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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Henry Schoolcraft Biography SCHOOLCRAFT, Henry Rowe (1793–1864). An American ethnologist. He was born in Watervliet (now Guilderland), N. Y. He studied mineralogy and chemistry for a year in Union College and in 1817 began the publication of a work on Vitreology. In 1817—18 he made a tour of the West, especially through southern Missouri and Arkansas, to study mineralogy and geology. The result was a volume entitled A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri. In the following year he received an appointment from the government to explore the upper Mississippi and the copper regions of Lake Superior. In 1822 he was made agent for the tribes about Lake Superior and thenceforth turned his attention to history and ethnology. In 1831 he was one of the principal founders of the Algic Society in Detroit, devoted to the antiquities and ethnology of the American aborigines. In 1836 he was instrumental in settling land disputes with the Chippewas, and by the treaties then effected the United States became possessed of vast territory, worth many millions of dollars. It was while he was engaged as Superintendent of Indian Affairs in this Northern Department that he published his Algic Researches (1839). From this period Schoolcraft gave his attention to literary pursuits. His chief contribution to the history of Indian affairs was his six quarto volumes entitled Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (1851–57). The work is partly from his pen and partly a collection of essays of greater or less value by others. Among his other publications the most important are: Onéota; or the Red Race of America (1844); Notes on the Iroquois (1846); Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers (1863). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 562-563. |