SKETCH OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT. 119 



reclamation of the Indians, and, connected with, this, the collec- 

 tion and dissemination of information respecting their language, 

 history, traditions, customs, and character; their numbers and 

 condition ; the geological features of their country, and its natural 

 history and productions. It also proposed some definite means of 

 action for furthering the moral instruction of the Indians, and 

 for helping the missionaries in all work for their benefit. As 

 president of this society, Mr. Schoolcraft was asked to lecture on 

 the grammatical construction of the Algonquin languages as 

 spoken by the Northwestern tribes, and to procure a lexicon of 

 it ; also to deliver a poem on the Indian character at the annual 

 meeting of 1833. Other literary efforts of this period were, an 

 address before the Historical Society of Michigan in 1830, and an 

 address, in 1831, before the Detroit Lyceum, on the natural history 

 of the Territory. In the summer of 1832 Mr. Schoolcraft, under 

 a commission from the Government, organized and commanded 

 an expedition to the country upon the sources of the Mississippi 

 River. The primary object of the expedition was to extend to the 

 Indians living north of St. Anthony's Falls the measures previous- 

 ly taken with those south of that point, to effect a pacification ; also, 

 to endeavor to ascertain the actual source of the river. He ascend- 

 ed the St. Louis from Lake Superior to Sandy Lake summit, and 

 passed thence direct to the Mississippi six degrees below the central 

 island in Cass Lake, which was till then the ultimate point of geo- 

 graphical discovery. Thence he went up the river and its lakes, 

 avoiding too long circuits of the stream by portages, to the junc- 

 tion of the two branches, where by the advice of his Indian guide 

 he took the left-hand, or Plantagenian branch, to Lake Assawa, its 

 source. Thence he went by portage, a distance of " twelve rest- 

 ing-places," to Itasca Lake, which he struck within a mile of its 

 southern extremity. The lake was judged to be about seven 

 miles in length, by one or two broad ; " a bay, near its eastern 

 end, gave it somewhat the shape of the letter y." The discoverer 

 returned, through the stream and its lakes,, to St. Peter's. 



The narrative of this expedition was published in 1834 ; and 

 was republished, with the account of the expedition of 1820, in 

 1853, under the title, Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to 

 the Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820, completed by the 

 Discovery of its Origin in Itasca Lake in 1832. The whole of Mr. 

 Schoolcraft's earlier life and work up to this time is recorded, 

 mostly from day to day, in his Personal Memoirs of a Residence 

 of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Front- 

 iers, etc., 1812 to 1842, a book having " the flavor of the time, with 

 its motley incident on the frontier, with Indian chiefs, trappers, 

 government employe's, chance travelers, rising legislators, farmers, 

 ministers of the gospel, all standing out with more or less of indi- 



