THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
Joseph Kellogg's Observations on
Senex's Map of North America
(Due to length divided here into two parts)
In: Stearns, Raymond P., Mississippi
Valley
Historical Review, vol. 23, pp. 345-354.
JOSEPH
KELLOGG'S OBSERVATIONS ON SENEX'S
MAP OF NORTH AMERICA (1710)1
BY RAYMOND PHINEAS STEARNS
The first Englishman so far as is known to travel through the Great Lakes and into the Illinois Country was Joseph Kellogg, a New England lad who, in 1710, at the age of nineteen years, accompanied "Six French Men from Canada" on "a Trading Voyage" to the Mississippi. Son of Martin and Sarah Dickenson [Lane] Kellogg, Joseph Kellogg was born November 8, 1691, at Hadley, Massachusetts.2 His grandfather, after whom he was named, had migrated to New England about 1650 from Great Leighs, Essex, England. After eleven years almost equally divided between Farmington, Connecticut, and Boston, Joseph Kellogg, the elder, became a proprietor of Hadley and the town's ferryman. Thereafter the Kelloggs were a frontier family. Joseph, the elder, fought in King Philip's War and, though the family must have realized, as the Reverend John Williams said, "It was a dangerous thing to be set in the Front of New England's Sins,3 Martin Kellogg and his family moved to Deerfield within a year or two after Joseph the younger was born.
Joseph Kellogg's youth was filled with danger and excitement enough to satiate the most avid boy. Deerfield in the 1690's was, in the words of a contemporary, Major John Pynchon, "continually pecked at" by the French and their Indian allies,4 and at the end of February, 1704, a party of French and Indians sacked the town, carried many inhabitants, and carried into cold Canadian captivity many Deerfield townsmen, including young Joseph (page 346) Kellogg, his father, his half-brother, Martin Junior, and his two sisters, Joanna and Rebecca. While he grew from a boy of twelve years to a young man of twenty-two, Joseph Kellogg was a captive, first of the Mohawk Indians at Caughnawaga Mission and later of the French.5
As a prisoner, young Kellogg learned the Mohawk language and gained such a reputation for linguistic accomplishments that the French took him in charge, used him as an interpreter and, in this capacity, permitted him to accompany trading expeditions. The extent to which Kellogg travelled with traders is not recorded; it appears likely that he journeyed more than once to the Great Lakes region, that his longest expedition was that of 17106 when he accompanied six Frenchmen with "two Cannoos made of Birch Bark" over the usual route from Montreal to the lakes, from "Chigaquea" near the "South west end" of Lake Michigan overland "to a branch of the River Ilinois," thence to the Mississippi and as far south as the mouth of the Ohio. Except for his observations, there was nothing remarkable about this trading expedition, it being one of many French attempts at the time to extend trade among the western Indians and to preserve from English encroachment or envelopment by double thrusts westward from New York and southward from Hudson Bay control of the fruitful fur trade of the lakes region.7 Kellogg returned to Canada and was released from captivity in 1714. For several years he lived with his father's family which had moved to Suffield, Massachusetts; he married the local parson's (page 347) daughter in 1720,8 was captain of a militia company raised to protect the frontier towns of the Connecticut Valley and, when Fort Dummer was established in 1723, became interpreter and lieutenant of the forces there. In the next thirty years he served as one of Massachusetts' most valuable negotiators with Indians, was appointed (December 26, 1740) "an establisht interpreter for this Province,"9 attended the Albany Conference of 1754, and died two years later in Schenectady while accompanying Governor William Shirley on his campaign in New York.
Sometime before his marriage in 1720, Joseph Kellogg made the acquaintance of Paul Dudley. Kellogg was then captain of the local frontier militia and Dudley recently (1718) had been appointed judge of the superior court of the colony. Perhaps it was the latter's court business that let him to the Connecticut Valley and to Kellogg; perhaps they encountered in connection with problems of colonial defense or of Indian relations- for Dudley had a wide range of public affairs; or possibly they were brought together by mutual friends in the Bay Colony. Howsoever they met, Dudley found Kellogg's accounts of his travels in the West both interesting and valuable, and it is to Dudley that posterity is indebted for a record of Kellogg's expedition to the Mississippi.
Paul Dudley, son of Governor Joseph and Rebecca [Tyng] Dudley, was born at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1675.10 He was graduated from Harvard College (A. B., 1690; A. M., 1693), studied law in Boston, and in 1697 entered the Middle Temple, London. For five years he was in England, during which time he (page 348) made the acquaintance of several learned and some famous men, such as Sir Hans Sloane, John Chamberlayne, Dr. James Jurin, and other students of the new "experimental science" who were members of the Royal Society of London. Perhaps it was by these men that Dudley's interest in natural history was aroused. He was called to the bar in 1700 and two years later returned to Massachusetts with the Queen's commission as attorney general of the colony. The remainder of his life was devoted very largely to public affairs. Intelligent political maneuvering, public-spirited activity, integrity, and uncommon ability carried him safely through severe partisan strife, and led to his appointment as chief justice of Massachusetts in 1745, a position he retained until his death six years later.
