Robert Buckeye offers reflections on Edwin James (1797-1861), Middlebury College Class of 1816. In 1829 James was appointed botanist and geologist to the exploring expedition of Major Samuel H. Long. In 1823, he published the 2-volume Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1818-19, a report of the exploration of what we now know as Pike's Peak. Buckeye proposes that in addition to his pioneering work as an explorer, James was a visionary environmentalist and an early proponent of civil rights for Native and African Americans, and speculates on why this extraordinary American has been relegated to relative historical obscurity.
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