The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram: An Elizabethan Sailor in Native North America

In The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram, author Dean Snow rights the record on a shipwrecked sailor who traversed the length of the North American continent only to be maligned as deceitful storyteller. In the autumn of 1569, a French ship rescued David Ingram and two other English sailors from the shore of the Gulf of Maine. The men had walked over 3000 miles in less than a year after being marooned near Tampico, Mexico. They were the only three men to escape alive and uncaptured, out of a hundred put ashore at the close of John Hawkins's disastrous third slaving expedition. A dozen years later, Ingram was called in for questioning by Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster. In 1589, the historian Richard Hakluyt published his version of Ingram's story based on the records of that interrogation. For four centuries historians have used that publication as evidence that Ingram was an egregious travel liar, an unreliable early source for information about the people of interior eastern North America before severe historic epidemics devastated them. In The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram, author and recognized archaeologist Dean Snow shows that Ingram was not a fraud, contradicting the longstanding narrative of his life. Snow's careful examination of three long-neglected surviving records of Ingram's interrogation reveals that the confusion in the 1589 publication was the result of disorganization by court recorders and poor editing by Richard Hakluyt. Restoration of Ingram's testimony has reinstated him as a trustworthy source on the peoples of West Africa, the Caribbean, and eastern North America in the middle sixteenth century. Ingram's life story, with his long traverse through North America at its core, can now finally be understood and appreciated for what it was: the tale of a unique, bold adventurer.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. Ingram in the 1560s 3. Ingram in Africa 4. Ingram in the Caribbean 5. The Long Walk, Autumn 1568 6. The Long Walk, Winter 1568-1569 7. The Long Walk, Spring 1569 8. The Long Walk, Summer 1569 9. The Return 10. Ingram in the 1570s 11. Ingram in the 1580s 12. Ingram's Legacy Appendix: A New Transcript

About the Author :
Dean Snow received his BA from the University of Minnesota and his PhD from the University of Oregon. He taught at the University of Maine and the University at Albany before assuming the headship of the Department of Anthropology at Penn State in 1995. He is an anthropological archaeologist and an ethnohistorian who has conducted field research in Mexico, the US, France, and Spain. He has served as president of the Society for American Archaeology and the American Society for Ethnohistory, as well as serving as an officer in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and three regional associations.

Review :
A highly informative and smooth combination of biography and colonialism history, Snow's book both shines new light on a four-century-old discussion over Ingram's credibility and provides a much-needed new perspective to studying the Age of Discovery. The Elizabethan traveler David Ingram claimed to have walked from the Gulf of Mexico to coastal Canada, a journey that many over time have questioned. Here the renowned archaeologist Dean Snow, through an act of masterful archival sleuthing, has put his journey, which encompassed participation in the slave trade and early ethnographic observations, into a rich and memorable context. In this deftly argued and elegantly written investigation into the travels and travails of David Ingram, Dean Snow argues that we can still learn a few things from the misunderstood shipwreck survivor, despite his mendacity—and more than a few things from Professor Snow himself. With expert historical detective work, Dean Snow has recovered a compelling 'truth is stranger than fiction' story from early America. David Ingram's odyssey calls to mind the travels of Cabeza de Vaca and Sir Walter Raleigh and the other-worldly fantasy of The Tempest. It is an illuminating record of Elizabethan England's first tentative steps into the New World. Cogent and well-documented, this is a valuable correction to the historical record. Provides a rare glimpse of an Atlantic world on the cusp of profound transformations wrought, in part, by ordinary sailors like [Ingram]. Utilising his expertise in the anthropology and archaeology of North America, Snow has meticulously reconstructed Ingram's 3,600-mile journey along known 16th-century indigenous trails, and has also proved that everything Ingram said to his interrogators was true to the best of his knowledge and ability... Fascinating. Utilising his expertise in the anthropology and archaeology of North America, Snow has meticulously reconstructed Ingram's 3,600-mile journey along known 16th-century indigenous trails, and has also proved that everything Ingram said to his interrogators was true to the best of his knowledge and ability... Fascinating. Absorbing... Thanks to Dean Snow's impressive sleuthing, David Ingram's account can at last resume its proper place as an astonishing and true story. Snow has done good service to Ingram and to the wider understanding of the world of early Elizabethan mariners. At the very least, this book will provoke scholars to look with fresh eyes on the extraordinary journey of David Ingram. There is plenty here for specialist and general reader alike. Snow has not only rigorously interrogated the manuscript evidence for Ingram's voyage but has provided an indepth analysis of a small, relatively overlooked, but clearly important part of Hakluyt's Voyages. The volume not only serves as an accessible introduction to the period for the general reader but is a testament to the dividends whichcan be yielded using both textual and nontextualevidence. It is an essential reminder not to dismiss the voices of ordinary people in the historical record, even if they had extraordinary stories to tell.