In October 1569, a captain of a French ship off the northern coast of Nova Scotia was summoned on deck. Alongside was a canoe, and in it were three Englishmen–David Ingram, Richard Browne, and Richard Twide. They claimed to be the survivors of a group of 100 men marooned on the Gulf coast of Mexico by an English slave-trading expedition. From that point, the three of them had walked north for 3,600 miles, making the journey in about a year.

Thirteen years later, in August 1582, David Ingram was interviewed and his answers recorded by none other than Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s secretary of state and chief of intelligence. Shortly after the publication of his testimony, and ever after, Ingram has been regarded as one of the great liars of his era. He described such impossibilities as large cities, kings carried about in crystal chairs, American natives working with and using iron, and the appearance of penguins and elephants along the eastern seaboard of North America.  Add to that the claim of his extraordinary journey, and little wonder that Samuel Purchas in 1625 observed of his account that “the reward of lying is not to be believed in truths.”

But Dean Snow, who once believed like most people that Ingram was at best given to tall tales, has changed his mind about Ingram’s journey. In his new book The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram: An Elizabethan Sailor in Native North America, Snow reconsiders the evidence and recreates the context of Ingram and his journey through an America that just fifty years after his long walk had faded away.

Dean Snow is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Penn State. A past President of the Society for American Archaeology, he is particularly known for his work on archaeology of native North America with a long-standing focus on the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) people.

For Further Investigation

If you haven't already, get a great overview of David Ingram's era in Episode 303 when Lucy Wooding described some of the characteristics of Tudor England; and while we didn't talk about him in the conversation, Dean Snow has a lot to say about Thomas Harriot. If you listen to Episode 109, you can find out why Thomas Harriot is one of the most fascinating intellectuals that you have never heard of.

When Dean Snow referred to Francis Drake escaping from the Battle of San Juan de Ulua in small ship, he was not getting. Drake's Judith was just 5o tons. By way of comparison the Pride of Baltimore II, a modern reconstruction of a early 19th century Baltimore sailing ship, is 97 tons. And that doesn't mean it's a particularly big ship...

The Susquehannock town that Ingram visited was probably the "Schultz site"; you can find out more about the Susquehannocks' culture and landscape here.

There are apparently a lot of crystal mines in upstate New York, enough for a great vacation.