David Ingram
Bornc. 1542
Barking, Essex
Diedafter 1583
NationalityEnglish
Other namesDavy Ingrams, Davyd Ingram
OccupationSailor
Employer(s)Sir John Hawkins (c. 1567)
Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1583)
Known forClaiming to have walked 3,300 miles from Mexico to Nova Scotia in the 16th Century.

David Ingram, Davy Ingrams,[1]: 18  or Davyd Ingram[2] (c. 1542 – after 1583)[2] was a 16th-century English sailor and explorer who claimed to have walked across the interior of the North American continent from Mexico to Nova Scotia in 1568.[1]: 19 

Early life

The precise date or year of Ingram's birth are unknown. However, Sir Francis Walsingham noted in 1582 that Ingram was then "abowt the age of fortye yeares".[2] He was born and grew up in Barking, Essex.[3]: 24 

Exploration

Ingram signed on with English privateer Sir John Hawkins on a slave trading mission in 1567 to raid and trade along the coasts of Portuguese Africa and Spanish Mexico.[1]: 19  After a brief skirmish with the Spanish, around a hundred men from Hawkins' expedition were left at Tampico.[4]: 5  Hawkins himself returned to Britain and he was expected to take two to three years to return for the men left behind.[1]: 19  The men at Tampico faced immediate peril at the hands of the Spanish and Mexican Native Americans.[4]: 5 

The sailors were aware that English fishing ships frequented Newfoundland.[1]: 19  Ingram and a few others from his party decided to march northwards into the interior to reach Newfoundland, ignorant of the fact that Newfoundland was around 3,000 miles away from Tampico.[1]: 19  After eleven months, only three men survived the walk - Ingram, Richard Browne, and Richard Twide.[5] In October 1568, they spotted a French vessel lying at anchor in Nova Scotia.[1]: 19  They managed to reach Le Havre with that vessel and then crossed the English Channel on a separate fishing vessel.[1]: 19 

Walsingham's account

The only account of Ingram's travels was written down by Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir George Peckham in 1582, after Ingram narrated the account to him at the request of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.[1]: 20 [6] Browne and Twide had died in the interim and only Ingram could attest to their purported journey.[1]: 20 [7]

Ingram described North America as a fertile and pleasant land, reporting its vast plains and diverse forests.[8] He claimed to have seen cities and towns, including Norumbega,[9] a legendary city that featured on early European maps of the New World. He further reported the inhabitants as "canibals" with canine-like teeth.[8] However, he added that the kings of the lands usually carried precious stones, pearls, silver, and gold, as well as that the ordinary people wore gold and silver bracelets and anklets.[8] He claimed to have given a pearl to the captain of the French ship that transported him to Le Havre.[8]

Ingram's descriptions are fanciful, perhaps derived from things he had seen or heard about in his travels near the coasts of West Africa and South America. For example, he claimed to have encountered elephants and white-headed birds that the locals called "penguins". He theorised that the word was of Welsh origin.[10]

Veracity and treatment

The account written by Walsingham was published in 1589 in Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. However, the second edition of Hakluyt's Principall Navigations of 1599 did not contain Ingram's account, as Hakluyt himself doubted the veracity of Ingram's claim.[9][10][11]

In 1625, Samuel Purchas, who continued Hakluyt's work, with his Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, contested some of Ingram's claims. On the omission of Ingram's account from Hakluyt's second edition, Purchas commented that "It seemeth some incredibilities of his reports caused him to leave him out in the next impression, the reward of lying [being] not to be believed in truths.”[8]

In 1999, British writer Richard Nathan attempted to see if the Ingram's journey was physically possible in only 11 months. On 18 August 1999, Nathan started walking from Guysborough, Nova Scotia and walked 3,300 miles for nine months to reach Barra del Torro, Tamaulipas on 14 May 2000.[3]: 85 

Later life

In 1583, Ingram returned to the New World with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in Gilbert's unsuccessful attempt to establish an English settlement in Newfoundland.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Giles Milton (2000). Big Chief Elizabeth:How England's Adventures Gambled and Won the New World. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 9780340748817.
  2. 1 2 3 Plowden Weston (1856). Documents Connected with the History of South Carolina. Chiswick Press. p. 7. ISBN 9781164623168.
  3. 1 2 Dean R. Snow (2023). The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram: An Elizabethan Sailor in Native North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19764-8001.
  4. 1 2 Frank Aydelotte (1942). "Elizabethan Seamen in Mexico and Ports of the Spanish Main". The American Historical Review. 48 (1): 1–19. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
  5. ↑ E. DeGolyer (1941). "Across Aboriginal America: Journeying Through Texas in 1568". Southwest Review. 26 (2): 167–187. Retrieved 5 September 2023.: 175 
  6. ↑ David Beers Quinn (1966). "INGRAM, DAVID". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. I (1000-1700) (Revised, 1979 ed.). University of Toronto and Laval University. Archived from the original on 7 June 2023. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  7. ↑ George Parker Winship (1905). Sailors Narratives of Voyages Along the New England Coast, 1524–1634. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, & Company. p. 30. ISBN 978-0874366648. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Charlton Ogburn (1979). "The Longest Walk: David Ingram's Amazing Journey". American Heritage. Vol. 30, no. 3. Rockville, Maryland: American Heritage Publishing Company. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  9. 1 2 "David Ingram and Norumbega". CBC. Archived from the original on 16 July 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  10. 1 2 Ronald H. Fritze (1993). Legend and Lore of the Americas Before 1492: An Encyclopedia of Visitors, Explorers, and Immigrants. ABC-CLIO. p. 131. ISBN 978-0874366648. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  11. ↑ James P. Helfers (1997). "The Explorer or the Pilgrim? Modern Critical Opinion and the Editorial Methods of Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas". Studies in Philology. 94 (2): 160–186, 179. doi:10.2307/4174574. Retrieved 5 September 2023.
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