John Lawson’s Carolina Journey: The Naturalist Who Mapped the Interior and Wrote an Early Book on Its Nature and Peoples

In 1700, a young Englishman named John Lawson arrived in Carolina. The Lords Proprietors had assigned him a survey of the colony's interior, and in late December he set out inland from Charles Town, away from the coastal settlements. He kept notes on nearly everything he passed: soil, rivers, plants, animals, and the many Native nations whose towns lay along his route.

Lawson's notes became A New Voyage to Carolina, published in London in 1709. It is often described as an early book on the natural history and peoples of the colony. About a decade after his journey, the region was at war, and Lawson was killed in it.

A surveyor arrives in Carolina

Carolina was an English colony under the Lords Proprietors when Lawson arrived. Surveying in this period meant more than measuring boundaries. It also meant describing what a place could produce and who already lived there.

The Lords Proprietors assigned Lawson a reconnaissance survey of the province's interior, and he carried it out by going where few colonists had gone. His journey ended at English settlements on the Pampticough River, near present-day Washington, North Carolina.

He was also a careful observer by temperament. That habit shaped much of what he wrote in his book.

Walking through Native country

Lawson's route took him from Charles Town up the Santee River by canoe and then on foot, into country inhabited by many Native peoples. He crossed into what is now North Carolina near present-day Charlotte, then followed the Trading Path east toward the coast. He traveled with Native guides, and he recorded about twenty distinct tribes.

His account describes the customs and manners of the Native peoples he encountered, as its full title promises. He kept a journal, made sketches and maps, and gathered specimens of plants and animals along the way.

Trade was a source of friction in the region. Tuscarora grievances before 1711 included the practices of white traders and inequitable trading deals, and these disputes helped push the Tuscarora toward war.

A New Voyage to Carolina

Lawson turned his journals into a book that combined travel narrative with natural history. Its full title promises an exact description of the country and its natural history, along with a journal of travel through several Native nations.

The book is not a neutral document. Lawson portrayed Native people as generally friendly toward European colonization, and he took little notice of enslaved Africans and white servants. Readers today can draw on its detail about Native life in the early eighteenth century, but should weigh the viewpoint of its author.

Lawson's work first appeared in 1709 in John Stevens's serial anthology of voyages and travels, and it was then issued as a single volume. Its value was recognized quickly: authors in the 1730s plagiarized extensive portions of it.

The war that ended his life

By 1711 tensions between colonists and Native nations in the Carolina region had grown sharply. Disputes over land, trade abuses and the expansion of settlement pushed the Tuscarora and some neighboring peoples toward open conflict. In September 1711 Tuscarora warriors attacked English settlements along the Neuse and Pamlico rivers, beginning the war that would last until about 1715.

Lawson was in the field that month with the Swiss baron Christopher von Graffenried, who had led a group of settlers to the region and helped found the town that became New Bern. The two men were captured by Tuscarora warriors. De Graffenried was held for about six weeks and was released after he signed a treaty and promised gifts and services. Lawson was killed.

Accounts of Lawson's death come from several sources: de Graffenried's own letters and later writings, a letter from Major Christopher Gale written in November 1711, and William Byrd's later account. They differ in detail. What is not in dispute is that Lawson died in the conflict, and that his death ended the career of one of the colony's most observant chroniclers. His book remains an essential source for the Carolina interior as it looked before the colonists and the Tuscarora fought over it.