TO THE
Hon. JOHN C. CALHOUN,
SECRETARY OF WAR.
Sir : Allow me to inscribe to you the following Journals, as an illustration of my several reports on the mineral geography of the regions visited by the recent Expedition under Governor Cass.
I beg you will consider it, not only as a proof of my anxiety to be serviceable in the station occupied, but also as a tribute of individual respect for those exertions which have been made, during your administration of the War Department, to develop the physical character and resources of all parts of our Western country; for the patronage it has extended to the cause of geographical science; for the protection it has afforded to a very extensive line of frontier settlements by stretching a cordon of military posts around them; and for the notice it has bestowed on one of the humblest cultivators of natural science.
HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT.
Albany, 1821.
PREFACE.
The following pages embrace the substance of the narratives of two distinct expeditions for the discovery of the sources of the Mississippi River, under the authority of the United States. By connecting the incidents of discovery, and of the facts brought to light during a period of twelve years, unity is preserved in the prosecution of an object of considerable importance in the progress of our geography and natural history, at least, from the new impulse which they received after the treaty of Ghent.
Geographers deem that branch of a river as its true source which originates at the remotest distance from its mouth, and, agreeably to this definition, the combined narratives, to which attention is now called, show this celebrated stream to arise in Itasca Lake, the source of the Itasca River.