Overview

Award-winning author and teacher Andrew J. Milson takes readers on anenthralling tour with four travelers as they faced treacherous rivers,drunken scoundrels, and repulsive food on the Arkansas frontier. But Milson also cautions thatthe dramatic imagery, provocative epithets, and frightful anecdotescommon in travel narratives too often result in distorted geographicalunderstandings of a place. Milson explains how the language in each ofthese travelers' published narratives reveals perceptions of places andlandscapes that can be mapped. When mapped, travelers' perceptionsreveal not just what the traveler said, but where he said it. Theresulting maps of these travelers' perceptions of Arkansasillustrate the places experienced and perceived rather than simply thespaces they traversed. Arkansas Travelers: Geographies of Exploration and Perception, 1804-1834, is the first book to capture the fascinating stories of William Dunbar, Thomas Nuttall, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, and George William Featherstonhaugh. A deeper understanding of the Arkansas past and the early nineteenth century American frontier is unveiled through maps of their stories and perceptions.

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9781682260968

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Reviews

[A] truly eye-opening volume, which lays aside the traditional travels of so long ago, and neatly places each excursion within two major themes--that of place and landscape. ... Milson has given us a new way to examine these travels and the Arkansas Travelers themselves. --Maylon Rice, Fort Smith Historical Society Journal, September 2019

Author Information

Andrew J. Milson is professor of history and geography at the University of Texas at Arlington. His ancestors settled in Arkansas in the 1820s.

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