From 1827 to 1831 Mr. Schoolcraft was a member of the legislative council of Michigan. In 1828 he organized the Michigan Historical Society, in which he was elected president, on the removal of General Cass to Washington, in 1831. In the fall of the same year he set on foot the Algic Society at Detroit, before which he delivered a course of lectures on the grammatical construction of the Indian languages,[1] and at its first anniversary a poem on The Indian Character. Guided by patriotism and good taste, he took a successful stand in the west against the absurd nomenclature which has elsewhere made such confusion in geography by repeating over and over the names of European places and characters, giving us Romes, Berlins, and Londons in the wilderness, and Hannibals, Scipios, Homers, and Hectors, wherever there was sufficient learning to make its possessors ridiculous. He submitted to the legislature of the territory a system of county and township names based upon the Indian vocabularies with which he was familiar, and happily secured its general adoption.
At Sault Ste. Marie Mr. Schoolcraft became acquainted with Mr. John Johnston, a gentleman from the north of Ireland, who had long resided there, and in the person of his eldest daughter married a descendant of the hereditary chief of Lake Superior, or Lake Algoma, as it is known to the Indians. She had been educated in Europe, and was an accomplished and highly interesting woman. After a residence there of eleven years he removed to Michilimackinac, and assumed the joint agency of the two districts. In 1836 he was appointed by President Jackson a commissioner to treat with the north-west tribes for their lands in the region of the upper lakes, and succeeded in effecting a cession to the United States of some sixteen millions of acres. In the same year he was appointed acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department, and in 1839 principal disbursing agent for the same district.
In the last mentioned year he published two volumes of Algic Researches, comprising Indian Tales and Legends, and soon after, having passed more than twenty years as a traveller or resident on the frontiers, he removed to the city of New-York, intending to prepare for the press the great mass of his original papers which he had accumulated in this long period. In 1841 he issued proposals for an Indian Cyclopedia, geographical, historical, philological, etc., of which only one number was printed, no publisher appearing willing to undertake so costly and extensive a work of such a description. In 1842 he visited England, France, Germany, Prussia, and Holland. During his absence his wife died, at Dundee, in Canada West, where she was visiting her sister. Soon after his return he made another journey to the west, to examine some of the great mounds, respecting which he has since communicated a paper to the Royal Geographical Society of Denmark, of which he was many years ago elected an honorary member, and soon after published a collection of his poetical writings, under the title of Alhalla, or the Lord of Talladega, a Tale of the Creek War, with some miscellanies, chiefly of early date. In 1844 he commenced in numbers the publication of Oneota, or the Red Race in America, their History, Traditions, Customs, Poetry, Picture Writing, etc., in extracts from Notes, Journals, and other unpublished writings, of which one octavo volume has been completed. In 1845 he delivered an address before a society known as the "Was-ah Ho-de-no-sonne, or New Confederacy of the Iroquois," and published Observations on the Grave Creek Mound in Western Virginia, in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society; and early in the following year presented in the form of a Report to the legislature of his native state, his Notes on the Iroquois, or Contributions to the Statistics, Aboriginal History, and General Ethnology of Western New-York.
The last and most important of Mr. Schoolcraft's works, the crowning labor of his life, for the composition of which all his previous efforts were but notes of preparation, is the Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States: Collected and prepared under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, per act of March 3, 1847. The initial volume of this important national publication, profusely illustrated with engravings from drawings by Captain Eastman, of the Army, has lately been issued in a very large and splendid quarto, by Lippincott. Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia, under authority of Congress. It embraces the general, national, and tribal history of the Indian race, with their traditions, manners, customs, languages, mythology, &c., and when completed will probably extend to six or seven volumes. Until more of it is published, it will not be possible to form any exact judgment of it, except such as is warranted by a knowledge of the author's previous works: but such a judgment must be in the highest degree favorable.
Mr. Schoolcraft's ethnological writings are among the most important contributions that have been made to the literature of this country. His long and intimate connection with the Indian tribes, and the knowledge possessed by his wife and her family of the people from whom they were descended by the maternal side, with his power of examining their character from the European point of view, have enabled him to give us more authentic and valuable information respecting their manners, customs, and physical traits, and more insight into their moral and intellectual constitution, than can be derived, perhaps, from all other authors. His works abound in materials for the future artist and man of letters, and will on this account continue to be read when the greater portion of the popular literature of the day is forgotten. With the forests which they inhabited, the red race have disappeared with astonishing rapidity. Until recently they have rarely been the subjects of intelligent study; and it began to be regretted, as they were seen fading from our sight, that there was so little written respecting them that had any pretensions to fidelity. I would not be understood to undervalue the productions of Eliot, Loskiel, Heckewelder, Brainerd, and other early missionaries, but they were restricted in design, and it is not to be denied that confidence in their representations has been much impaired, less perhaps from doubts of their integrity than of their ability and of the advantages of the points of view from which they made their observations. The works on Indian philology by Roger Williams and the younger Edwards are more valuable than any others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it now appears that these authors knew very little of the philosophy of the American language. Du Ponceau's knowledge was still more superficial, and excepting Mr. Gallatin and the late Mr. Pickering, who made use of the imperfect data furnished by others, I believe no one besides Mr. Schoolcraft has recently produced any thing on the subject worthy of consideration. Something has been done by General Cass, and Mr. McKenny and Mr. Catlin have undoubtedly accomplished much in this department of ethnography; but allowing all that can reasonably be claimed for these artist-travellers, Mr. Schoolcraft must still be regarded as the standard and chief authority respecting the Algic tribes.
The influence which the original and peculiar myths and historical traditions of the Indians is to have on our imaginative literature, has been recently more than ever exhibited in the works of our authors. The tendency of the public taste to avail itself of the American mythology as a basis for the exhibition of "new lines of fictitious creations" has been remarked by Mr. Schoolcraft himself in Oneota, and he refers to the tales of Mrs. Oakes Smith, and to the Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie, and the Vigil of Faith, by Mr. Charles F. Hoffman, as works in which this tendency is most distinctly perceptible. In the writings of W. H. C. Hosmer, the legends of Mr. Whittier, and some of the poems of Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Lowell, we see manifestations of the same disposition.
No one who has not had the most ample opportunities of personal observation should attempt to mould Indian life and mythology to the purposes of fiction without carefully studying whatever Mr. Schoolcraft has published respecting them. The chief distinction of the Algic style with which he has made us acquainted is its wonderful simplicity and conciseness, with which the common verbosity, redundant description, false sentiment, and erroneous manners of what are called Indian tales, are as little in keeping as "English figures in moccasins, and holding bows and arrows."
The excellent portrait at the beginning of this article is from a daguerreotype by Simons, of Philadelphia.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Two of these lectures were published in 1834, translated into French by the late Mr. du Ponceau, and subsequently read before the National Institute of France.