SOURCE: Bellin, Joshua David. “Wicked Instruments: William Bartram and the Dispossession of the Southern Indians.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 51, no. 3 (autumn 1995): 1-23.

In the following essay, Bellin analyzes Bartram's view of native Americans and their use of land compared to the European settlers.

I

On June 1, 1773, William Bartram witnessed the Treaty of Augusta, in which Creek and Cherokee Indians, constrained by trade debts, ceded two million acres of land to the Crown.¹ While accompanying government agents and tribal chiefs on the surveying mission, Bartram noted a “remarkable instance of Indian sagacity” which “nearly disconcerted all our plans, and put an end to the business” (58). Bartram writes:

The surveyor having fixed his compass on the staff … just as he had determined upon the point, the Indian chief came up, and observing the course he had fixed upon, spoke, and said it was not...