Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2007/05/18/john_ledyard_the_original_hard_guy.php

John Ledyard: the Original Hard Guy

Friday, May 18, 2007

By Jared W. Zelski

“He has genius, an education better than the common, and a talent for the useful & interesting observation… I believe him to be an honest man, and a man of truth… To all this he adds just as much singularity of character, and of that particular kind too, as was necessary to make him undertake the journey he proposes.”
—Thomas Jefferson to the Marquis de Lafayette, 1784

In and around Hanover, the ever-present reminders of John Ledyard are anything but subtle: Ledyard Canoe Club, Ledyard National Bank, Ledyard Bridge. Yet, most Americans, including even Dartmouth students, trudge through American history textbooks and bookshelves without ever learning who John Ledyard was, let alone his impressive legacy. He is, by the way, a forgotten American hero, the embodiment of its spirit, “singular” to say the least, and somehow erased from its popular history. This forgetting, I maintain, is virtually criminal, and this book demonstrates why.

Bill Gifford ’88’s 284-page biography, Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer, is the second of its kind to surface in the past three years and for good reason, too. If one man ever embodied America’s sense of “rugged individualism,” it was the Connecticut-born John Ledyard. He was the first truly American explorer, traveling around the unexplored globe with the renowned Captain Cook, walking thousands of miles into Siberia, and departing on an African expedition.

Gifford’s writing is agreeable and never too long-winded, which resonates well with the free-spirited character of John Ledyard. Although Ledyard often reads like a patchwork of disconnected narratives—of Dartmouth, of Cook, of Jefferson, etc.—it manages to come together, thus giving a clear sense of exactly who John Ledyard was and an even greater sense of the world in which he lived. John Ledyard is a frightfully inspiring character, and it would take an awfully deliberate attempt to write a lackluster biography about him. Ledyard has much in the terms of anecdote and barely any haughty pretense. Gifford, in a way, wrote it with gripping substance yet crafted it rather straightforwardly. But what else would we expect from Gifford, a Dartmouth grad?

The first part of the book offers up a healthy history lesson on Dartmouth and New England, and this trend of providing context lasts throughout the entire book. Indeed, Gifford has done his research, and it shines throughout the biography. Although he often unexpectedly launches into historical asides, which can be frustrating at times, they are actually very useful in understanding the context of the man’s life. Because of the nature of Ledyard’s acquaintances and travels, the book is necessarily half-biography and half-history.

Family background aside, the book really begins when John Ledyard arrived at the then-infant, rural Dartmouth College. There, in the midst of Bible-thumping preachers, Ledyard stood out as the original hard guy—always drunk, always outgoing, and “singular” overall. His stay lasted briefly, and his extravagant (though mostly pragmatic) departure defined him for the rest of his life. In 1773, out of money and thirsty for adventure, he felled a tree, dug a canoe, and floated down the Connecticut River while reading Ovid and the New Testament. Reverend James Wheelock knew Ledyard’s personality well:

I think probably, however, it was, that he was too restless to be in any one place, and that his mind was not adapted to close application, & that he could not patiently submit to the restraints, nor comply with the strict & uniform regulations of a College government.

Shortly thereafter, Ledyard found himself, by virtue of his impressive abilities to charm and persuade, sailing “‘round the girdled earth” with Captain James Cook on his third and final voyage for a total of seven years. Aboard, Ledyard was trained as an explorer and observer. With Cook, he was able to channel productively his free-spiritedness and adventurism into a sense of responsibility.

Thankfully, Gifford includes some of Ledyard’s tales. One takes place on the northwest coast of North America: after dining on pickled pork and rat for weeks on end, some natives near Vancouver Island offer Cook’s crew a roasted human arm. Ledyard unsurprisingly tries it, noting, “I have often heard it remarked that human flesh is the most delicious… and therefore tasted a bit.”

Ledyard’s accounts, including the bloody death of Cook, provide many of the high points of the book. Unfortunately, Gifford’s tendency to focus on the larger picture and not Ledyard himself makes the biography seem, for a period, as if it were about Cook and not Ledyard. Yet, it is ultimately forgivable because, after all, Ledyard was Cook’s subordinate and shared similar experiences.

