In 1719, a work frequently cited by literary historians as “perhaps the first true instance in English of…the realistic novel” was published.1 The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, was an instant success for its author Daniel Defoe, who sought to capitalize on popular interest in the dangerous and exotic Americas. Robinson Crusoe, written in the manner of an autobiographical journal, is the story of an ideological Englishman, stranded by a shipwreck on a deserted shore, who relies on “God’s Providence” to protect him from starvation, the elements, and cannibalistic Indian natives. Defoe’s is a work of fiction, but one that immediately brings to mind a genuine autobiographical tale of survival published two decades before.2
God’s Protecting Providence was published in Philadelphia in 1699.3 Like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe twenty years later, Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal attracted immediate attention in the American colonies and in Europe. Interest in the work has been sustained, and since its first publication there have been over “twenty-two reprintings in English, Dutch, and German.”4 While the Journal was initially popular for its message of unwavering faith in the midst of peril—and its Quaker publishers emphasized that aspect—it is notable today for its depiction of late seventeenth century Florida, and the sometimes hostile interaction between the peninsula’s indigenous inhabitants and European settlers.
On August 23, 1696, a ship called “Reformation” sailed from Port Royal, near present-day Kingston, Jamaica. At that time, England, Spain and others were allied against France in the Nine Years’ War, with all parties fighting for their commercial interests in the Americas.5 This hostile atmosphere rendered solo voyages impossible, so the Reformation traveled within a convoy, protected by an armed frigate. “On board [the Reformation] were eight mariners besides the master [Joseph Kirle]; a Quaker missionary, Robert Barrow; a young Quaker merchant, Jonathan Dickinson; his wife and little baby; a relative named Benjamin Allen; and Dickinson’s eleven slaves.”6 Dickinson had chartered the vessel to carry cargo to Philadelphia, where he would establish a business. It is clear from Dickinson’s Journal, however, that the journey was beset by trouble from its very start.
Within days after the Reformation departed Port Royal, Dickinson noted that calm winds prevented the ship from moving under sail, that the ship had been carried off its intended course by currents, and that his party had “lost sight of the Hampshire frigate.”7 They had even lost their ship’s anchor. On the eighteenth of September, while the Reformation stood stalled north of Havana, a violent storm brought a boom down on the captain, Robert Kirle, breaking his leg – a substantial injury in light of their circumstances. On September 24, a month after Dickinson’s ship left Jamaica, it ran aground during a violent storm, on the east coast of Florida, near present-day Jupiter Inlet. In his Journal, Dickinson remarks that he and his companions “rejoiced at this our preservation from the raging seas; but at the same instant feared the sad consequences that followed.”8
Dickinson was evidently displeased by the Florida landscape he first observed, describing it as harsh and bleak: “the wilderness country looked very dismal, having no trees, but only sand hills covered with shrubby palmetto, the stalks of which were prickly.”9 Having lived for some time in the Caribbean, he was used to the heat, but the flat, treeless coastal terrain bore little resemblance to the lush topography of Jamaica. Moreover, Dickinson believed that his party had run aground far from civilization, and deep inside territory populated by “barbarous people such as were generally accounted man-eaters.”10
Dickinson’s party was soon discovered by “the Jobeses, or dwellers of the Rio Jobe, as the Spaniards called what later came to be known first as Jupiter and later as Grenville Inlet.”11 The Indians promptly stripped Dickinson’s party of their clothing and supplies, and ordered them to their village. Dickinson had refused to allow his companions to use their guns against the Indians they first encountered. He probably recognized the futility of such an action, but in keeping with his Quaker faith, likely opposed violence on principle. Believing that he, his wife, child, and other companions were in imminent physical danger, Dickinson nevertheless professes in his Journal to putting his fate before God.
