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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 the tale of a unique, bold adventurer.
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 the tale of a unique, bold adventurer.
330 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 24, 2023
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About the author
Dean R. Snow
22 books3 followersDean Snow is a North American archaeologist who grew up on the southern Minnesota prairie and received his BA degree at the University of Minnesota in 1962. He gained field experience in the Midwest and Alaska there at at his graduate university, the University of Oregon. He earned a PhD there in 1964. His doctoral dissertation was based on research carried out in highland Mexico.
Snow began his research and teaching career at the University of Maine, and established the first university-based archaeological research program in that state. He moved to the University at Albany in 1969 and remained there for 26 years. The U. S. Bicentennial celebrations drew him into historical archaeology, which involved innovative and revealing excavations on the key 1777 battleground site at Saratoga, New York.
In 1982 he undertook a large multi-year project on Iroquois archaeology in New York’s Mohawk Valley, which led to new understandings of American Indian paleodemography, particularly the size of the aboriginal populations in 1492 and the ways in which epidemics later reduced them. This in turn led to multidisciplinary study of human migrations through archaeology and related disciplines.
Snow served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Albany three times and was an associate dean for one term. In 1995 he moved to The Pennsylvania State University and served has Head of the Department of Anthropology there from then until 2005.
More recently Snow has developed techniques for distinguishing male from female handprints at rock art sites found around the world. Development of the techniques has focused on examples in the Upper Paleolithic caves of France and Spain, but this research is also being taken up by others in North America and elsewhere.
Dean Snow won election to the presidency of the Society for American Archaeology and served 2007-2009. Working with PSU colleagues in archaeology and information technology he is using his standing in the discipline to lead the development of new “cybertools” designed to make archaeological finds and publications more accessible to scholars, students, and the general public. His most recent book, Archaeology of Native North America, is the first truly continental synthesis of North American archaeology in forty years.
Snow began his research and teaching career at the University of Maine, and established the first university-based archaeological research program in that state. He moved to the University at Albany in 1969 and remained there for 26 years. The U. S. Bicentennial celebrations drew him into historical archaeology, which involved innovative and revealing excavations on the key 1777 battleground site at Saratoga, New York.
In 1982 he undertook a large multi-year project on Iroquois archaeology in New York’s Mohawk Valley, which led to new understandings of American Indian paleodemography, particularly the size of the aboriginal populations in 1492 and the ways in which epidemics later reduced them. This in turn led to multidisciplinary study of human migrations through archaeology and related disciplines.
Snow served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Albany three times and was an associate dean for one term. In 1995 he moved to The Pennsylvania State University and served has Head of the Department of Anthropology there from then until 2005.
More recently Snow has developed techniques for distinguishing male from female handprints at rock art sites found around the world. Development of the techniques has focused on examples in the Upper Paleolithic caves of France and Spain, but this research is also being taken up by others in North America and elsewhere.
Dean Snow won election to the presidency of the Society for American Archaeology and served 2007-2009. Working with PSU colleagues in archaeology and information technology he is using his standing in the discipline to lead the development of new “cybertools” designed to make archaeological finds and publications more accessible to scholars, students, and the general public. His most recent book, Archaeology of Native North America, is the first truly continental synthesis of North American archaeology in forty years.
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