The Travel Journals of Tappan Adney

Author: 
C. Ted Behne
In 1887, at the age of 18, Tappan Adney embarked on his first trip to Canada. He had plans to return to New York in the fall — but fate intervened. He fell under the spell of the New Brunswick wilderness and the Maliseet people, including Peter Joseph, with whom he hunted and camped. Nothing escaped Adney’s attention. He recorded the details of snowshoes, and birchbark canoes, and the Native names for birds and animals. He chronicled a caribou hunt on snowshoes in winter conditions, decades before woodland caribou became extinct in eastern Canada. In this journal he recorded his travels from New York to Fredericton, Woodstock, and Nackawic in New Brunswick, the Squatec Lakes in Quebec, and to Windsor and Weymouth in Nova Scotia. The Travel Journals of Tappan Adney, 1887-1890, is the first published version of Adney’s first two journals. He would write three more before his last in 1896. Retaining the authenticity of Adney’s writing, this volume preserves the language of the day and spellings of names and places. It also includes reproductions of Adney’s original sketches and a few early photographs. Tappan Adney was an artist, journalist, photographer, and ethnologist. He is perhaps best known for his models of aboriginal canoes, which helped save the birchbark canoe from oblivion.