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RALEIGH If you were making a list of your favorite books about North Carolina - or even the most important books - what would you include? Maybe more important, where would you start?
That opens up a whole world of debate, but it would be hard to argue against starting with John Lawson, whose "A New Voyage to Carolina," first published in 1709 in London.
Its full title promised a lot: "A New Voyage to Carolina; Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country; Together with the Present State Thereof, and a Journal of a Thousand Miles Travel'd thro' several Nations of Indians, Giving a particular Account of Their Customs, Manners &c."
Steamy accounts
Did it ever. Lawson's attention was drawn to all sorts of customs:
"The Women smoak much Tobacco, (as most Indians do.) They have Pipes, whose Heads are cut out of Stone, and will hold an Ounce of Tobacco, and some much less. They have large wooden Spoons, as big as small Ladles, which they make little Use of, lading the Meat out of the Bowls with their Fingers," he wrote in one entry.
In another, he took note of mating customs: "The Girls at 12 or 13 Years of Age, as soon as Nature prompts them, freely bestow their Maidenheads on some Youth about the same Age, continuing her Favours on whom she most affects, changing her Mate very often, few or none of them being constant to one, till a greater Number of Years has made her capable of managing domestick Affairs, and she hath try'd the Vigour of most of the Nation she belongs to; Multiplicity of Gallants never being a Stain to a Female's Reputation, or the least Hindrance of her Advancement, but the more Whorish, the more Honourable, and they of all most coveted, by those of the first Rank, to make a Wife of."
Racy stuff, but Lawson wasn't making judgments. He was making notes and writing about Carolina for the Lords Propriator of Carolina. In late 1700 he left Charleston, made his way up river, came through what's now the Charlotte area, went on to what's now Hillsborough and wound up at the mouth of the Pamlico River. From those travels he recorded the basis of "A New Voyage," a work that William Powell's Dictionary of N.C. Biography calls "a classic of early American literature, and the detailed information it recorded of native Americans and the natural history of the region is highly treasured."
Direct, vivid, thorough
To historian and UNC Chapel Hill Prof. Hugh T. Lefler, "Lawson's observation is keen and thorough; his style direct and vivid. He misses nothing and recounts all."
Those wishing to learn more about John Lawson and his travels through this area, leading up to his death at the hands of Tuscarora Indians near the Neuse River in 1711, should take note of the John Lawson Tercentenary Symposium and Exhibition this weekend at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh. (See www.ncculture.com for more.) For those who can't attend, there's a new exhibit, "A New Land, 'A New Voyage'" at the museum opening Friday and running through mid-February.
Although Lawson wrote about what is now both South and North Carolina, his book really focused on North Carolina, noted ECU Prof. Thomson Shields in a 1992 piece in the N.C. Literary Review. "Lawson's Carolina is North Carolina, and his image of the lands between Currituck and Cape Fear come across as the terrestrial paradise. Even Lawson's name for the southern boundary of North Carolina, Cape Fair rather than Cape Fear, implies the Edenic quality of the area," wrote Shields, a presenter at this week's symposium.
'Insults of the Atlantick'
Three centuries later, a lot of what Lawson found is still valid. "This Part of Carolina is faced with a Chain of Sand-Banks, which defends it from the Violence and Insults of the Atlantick Ocean; by which Barrier, a vast Sound is hemm'd in, which fronts the Mouths of the Navigable and Pleasant Rivers of this Fertile Country, and into which they disgorge themselves."
Exactly so. But as many have noted, by the time Lawson wrote, this Eden was already changing and the Carolina he described was passing from the scene. Others have noted that Lawson seemed to draw on the work of earlier writers.
But his work was a huge success, and drew settlers to North Carolina at a time when much of what is now this old state was beginning to see more Europeans. It was still the province of native Americans living among the "large and spacious Rivers, pleasant Savanna's, and fine Meadows, with their green Liveries, interwoven with beautiful Flowers, of most glorious Colours, which the several Seasons afford," but not for much longer.
Still, despite the changes that 300 years of development have wrought upon us, it's remarkable that so many North Carolinians still think of this place, as John Lawson once did, as an Edenic Carolina.
