1815 JOHN JEWITT. Account of Massacre and Enslavement by the Nootka Tribe of Vancouver.

A textually well-preserved example of one of the most famous and culturally significant American captivity narratives of the early 19th century. It details the experience of John R. Jewitt, an English-born armorer aboard the American trading ship Boston, which was seized in March 1803 by Chief Maquinna and the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people off the coast of Vancouver Island. Almost the entire crew was killed in retaliation for insults and mistreatment by Western traders. Just two, Jewitt and a sailmaker named John Thompson, were spared, reputedly for the skills they offered to teach the Nuu-chah-nulth captors. Jewitt lived as a captive and slave to Maquinna for over two years, until his rescue by the brig Lydia in 1805.

While Jewitt previously printed a brief, rudimentary 48-page journal in 1807, this expanded 1815 book was actually ghostwritten by the Hartford poet and merchant Richard Alsop. Alsop interviewed Jewitt extensively, embellishing the raw journal notes into a compelling, popular narrative, styled intentionally after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Despite the period's sensationalized title language regarding "savages," the text is prized today by ethnohistorians because Jewitt’s close observation of Nuu-chah-nulth life, food, language, social structures, and whale-hunting traditions offers one of the earliest detailed firsthand accounts of Pacific Northwest Indigenous culture written by a Westerner.

This 204-page Seth Richards imprint from Middletown, Connecticut, represents the second edition, published in the very same year as the first edition (which was issued by Loomis & Richards). The work was an immediate commercial success, running through numerous editions and turning Jewitt into a traveling celebrity who sold copies from a wheelbarrow and performed in theatrical adaptations of his own story. 

Jewitt, John R. A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings, of John R. Jewitt; Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years among the Savages of Nootka Sound: With an Account of the Manners, Mode of Living, and Religious Opinions of the Natives. Embellished with a Plate, Representing the Ship in Possession of the Savages. Middletown. Printed by Seth Richards. 1815. Second Edition. 204pp.

Good - in original full calf binding, front board detached, rear a bit tender, but generally stable. Rubbed at hinges and extremities of boards, through at points. Some handling, small closed tears, and occasional foxing. Text generally solid and clean as shown. The frontis engraving, often pilfered, is present and in a better than usual state.