Shamokin, PA, but not anywhere close to the original. That was the easy one to find out. Other place names seem to have disappeared from the record as well as the map. But he gives great information as to flora and fauna. Is it “worth” the time to figure out exactly where he was? Probably, if I want to be as thorough as possible in showing change in flora and fauna over time. I encountered many of the same problems with the Jesuit Relations. The Jesuits also used French renditions of Iroquois place names that are then translated into English. Fun.

All of the authors of these narratives were interested in recording the flora and fauna of the lands through which they traveled to learn how best they could be exploited as resources. With this, one must always consider if there is exaggeration of quality or quantity in their descriptions? Jacobs is traveling to and serving in Hudson Bay Co. communities. Are some of these observations somehow to serve the HBC? The Jesuits were also looking for resources along with souls. How does this affect the way they write? These questions remain whether we are collecting information for a data to be input into a mapping program or a more traditional qualitative study.

I still believe this project could be useful in answering the questions of how the environment of Upstate NY and the Great Lakes changed over time, but I see this as being a much larger undertaking than originally thought. I also have to consider more the data I am collecting and the tools I am using. I think there are questions I haven’t considered to ask given the abilities of the tools. This course and this project has helped me to see a bit further as to what lies ahead.