38 Facts About Henry Schoolcraft

1.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River.

2.

Henry Schoolcraft is noted for his major six-volume study of Native Americans commissioned by Congress and published in the 1850s.

3.

Henry Schoolcraft served as United States Indian agent in Michigan for a period beginning in 1822.

4.

Henry Schoolcraft taught Schoolcraft the Ojibwe language and much about her maternal culture.

5.

Henry Schoolcraft is recognized for her poetry and other writings as the first Native American literary writer in the United States.

6.

That year Henry Schoolcraft was commissioned by Congress for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States.

7.

Henry Schoolcraft married again in 1847, to Mary Howard, from a slaveholding family in South Carolina.

8.

Henry Schoolcraft entered Union College at age 15 and later attended Middlebury College.

9.

Henry Schoolcraft's father was a glassmaker, and Schoolcraft initially studied and worked in the same industry.

10.

Henry Schoolcraft published this study in A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri.

11.

Henry Schoolcraft met his first wife Jane Johnston soon after being assigned in 1822 to Sault Ste.

12.

Henry Schoolcraft died in 1842, while visiting a sister in Canada, and was buried at St John's Anglican Church, Ancaster, Ontario.

13.

On January 12,1847, after moving to Washington, DC, Henry Schoolcraft married again, at age 53, to Mary Howard.

14.

Henry Schoolcraft was a southerner and slaveholder, from an elite planter family of the Beaufort district of South Carolina.

15.

Henry Schoolcraft began his ethnological research in 1822 during his appointment as US Indian agent at Sault Ste.

16.

Henry Schoolcraft had responsibility for tribes in what is northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

17.

From his wife Jane Johnston, Henry Schoolcraft learned the Ojibwe language, as well as much of the lore of the tribe and its culture.

18.

Jane Johnston Henry Schoolcraft used the pen names of "Rosa" and Leelinau as personae to write about different aspects of Indian culture.

19.

Henry Schoolcraft was elected to the legislature of the Michigan Territory, where he served from 1828 to 1832.

20.

Henry Schoolcraft worked to talk to as many Native American leaders as possible to maintain the peace.

21.

Henry Schoolcraft was provided with a surgeon and given instructions to begin vaccinating Native Americans against smallpox.

22.

Henry Schoolcraft determined that smallpox had been unknown among the Ojibwe before the return in 1750 of a war party that had contact with Europeans on the East Coast.

23.

Henry Schoolcraft followed up with a personal account of the discovery with his book, Narrative of an Expedition Through the Upper Mississippi River to Itasca Lake.

24.

Henry Schoolcraft worked with them to accomplish the Treaty of Washington, by which they ceded to the United States a vast territory of more than 13 million acres, worth many millions of dollars.

25.

Henry Schoolcraft believed that the Ojibwe would be better off learning to farm and giving up their wide hunting lands.

26.

In 1838 pursuant to the terms of the treaty, Henry Schoolcraft oversaw the construction of the Indian Dormitory on Mackinac Island.

27.

In 1839 Henry Schoolcraft was appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern Department.

28.

Henry Schoolcraft founded and contributed to the first United States journal on public education, The Journal of Education.

29.

Henry Schoolcraft published The Souvenir of the Lakes, the first literary magazine in Michigan.

30.

Henry Schoolcraft named many of Michigan's counties and locations within the former Michigan Territory.

31.

Henry Schoolcraft named Leelanau County, Michigan after his wife's pen name of "Leelinau".

32.

In names such as Alcona, Algoma, Allegan, Alpena, Arenac, Iosco, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Lenawee, Oscoda and Tuscola, for example, Henry Schoolcraft combined words and syllables from Native American languages with words and syllables from Latin and Arabic.

33.

Henry Schoolcraft died the next year during a visit with a sister in Canada, while Schoolcraft was traveling in Europe.

34.

Henry Schoolcraft traveled to England to request the services of George Catlin to illustrate his proposed work, as the latter was widely regarded as the premier illustrator of Indian life.

35.

Henry Schoolcraft later engaged the artist Seth Eastman, a career Army officer, as illustrator.

36.

Henry Schoolcraft had two extended assignments at Fort Snelling in present-day Minnesota, the second time as commander of the fort, and had closely studied, drawn and painted the people of the Indian cultures of the Great Plains.

37.

Henry Schoolcraft worked for years on the history and survey of the Indian tribes of the United States.

38.

Henry Schoolcraft's papers are archived in the Library of Congress.