Journey Into Mohawk Country TP NM George O’Connor First Second Books

Description

Journey Into Mohawk Country Paperback
by George O’Connor (Author, Illustrator)

Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert was only twenty three when he ventured into Mohawk territory in search of the answers to some pressing questions: where were all the beaver skins that the Indians should have been shipping down the river? Was the money that should have been going into the pockets of the Dutch going to the French instead? Despite freezing temperatures and a scarcity of trustworthy guides, maps, and sometimes even food, Harmen van den Bogaert and his friends set off for a journey through old New York in an attempt to revive the struggling fur trade. Nearly four centuries later, George O’Connor brings Harmen van den Bogaert’s journal of his travels to life with simple and striking artwork.

Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: First Second

In 1634, an employee of the Dutch West India Company volunteered to find out the reason beaver-pelt trade at Fort Orange (present-day Albany) was taking a nose-dive. Bogaert and two companions, Willem and Jeromus, took a six-week journey to meet with their former Indian suppliers and learn the truth behind rumors of the new trading alliance that seemed to be undercutting business. O’Connor takes Bogaert’s terse record of the journey and creates not only a literal pictorial rendering of their adventures in graphic novel format but fleshes it out with credible, if speculative, subplots that play out only in the full-color sequential art. Graphic novel format is, admittedly, an unusual choice for reproducing a colonial document, but O’Connor brings it off with panache. Working within the comic book idiom, star-of-his-own-story Bogaert is the bright-eyed, Doonesbury-esque sharp guy, his sidekicks are tall-and-lean and short-and-round, and most of the workaday Indians encountered are heavy-browed and solemn, except when they’re snickering or forehead-slapping over the white guys’ ineptitude on the trail. Arenias, the Sinneken leader who ultimately saves their financial bacon and guides them back to Fort Orange, gets the role of superhero with his pumped-up muscles, brilliant-toothed smile, unshakable benevolence, and possession of the beautiful, loving wife whom Bogaert has been lusting after. O’Connor’s particular skill lies in taking a snippet of the translated historical journal (e.g., “We came at one hour into the evening to a cabin one half mile from the first castle. No one was there but women”) and, while remaining true to the known course of events, launching a visual back story (e.g., in which Willem gets himself a girlfriend) rife with humor or tension. The 1634 encounter captures a moment in early Indian/white contact when, although disease had insinuated itself into native communities, the two races still met as equals at the pelt bargaining table, confused and skeptical of each other¹s customs, but knowing a good deal when they saw one. Notes on geography and sources are included, as is a glossary of terms.

Journey tells the story of Harmen Meyndertsz von den Bogaert, who in 1634 traveled from Fort Orange (present-day Albany) with two companions deep into Mohawk Indian territory to forge a new trade agreement for beaver pelts on behalf of the Dutch West India Company. Their efforts helped ensure the survival of New Netherlands, which included what is now Manhattan, thus shaping the history of New York City and North America. In an interview with PWCW, debut graphic novel artist O’Connor explains that he learned of von den Bogaert while reading Russell Shorto’s Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (Vintage). He then sought out William Staarna and Charles Gehring’s translation of the journal. His subsequent research included sketching hundreds of artifacts in museums: “Basically, anyplace that had some time-appropriate collections of Iroquois artifacts, I dropped by.”

“Doing Journey into Mohawk Country was like scratching an itch I didn’t know I had,” says O’Connor, author of the popular children’s books Kapow!, Kersplash (both S&S Children’s) and Sally and the Some-thing (Roaring Brook). The final product represents a impressive collaboration among O’Connor, Siegel and colorist Hilary Sycamore. O’Connor’s first draft presented realistic but dry renderings of the journal’s events. Siegel encouraged the artist to portray the emotion and humor of the Dutchman’s experience, while keeping his words intact. O’Connor believes he ultimately grasped the “soul of the story,” which is “the tale of these three young men sent into the wilderness of North America, with really no preparation or support to speak of, and how the experience transformed them.” Sycamore’s rich palette of browns, yellows, and purples is critical to the book’s emotional resonance, and O’Connor praises her talent and her patience: “She would endure these long conversations with me, filled with many pointless diversions and trivia I had picked up, as I explained what I hoped she could accomplish with the color, and she would come back with something even better than I had envisioned.”

As for his hopes for Journey, his first graphic novel, O’Connor says, “I really hope that Journey into Mohawk Country really turns a lot of people onto this amazing and almost completely overlooked period of history”.

Near mint, 1st print.