Still, he wasn’t above deceiving the Indians to ensure his party’s safety. It was clear to Dickinson that the Indians harbored a violent hatred for the English. With nearly every Indian his party encountered on their trek, a similar introduction took place:
Their Casseekey (for so they call their king) with about thirty more came down to us in a furious manner, having a dismal aspect and foaming at the mouth. … They rushed in upon us and cried Nickaleer Nickaleer. We understood them not at first: they repeating it over unto us often. At last they cried Epainia or Spaniard, by which we understood them that at first they meant English.12
Sensing the genuine risk for physical violence should the Indians believe them to be English, Dickinson persuaded Solomon Cresson, one of his companions, to address the Indians in Spanish, since only he among them understood that language. From more than a century of interaction with the Spanish, many of the Indian tribes had acquired a limited degree of Spanish proficiency. Still, communication between Dickinson’s party and the Indians remained awkward, and often tense. Dickinson notes that on October 27, in the Indian village of Jece, members of the party were nearly tricked into revealing their English identity, when they were offered berries. Dickinson’s companions, sensing that they were being tested, called the fruit by its Spanish name “vivaes,” instead of “plums.”13
Hoe-Bay, the town in which the Jobeses lived, consisted of “little wigwams made of small poles stuck in the ground, which they bended one to another, making an arch, and covered…with thatch of small palmetto-leaves.”14 Dickinson’s party remained at Hoe-Bay for three days, and his description of the Indians’ customs borders on condemnation. He found their diet revolting, their manners greedy, and their singing and dancing “hideous” and “terrible,” and he was startled to hear exclaim, “English Son of a Bitch.”1516 But, both at Hoe-Bay and in other Indian villages along their route to St. Augustine, Dickinson found the Indian women to be compassionate, particularly when they nursed his child while his wife could not. Still, the party was eager to leave Hoe-Bay.
Throughout his Journal, it appears that Dickinson and his companions were afraid to venture north without an escort. Certainly, they needed canoes to transport the infirm of the party. Besides Robert Kirle’s broken leg, Dickinson’s wife was weak. Their journey was terribly dangerous. Indeed, in mid-November, along the Atlantic coast (between present day Ormond Beach and the Matanzas Inlet), five of the party died, including Dickinson’s kinsman, Benjamin Allen.17 But soon after, the party reached the southern edge of Spanish Florida, and the sentinel posts south of St. Augustine.
Spain had had a settlement at St. Augustine since 1565, and when Dickinson’s party reached the town, they could see the newly-completed Castillo de San Marcos, finished in 1695.18 It was the height of the First Spanish Period, and Dickinson observed the power the Spanish appeared to wield in Florida. When his party had first encountered members of a Spanish outfit sent to aid them at Jece, he observed how “the Indians were like a people amazed an overcome with fear: we perceived the noise of a gun was terrible unto them.”19 Spain had earned its fearsome reputation during the brutal adelantado period.
By early December 1695, more than two months after the Resolution had run aground, Jonathan Dickinson and the remaining members of his party slipped out of Florida en route to the Carolinas, and thenceforth to Philadelphia. They had trekked two hundred thirty miles through a dangerous and unforgiving territory, and suffered tremendous loss. The publication of Dickinson’s Journal in 1699 brought the incidents relayed therein vividly to life. At a time when “private entrepreneurs and public statesmen” were advertising Florida as a land of riches, few had read “complete accounts of people who actually visited the peninsula.”20 The Journal, then, was a revelation to those who read it.
In the coming decades, many more would read accounts similar to Jonathan Dickinson’s. In 1766, a Frenchman named Pierre Viaud, sailing from Haiti to New Orleans, was shipwrecked on the Florida coast, and his account, published in 1768—with a French title that, while less overtly religious, was certainly as long as God’s Protecting Providence—was also a sensation.2122 The public’s appetite for adventure stories was unquenchable, and whether fiction, like Robinson Crusoe, or fact, like Dickinson’s Journal, enjoyed tremendous success – even when the Spanish and English endeavors in Florida failed.
Jonathan Dickinson was a success himself. He reached Philadelphia, established a profitable business, and made repeat voyages to and from Jamaica, with Robert Kirle as captain.23 Until his death in 1722, he remained convinced that he and his party had been delivered through God’s Protecting Providence. Read more »
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