American History as Travel Writing

This weekend while reading Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates
it occurred to me, American history is, at it's heart travel writing. i.e. I went here, it's like such and such, I did so and so, and met this and that person. (Putting aside that in American history the next step generally was, "I then wiped this and that person and all their relatives off the face of the map.") Take, for example the folks discussed in Vowell's book, John Winthrop - went to Massachusetts, its got a great hill upon which to build a city, there's also lots of natural resources. Roger Williams - went to Massachusetts, met some well intentioned people but they didn't really have the right idea so he sailed somewhere else, saw a bigger bay, met a lot of interesting new people, hung out with them for awhile, then got together with Winthrop and others and wiped them out. Next traveler, Anne Hutchinson. She sails to Winthrop's city, meets some people, and is forced to visit Roger Williams but finds even his company a bit much so head off to New Amsterdam. Nice place - until the natives get a bit upset.

And so it goes throughout American history. Take The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Adventurers? I don't think so. Really they're just travel writers in disguise. If they'd had some help writing it might even have been a best seller.

Even the Civil War was treated as a travel adventure (although mostly for Northerners.)

And so two streams come together. My love of American history and travel writing converge. (And I get to write a corny concluding sentence before running off to work.)

PS The Wordy Shipmates is a very good read. Strangely inclusive of all of American history while focusing on the Puritans. Brought me right back to my college years and while it may be too densely packed with references only a scholar of that period could understand, still it lends a new perspective.