337 



SCHOOLCRAFT. HENRY HOWE. 



SCHOOTEN, FRANCIS. 



338 



General Cass, despatched by the government in the spring of 1820, to 

 the sources of the Mississippi. Of this expedition he published on 

 his return in 1821, his 'Journal,' and also his geological report. These 

 works added much to his reputation, aiid of the ' Journal ' a large 

 edition was sold in a few weeks. Having been appointed secretary 

 to an Indian conference at Chicago, he made in 1821 a lengthened 

 journey along the Miami and Wabash rivers, and into Illinois, of which 

 he published an account under the title of ' Travels in the Central 

 Portions of the Miesissippi Valley.' 



In 1822 he was appointed by President Monroe agent for Indian 

 affairs in the North Western Provinces, his residence being fixed at 

 the foot of Lake Superior. Here he became acquainted with and 

 married Miss Jane Johnston, the eldest daughter of an Irish gen- 

 tleman who had settled in those parts, and married the daughter 

 of Wa-bo-jeeg, a celebrated war sachem and hereditary ruling cacique. 

 Miss Johnston, who had been sent to Europe to be educated, was a 

 young lady of accomplishments and literary tastes, but she had derived 

 from her mother an intimate acquaintance with the Indian language 

 and traditions for which she retained a warm attachment. His 

 marriage with her stimulated his interest in Indian matters and 

 smoothed his way for the acquisition of all kinds of information ; and 

 during a continuous residence of twenty years in the vicinity of 

 Indian tribes at Elmwood and Michiliinackinack he pursued with 

 untiring ardour the investigation of the Indian languages, ethnology, 

 and antiquities, abandoning for them, to a great extent the geological 

 studies which had won him his early reputation. But during all this 

 time he was constantly engaged in his official and extra-official duties. 

 He attended several important conferences of Indian tribes, and in 

 1831 was sent on two or three occasions, accompanied by United States 

 troops, to advise or compel hostile tribes to arrange their differences. 

 From 1828 to 1832 he was a member of the territorial legislature, and 

 in that capacity [he procured the passing of several laws tending to benefit 

 the Indian races ; he also induced the legislature to adopt a system 

 of county and township names formed by him on the basis of the 

 aboriginal vocabulary. During this time he managed the finances of 

 the territory; and he founded in 1828 the Michigan Historical Society,, 

 and the Algic Society of Detroit for the investigation of the Indian 

 language and antiquities. 



In 1832 Mr. Schoolcraft was directed to conduct an expedition to 

 the Upper Mississippi, north and west of St. Anthony's Falls. Of this 

 journey he published an account with maps, under the title of 'An 

 Expedition to Itasca Lake,' New York, 1834. Mr. Schoolcraft " suc- 

 ceeded in tracing the Mississippi up to its ultimate forks, and to its 

 actual source in Itasca Lake, which point he reached on the 23rd of 

 July, 1832." According to the writer of 'Sketches of the Life of H. R. 

 Schoolcraft,' prefixed to his ' Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes,' he 

 is "the only man in America who has seen the Mississippi from its 

 source in Itasca Lake to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico." 



In 1836 President Jackson appointed Mr. Schoolcraft commissioner 

 to treat with the Indian tribes of the north-west for the purchase of 

 their lands, and he succeeded in obtaining from them a tract of some 

 16,000,000 acres in the region of the Upper Lakes. On the completion 

 of this negociation he was appointed acting superintendent of Indian 

 affairs for the northern department, and in 1839 chief disbursing agent 

 for the same department. 



One of his earliest undertakings in connection with his Indian studies 

 was the construction of a complete lexicon of the Algonquin language 

 or the primitive and most widely-diffused of the aboriginal languages; 

 and he reduced the grammar of this language to a system. He read 

 before the Algic Society a course of lectures on the Algonquin language, 

 and two of them being translated into French by M. Duponceau, 

 obtained for him the gold medal of the National Institute of France. 

 In 1839 appeared his 'Algic Researches, comprising Inquiries respecting 

 the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians : First Series, 

 Indian Tales and Legends,' 2 vols. 12mo, New York, 1839 : a valuable 

 body of legends collected by him from the Indian wigwams, or 

 obtained by his wife from her family stores. No book had given so 

 faithful an image of the domestic life and habits of thought of the 

 aboriginal Americans; and if we have since been able to penetrate 

 even further into their inner life, it has been chiefly by means of Mr. 

 Schoolcraft's subsequent publications. 



He now resolved to remove to New York, and digest the immense 

 mass of materials he had so laboriously collected. Arriving in that 

 city in 1841, he issued proposals with a specimen number of an 

 ' Indian Cyclopaedia,' which was intended to embrace the history, 

 ethnology, and philology of the tribes, and the geography and anti- 

 quities of the country occupied by them ; but he could find no publisher 

 willing to undertake the risk of a work of such magnitude, and the 

 scheme fell to the ground. He then resolved to undertake a tour in 

 Europe, partly in order to make himself better acquainted with the 

 recent progress in archaeological and philological studies. His works 

 had already rendered his name familiar in Europe, and he received a 

 warm welcome both in this country and on the Continent ; but during 

 his absence he lost hid wife, the companion of his Indian studies. 