The low points of the book begin at about this time as well. Gifford unexpectedly launches into a narrative of his own seven-day reenactment of Cook’s voyage on a replica of his ship (which requires steep fare, I might add). His attempt to live on a ship as if in the eighteenth century hardly gives the reader a sense of Ledyard’s hardship (the replica ship has a “twentieth century deck” with modern amenities), and it certainly doesn’t pay homage to Ledyard’s brimming audacity. Rather, Gifford’s mock-journey merely echoes Ledyard’s experiences, for his feeble attempt to understand Ledyard and his trials are ultimately transparent. At its worst, Ledyard falls out of focus during Gifford’s account; at its best, we learn about marine maneuvers and terminology. Although Ledyard maintains an informal tone, such a self-centered diversion has no place in a proper biography.

Nonetheless, Gifford uses firsthand accounts like Ledyard’s Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage (the first copyrighted book in the U.S.) to create a biography that flows like a story. Ledyard’s “journal” inspired some of the great American literary giants of the nineteenth century: Mark Twain and Herman Melville. Melville even mentions Ledyard in his classic Moby Dick, and his Typee also very much resembles Ledyard’s experiences over a half-century earlier. Throughout that era, the mythic Ledyard served as a foundation for much of the travel literature to come out of it.

In his post-Cook years, Ledyard found himself in Europe charming renowned men like John Paul Jones, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Thomas Jefferson (often to gain financial favor). The bond that Jefferson and Ledyard shared is not surprising; Ledyard’s grand vision of American profit in North America struck the like-minded Jefferson. Between the two, they embodied the whole of the modern American spirit, embracing freedom, innovation, and fearlessness.

But it was the Danish explorer Vitus Bering who served as Ledyard’s eventual prototype—“a lone explorer in a small craft, independent and unbeholden to anyone.” And so Ledyard ventured into the heart of Russia on foot and on boat. His goal was to cross the North American continent from west to east, eventually reaching home. Ledyard traveled 1,400 miles (walking was his preferred method of transportation) in ten weeks to St. Petersburg during a frigid Scandinavian winter. He then trekked into barren, austere Siberia, where he was eventually arrested as a spy and transported 4,000 miles back to Moscow for interrogation.

An adventure as bold as this is Gifford’s true opportunity to capture the reader indefinitely, but he unfortunately adds in more of his haphazard and ineffective modern-day commentary. While Gifford’s retracing of Ledyard’s steps in Russia pays some respect to Ledyard, the inclusion of descriptions of train rides through Russia and modern-day Irkutsk are but a feeble attempt to justify that his modern retracing (if we can call it that) wasn’t for nought. One who wants to get to the meat-and-potatoes of the biography will find it difficult to trek through Gifford’s sidetrack narratives; a reader wanting to hear of the pain and drudgery of the lone American explorer in Russia has no patience for such things.

Shortly after returning to England as “a celebrated Traveler,” Ledyard joined an expedition into Africa, where he met his demise. His intended expedition very much resembled Marlow’s journey into “the heart of darkness” in Conrad’s masterwork over a century later—visit Alexandria and Cairo, drift down the Nile, make a trip to Mecca, and finally descend into Africa via the Niger. But Ledyard, as always, was impatient and one step ahead of himself. Fatigued from his Siberian trek, he died alone in a grimy convent room in Cairo from a violent illness; Jefferson was emotionally distressed.

On the back cover, author Jon Krakauer praises Ledyard as “probably the most fascinating historical figure you’ve never heard of.” His eccentric tendencies, such as writing letters in the nude while sipping red wine, give him an air of mystique, while his entrepreneurial spirit and love for adventure have inspired people for over two centuries.

The character of Ledyard—“flamboyant, talkative, iconoclastic”—truly makes this book a worthwhile read. Gifford does a pretty good job at delivering his character, but it is the spirit of John Ledyard that keeps you reading. John Ledyard, the explorer, the student of native cultures, the self-taught linguist, the progressive thinker, the daring connoisseur, the naïve Dartmouth boy in a canoe who bid farewell to ordinary life, is as charming today as he was in the 1780s. In this respect, Gifford’s book is a success.

It is unfortunate that over time Americans have been so predisposed to historical oversimplification and irrational historical omissions, which leave significant players like Ledyard out of our nation’s history, much to our detriment. Regardless of whether the lethargic masses ever hear of John Ledyard or not, pursuers of a truer, larger picture of American history should at least learn something about the quintessential American explorer.