Reviewed by:

• Arkansas Travelers: Geographies of Exploration and Perception, 1804–1834 by Andrew J. Milson
• Joseph Key

Andrew J. Milson reconceptualizes the Mississippi River Valley and the American South of the early American republic in his new work on travelers and explorers. Using the methodology of historical geography, Milson enhances our understanding of the region and its landscapes—both physical and cultural. In particular, he looks at the expeditions and travels of George Hunter and William Dunbar, Thomas Nuttall, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, and George William Featherstonhaugh. Arkansas Travelers: Geographies of Exploration and Perception, 1804–1834 covers the thirty years after the Louisiana Purchase and gives readers a new perspective on Arkansas's transition from territory to statehood.

Milson is one of the few to examine seriously these travelers' journals. In fact, Dunbar and Hunter's journals only became accessible to most readers in the last fifteen years—edited by Trey Berry, Pam Beasley, and Jeanne Clements in the aptly titled The Forgotten Expedition, 1804–1805: The Louisiana Purchase Journals of Dunbar and Hunter (Baton Rouge, 2006). Milson, with a geographer's eye, compares the travelers' descriptions and perceptions of the different types of landscapes at different times during the thirty-year period. Through these writers, Milson is also able to address many diverse regions of Arkansas not usually considered in studies of its early history.

While Milson's focus is on Arkansas, historians and geographers of Missouri, Louisiana, and the Mississippi Valley will find his scholarship valuable. Not surprisingly for a geographer, the maps make the book worth the price, but the maps are a visual introduction to a location that may seem familiar to many. In Milson's hands, the location becomes less a place we thought we knew. Defining place "as a geographical concept [that] involves both objective and subjective characteristics that bring human meaning to a physical space," Milson redefines Arkansas and its varied landscapes in the early nineteenth century and in the process shifts our view of Arkansas and its travelers (p. 6).

Milson's comparison of these four expeditions clearly reveals the changing cultural and closely connected commercial landscapes across Arkansas that the travelers themselves could not see. Milson, though, at times gives the travelers [End Page 329] more credit than they deserve. He overstates Nuttall's appreciation of Native peoples. Quapaw women, for instance, would not have been so keen on Nuttall's descriptions of them. Of course, Nuttall never actually talked to Quapaw women. His conversations with the Cherokees were limited to the slave-owning elite, who were more like their white planter neighbors. Milson also argues that Featherstonhaugh, who traveled the territory in 1834, disregarded the Native presence in Arkansas, which is not really surprising since the Quapaws and Cherokees had been expelled from the territory before 1834. Milson here does not make clear that Featherstonhaugh's perception of the cultural landscape was part of the postremoval revision of southern history that wrote Native peoples out of the story. They were gone and forgotten.

Milson's own perceptions are limited by his sources. Throughout the history of early America, the elite white men who served as explorers did not or could not seek out the voices of everyone they encountered. Women of all races and the enslaved were observed but rarely heard. The explorers easily crossed geographic boundaries but usually failed to challenge their own racial, gender, and class assumptions. Milson's illuminating exploration of travelers' perceptions, however, has given us a starting point to map gendered and racialized landscapes in the Mississippi Valley and the South. His perspective and that of the travelers he studies allow us to see in stark terms the achievement of statehood through the dispossession and expulsion of Native peoples and the reshaping of the landscape in a new racial order.

审核人：

• 阿肯色旅行者：探索与感知地理，1804-1834年，安德鲁·J·米尔森（Andrew J. Milson）
• 约瑟夫·基

安德鲁·J·米尔森（Andrew J. Milson）在其关于旅行者和探险家的新著作中重新构思了密西西比河流域和美国早期共和国的美国南部。通过使用历史地理方法论，Milson增强了我们对该地区及其自然景观和文化景观的理解。特别是，他着眼于George Hunter和William Dunbar，Thomas Nuttall，Henry Rowe Schoolcraft和George William Featherstonhaugh的探险和旅行。阿肯色州旅行者：探索与感知地理，1804-1834年涵盖了路易斯安那购买之后的30年，为读者提供了关于阿肯色州从领地过渡到建州的新视角。

米尔森是为数不多的认真审查这些旅行者日记的杂志之一。实际上，Dunbar和Hunter的期刊仅在过去的15年中才对大多数读者开放-由Trey Berry，Pam Beasley和Jeanne Clements编辑，标题为“被遗忘的远征”，1804-1805年：《 Dunbar和Hunter的路易斯安那州购买期刊》（巴吞鲁日，2006年）。米尔森用地理学家的眼光，比较了旅行者在30年期间在不同时间对不同类型景观的描述和看法。通过这些作家，米尔森还能够解决阿肯色州的许多不同地区，而阿肯色州的早期历史研究通常不考虑这些地区。

米尔森的重点是阿肯色州时，密苏里州，路易斯安那州和密西西比河谷的历史学家和地理学家会发现他的奖学金很有价值。对于地理学家来说并不奇怪，这些地图使这本书物有所值，但是这些地图是对该地点的直观介绍，对于许多人来说似乎很熟悉。在米尔森的手中，这个位置变得越来越像我们以为我们知道的地方。米尔森（Milson）将地点定义为“一种地理概念，涉及到将人类的意义带入物理空间的客观和主观特征，”米尔森在19世纪初期重新定义了阿肯色州及其变化多端的景观，并在此过程中改变了我们对阿肯色州及其旅行者的看法（第6页）。

米尔森对这四个探险队的比较清楚地表明，阿肯色州各地的文化和人脉密密的商业景观正在变化，而旅行者本人却看不见。但是，米尔森有时会给旅行者[End Page 329]比他们应得的更多的信誉。他夸大了纳塔尔（Nutttall）对土著人民的欣赏。例如，Quapaw妇女不会对Nuttall对她们的描述那么热衷。当然，Nuttall从未真正与Quapaw妇女交谈。他与切诺基人的对话仅限于拥有奴隶的精英，他们更像是白人种植者的邻居。米尔森还辩称，费瑟斯顿霍夫（Featherstonhaugh）于1834年到访该领土，无视阿肯色州的原住民生活，这并不令人感到意外，因为魁北克人和切诺基人于1834年之前被驱逐出该领土。文化景观是南部历史撤除后修订的一部分，该修订将原住民写成故事。他们走了，被遗忘了。

米尔森自己的看法受到他的消息来源的限制。在整个美国早期的历史中，曾担任探险家的白人精英没有或无法找到他们遇到的每个人的声音。观察到各个种族和奴隶制的妇女，但很少听到。探险者很容易越过地理边界，但通常无法挑战自己的种族，性别和阶级假设。但是，米尔森（Milson）对旅行者感知的启发性探索，为我们提供了绘制密西西比河谷和南部两性和种族化景观的起点。他的观点以及他所研究的旅行者的观点，使我们得以明晰地看到通过剥夺和驱逐土著人民以及以新的种族秩序重塑景观来实现建国。