 On his return to America he made an antiquarian tour in Western 

 Virginia, Ohio, and the Canadas ; and he communicated the result of 

 his examinations of the great Indian mounds which ho saw in this 

 journey to the Geographical Society of Denmark, which had elected 



BIOG, DIV. VOL. v. 



him an honorary member. In 1844 he published in numbers the first 

 volume of a miscellany entitled ' Oneota, or the Indian iu hia Wigwam,' 

 in which ho gave popular sketches of the history, custoi. e, poetry, 

 traditions, &c., of the Indians, with descriptions of their loontry, iu 

 extracts from his journals, besides much other miscellaneous inform- 

 ation respecting them. About the same time appeared a collection of 

 his poetry, under the title of ' Alhalla, or the Lord of Talledaga, a 

 Tale of the Creek War, and some Miscellaneous Pieces,' some of them 

 previously printed. He also printed an 'Address' delivered before the 

 Ethnological Society of New York, of which he was one of the founders; 

 a paper on the ' Grave Creek Mound in Western Virginia ' (in the 

 ' Transactions ' of the American Ethnological Society) ; an ' Address ' 

 delivered before the New York Historical Society; and some other 

 papers. 



In 1845 the legislature of the state of New- York empowered Mr. 

 Schoolcraft to take a census and collect statistics of the Iroquois or 

 Six Nations, and the results were published in the following year under 

 the title of ' Notes on the Iroquois, or Contributions to the Statistics, 

 Aboriginal History, Antiquities, and General Ethnology of Western 

 New- York.' This work, which gave a much more favourable view 

 than was commonly held of the condition and prospects of the tribes, 

 was a good deal canvassed, but was received with very general appro- 

 bation. In 1846 Mr. Schoolcraft succeeded in bringing the Aborigines 

 question under the notice of Congress, and by a large body of various 

 information enforcing his opinion that their character had been mis- 

 understood and a wrong policy adopted towards them ; and he strongly 

 urged the importance of the executive making a strenuous effort to 

 collect such historical and other information as might still be preserved 

 among them, as well as full information respecting their actual con- 

 dition. In consequence of his representations the Congress passed an 

 act, authorising the appropriation of the necessary funds for the purpose 

 and directing the secretary of war " to collect the statistics of all tho 

 tribes within the Union, together with materials to illustrate their 

 history, condition, and prospects." The enquiry was entrusted to Mr. 

 Schoolcraft, who issued an elaborate series of questions, "embodying 

 the results of his thirty years' studies," and carried out the investiga- 

 tion with a rare amount of zeal and energy. The first part of his 

 report appeared in 1850 in the shape of a bulky quarto volume, 

 entitled ' 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 Congress of March 3rd, 1847, by H. R. S., illus- 

 trated by S. Eastman, Capt. U. S. army : published by Authority of 

 Congress ;' and three more parts or volumes have since appeared. This 

 great work, in its way unique, must always remain a standard 

 authority on the interesting subject of which it treats; and with Mr. 

 Schoolcraft's more popular works it comprises that complete ' Indian 

 Cyclopaedia ' which in his earlier days it was his ambition to produce. 



During the progress of this his great work to carry on whiuh 

 effectually he had removed with his second wife to Washington he 

 commenced the publication of ' a revised series of his complete works,' 

 by the publication, in one 8vo volume, Phil. 1851, of his 'Personal 

 Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty years with the Indian Tribes on the 

 American Frontiers, 1812-1842,' a work answering pretty closely to its 

 title, and consequently neither systematic nor profound, and, despite 

 of many remarkable personal adventures, in its disconnection not very 

 entertaining, but full of materials serviceable to those interested in 

 Indian manners, language, and history : prefixed to it is a somewhat 

 too magniloquent life of the author, from which the materials of this 

 sketch are (with the assistance of Mr. Schoolcraft's writings) mainly 

 derived. Mr. Schoolcraft has since published 'American Indians, 

 their History, Condition, and Prospects, from Original Notes and 

 Manuscripts,' 1 vol. 8vo ; ' Scenes and Adventures in the Semi- Alpine 

 Region of the Ozack Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas,' 8vo, 1853; 

 and ' The Myth of Hiawatha and other Oral Legends, Mythological, 

 and Allegoric, of the North American Indians,' 8vo, Phil., 1856. The 

 last work was published in consequence of the popularity of Long- 

 fellow's celebrated poem of Hiawatha. In the Notes to that poem, 

 Mr. Longfellow mentions Mr. Schoolcraft's writings as the source 

 whence he derived his legend, and Mr. Schoolcraft was induced by 

 this notice to revise and recast his ' Algic Researches,' which had long 

 been out of print, and give the Indian stories in their original 

 simplicity. 



Besides being a member of the chief American literary and scientific 

 societies Mr. Schoolcraft is an associate or member of the Geographical 

 Society of London, the Ethnological Society of Paris, and the Society 

 of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen. In 1846 the University of 

 3eneva conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. 



SCHOOTEN, FRANCIS, a Dutch mathematician of the 1 7th century, 

 of whose life scarcely any particulars have been preserved. He was 

 professor of mathematics at Leyden, and was one of the young philo- 

 sophers, chiefly natives of Holland, who, rising superior to the prejudices 

 of the age in favour of the ancient geometry, contributed most to the 

 establishment and promotion of what was then called the New analysis 

 the algebra of Descartes and the infinitesimal calculus. 



In 164G he published a small tract on conic sections, iu which ar 

 given several ways of describing those curves by a continuous moti< 

 and in 1G49 he gave to the world a Lathi translation, accompanied by 



