Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864)
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was one of the United States’ earliest geologists, ethnologists, and antiquarians. Born in Albany County, New York, he attended both Union and Middlebury Colleges. After a failed attempt at career in glassmaking, his propensity for geology and mineralogy inspired him to explore Missouri and Arkansas. This trip resulted in his 1819 publication, A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri. Additional explorations in the upper Mississippi Valley led to the publication of Narrative Journal of Travels though the Northwestern Regions of the United States…to the Sources of the Mississippi River (1821) and Narrative of an Expedition through the Upper Mississippi to Itasca Lake, the Actual Source of the Mississippi (1834). His work led to an 1822 appointment as the Indian agent for tribes in the Lake Superior region. It was there in 1823 that he married Jane Johnston, whose mother, Oshawguscodawayqua, was from an Ojibwa family in LaPointe, Wisconsin. In 1836, he was promoted to Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Michigan. During his five-year tenure, he negotiated numerous treaties, including the 1836 treaty which gave the United States expanded title to Michigan.
More important than his political career were Schoolcraft’s contributions to the study of the American Indian. In his 1839 publication, Algic Researches, he recorded many of their myths and legends, and he outlined his views on the history and characteristics of Indian peoples. Many of his early works, such as Oneota (1844-5), Notes on the Iroquois (1847), and Personal Memories of…Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes (1851) are more literary than scientific. However, Schoolcraft’s desire to collect and organize the vast amounts of information he had accumulated relating to the American Indian resulted in his seminal publication, Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. Published in six folio volumes (1851-1857) with the help of a governmental subvention, this monumental work was illustrated with lithographs by noted artist, Seth Eastman (1808-1875). (Eastman would receive the 1867 Congressional commission for nine paintings to decorate the new offices of the Committee on Indian Affairs of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Capitol.) Schoolcraft’s final opus remains a standard reference for American Indian studies and thus places him among the most significant figures in the history of American ethnology.