After he was established judge of the superior court in 1718, Dudley renewed his communications with his former acquaintances in London, expressed his interest in scientific matters, and began sending observations on natural phenomena to his London friends. In 1719, he sent to John Chamberlayne "An Account of the Method of making Sugar from the Juice of the Maple Tree in New England" which Chamberlayne read before the Royal Society at its meeting of October 29, 1719,11 and which was published in the Philosophical Transactions.12 Subsequent communications from Dudley to his London correspondents appeared in a steady stream,13 and on November 2, 1721, Dudley was elected fellow of the Royal Society upon the previous motion of Sir Hans Sloane.
The Royal Society usually kept its overseas correspondents fully informed of
its experiments and projects. The society had always taken an active interest
in geographical explorations and discoveries,14
both as adjuncts to natural history and as means
_______________________
2 Genealogical information relating to the Kelloggs is derived mostly from Timothy Hopkins, The Kelloggs in the Old World and the New (San Francisco, 1903), 25, 35-38, 59-63. The author is indebted to Louise Phelps Kellogg of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for notes on this book and for helpful suggestions respecting Joseph Kellogg's travels. See also Justin P. Kellogg, A Supplement to Notes on Joseph Kellogg . . . . (Geneva, Switzerland, 1899), passim.
3 New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Boston, 1847-), VII (1854), 174-76.
4 Sylvester Judd, History of Hadley . . . (Springfield, Mass., 1905), 258. Judd states (p. 332 n.), indicating no source, that Kellogg "had seen the Mississippi."
7 E. B. O'Callaghan (ed.), Documents Relative to the Colonial History of . . . New York (Albany, 1856-87), V, 586-87; IX, 852-53.
8 Rachel, daughter of the Reverend Ebenezer Derotim, of Suffield. They were married March 10, 1720.
9 See "The Belcher Papers," in Massachusetts Historical Society Collections (Boston, 1792-), Series 6, VII (1894), 528. See also ibid., Series 1, X (1809), 143, 149; Series 3, V (1836), 5-74; Series 6, VI (1893), 191-93, 466, 484-85; 489; VII (1894), 480ff.; Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings (Boston, 1791-), Series 2, VI (1891), 359-81; George Temple and Josiah H. Sheldon, History of Northfield . . . (Albany, 1875), passim.; O'Callaghan, N. Y. Col. Docs., V, 655-57 and O'Callaghan, Documentary History of the State of New York (Albany 1849-51), III, 629; New. Eng. Hist. Gen. Register, LVIII (1904), 379-80; James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (Boston, 1860-62), III, 5.
10 Dumas Malone (ed.), Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1924-36), V, 483-84. Other materials about Dudley appear in Dean Dudley, History of the Dudley Family . . . (Wakefield, Mass., 1886-1901), I, 521-26; C. K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College . . . 1690-1700 . . . (Sibley's Harvard Graduates, IV. Cambridge, 1933), 42-54.
12 Philosophical Transactions (London, 1665-), XXXI (1720-21), no. 364, pp. 27-28.
13 Dudley's published papers on scientific affairs are listed in Dean Dudley, The Dudley Genealogies and Family Records (Boston, 1848), 73-74.
14 The minutes of the Royal Society frequently disclose an interest in exploration and discovery. Dr. Daniel Coxe was particularly alert in these matters and two of his communications to the society are of uncommon interest. On July 11, 1678, the Journal-Book records (VI, 117) that "Dr. Dan. Cox Related that Bacon (who at his first going into America had been very curious in making observations on Animals as well as Plants) had given him a description of certaine Animalls that were found in a might large plaine or Champion Countrey lying between Hudsons Bay & Calefornia in vast great numbers or heards. These _______ [sic] at the time of the year did shed their Wool or Coat wch was an exceeding fine furr or Wool, and the wind blowing gathered it together in great heaps or Cocks. These Mr. Henshaw [Thomas Henshaw, F. R. S.] Supposed might be a Sort of Indian Goats called by the Spaniards Vacouneos or Quereunadoes, these were used in Potosi Described in De Laet. He further added that he [Coxe] was so confident there was no Northwest passage that he Said he could demonstrate that Hudson bay and the South Sea were 1000. miles distant." Years later (January 12, 1686/7) Coxe again appeared (ibid., VIII, 121) and "produced severall Mapps and discourses concerning the great Lakes that are in North America; wch he affirmed some Englishman had surveyed, and found to be a great Mediterranean sea of above 5000 miles round, and that there was a great probability that the Sasquehannough River comes out of this Lake, and that Delaware River comes within 5 or 6 miles of another River that certainly falls into the Lake: upon which Dr. Cox proposed that an advantageous settlement for the beaver-trade might be made on these Lakes. The Dr. promised also to give an account of the History of this Discovery." Unfortunately, if Dr. Coxe gave his "account of the History of this Discovery," it has not been found.
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