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The early period at which Mr. Schoolcraft entered the field of
observation in the United States as a naturalist; the enterprise he
has from the outset manifested in exploring the geography and
geology of the Great West; and his subsequent researches as an
ethnologist, in investigating the Indian languages and history, are
well known to the public, and may be appropriately referred to as
the grounds of the present design, in furnishing some brief and
connected sketches of his life, family, studies, and literary
labors. He is an example of what early and continued zeal, talent,
and diligence, united with energy of character and consistent moral
habits, may accomplish in the cause of letters and science, by the
force of solitary application, without the advantage of hereditary
wealth, the impulse of patronage, or the _prestige_ of early
academic honors. Ardent in the pursuit of whatever engaged his
attention, quick in the observation of natural phenomena, and
assiduous in the accumulation of facts; with an ever present sense
of their practical and useful bearing--few men, in our modern
history, have accomplished so much, in the lines of research he has
chosen, to render science popular and letters honorable. To him we
are indebted for our first accounts of the geological constitution,
and the mineral wealth and resources of the great valley beyond the
Alleghanies, and he is the discoverer of the actual source of the
Mississippi River in Itasca Lake. For many years, beginning with
1817, he stirred up a zeal for natural history from one end of the
land to the other, and, after his settlement in the West, he was a
point of approach for correspondents, as his personal memoirs
denote, not only on these topics, but for all that relates to the
Indian tribes, in consequence of which he has been emphatically
pronounced "The Red Man's FRIEND."
Mr. Schoolcraft is a native of New York, and is the descendant in
the third generation, by the paternal line, of an Englishman. James
Calcraft had served with reputation in the armies of the Duke of
Marlborough during the reign of Queen Anne, and was present in that
general's celebrated triumphs on the continent, in one of which he
lost an eye, from the premature explosion of the priming of a
cannon. Owing to these military services he enjoyed and cherished a
high reputation for bravery and loyalty.
He was a descendant of a family of that name, who came to England
with William the Conqueror--and settled under grants from the crown
in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire--three separate branches of the
family having received the honor of knighthood for their military
services.
In the reign of George the Second, consequently after 1727, he
embarked at Liverpool in a detachment of veteran troops, intended to
act against Canada. He was present in the operations connected with
the building of Forts Anne and Edwards, on the North River, and Fort
William Henry on Lake George.
At the conclusion of these campaigns he settled in Albany county,
N.Y., which has continued to be the residence of the family for more
than a century. Being a man of education, he at first devoted
himself to the business of a land surveyor, in which capacity he was
employed by Col. Vroman, to survey the boundaries of his tract of
land in the then frontier settlement of Schoharie. At the latter
place he married the only daughter and child of Christian Camerer,
one of the Palatines--a body of determined Saxons who had emigrated
from the Upper Rhine in 1712, under the assurance or expectation of
a patent from Queen Anne.1 this marriage
he had eight children--namely, James, Christian, John, Margaret,
Elizabeth, Lawrence, William, and Helen.
For many years during his old age, he conducted a large school in
this settlement, being the first English school that was taught in
that then frontier part of the country. This appears to be the only
tenable reason that has been assigned for the change of the family
name from Calcraft to Schoolcraft.
When far advanced in life, he went to live with his son William, on
the New York grants on Otter Creek, in the rich agricultural region
south of Lake Champlain--which is now included in Vermont. Here he
died at the great age of one hundred and two, having been
universally esteemed for his loyalty to his king, his personal
courage and energy, and the uprightness of his character.
After the death of his father, when the revolutionary troubles
commenced, William, his youngest son, removed into Lower Canada. The
other children all remained in Albany County, except Christian, who,
when the jangling land disputes and conflicts of titles arose in
Schoharie, followed Conrad Wiser, Esq. (a near relative), to the
banks of the Susquehanna. He appears eventually to have pushed his
way to Buchanan River, one of the sources of the Monongahela, in
Lewis County, Virginia, where some of his descendants must still
reside. It appears that they became deeply involved in the Indian
wars which the Shawnees kept up on the frontiers of Virginia. In
this struggle they took an active part, and were visited with the
severest retribution by the marauding Indians. It is stated by
Withers that, between 1770 and 1779, not less than fifteen of this
family, men, women, and children, were killed or taken prisoners,
and carried into captivity.2
Of the other children of the original progenitor, James, the eldest
son, died a bachelor. Lawrence was the ancestor of the persons of
this name in Schoharie County. Elizabeth and Helen married, in that
county, in the families of Rose and Haines, and, Margaret, the
eldest daughter, married Col. Green Brush, of the British army, at
the house of Gen. Bradstreet, Albany. Her daughter, Miss Francis
Brush, married the celebrated Col. Ethan Allen, after his return
from the Tower of London.
JOHN, the third son, settled in Watervleit, in the valley of the
Norman's Kill--or, as the Indians called it, Towasentha--Albany
County. He served in a winter's campaign against Oswego, in 1757,
and took part also in the successful siege and storming of Fort
Niagara, under Gen. Prideaux 3 and Sir
William Johnson, in the summer of 1759. He married a Miss Anna
Barbara Boss, by whom he had three children, namely, Anne, Lawrence,
and John. He had the local reputation of great intrepidity, strong
muscular power, and unyielding decision of character. He died at the
age of 64. LAWRENCE, his eldest son, had entered his seventeenth
year when the American Revolution broke out. He embraced the
patriotic sentiments of that era with great ardor, and was in the
first revolutionary procession that marched through and canvassed
the settlement with martial music, and the Committee of Safety at
its head, to determine who was Whig or Tory.
The military element had always commanded great respect in the
family, and he did not wait to be older, but enrolled himself among
the defenders of his country.
He was present, in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was
read to the troops drawn up in hollow square at Ticonderoga. He
marched under Gen. Schuyler to the relief of Montgomery, at Quebec,
and continued to be an indomitable actor in various positions, civil
and military, in the great drama of the Revolution during its entire
continuance.
In 1777, the darkest and most hopeless period of our revolutionary
contest, he led a reinforcement from Albany to Fort Stanwix, up the
Mohawk Valley, then alive with hostile Indians and Tories, and
escaped them all, and he was in this fort, under Col. Ganzevoort,
during its long and close siege by Col. St. Leger and his infuriated
Indian allies. The whole embodied militia of the Mohawk Valley
marched to its relief, under the bold and patriotic Gen. Herkimer.
They were met by the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas, and British
loyalists, lying in ambush on the banks of the Oriskany, eight miles
from the fort. A dreadful battle ensued. Gen. Herkimer was soon
wounded in the thigh, his leg broken, and his horse shot under him.
With the coolness of a Blucher, he then directed his saddle to be
placed on a small knoll, and, drawing out his tobacco-box, lit his
pipe and calmly smoked while his brave and unconquerable men fought
around him.
This was one of the most stoutly contested battles of the
Revolution. Campbell says: "This battle made orphans of half the
inhabitants of the Mohawk Valley." 4 It
was a desperate struggle between neighbors, who were ranged on
opposite sides as Whig and Tory, and it was a triumph, Herkimer
remaining master of the field. During the hottest of the battle,
Col. Willett stepped on to the esplanade of the fort, where the
troops were paraded, and requested all who were willing to fight for
liberty and join a party for the relief of Herkimer, to step forward
one pace. Schoolcraft was the first to advance. Two hundred and
fifty men followed him. An immediate sally was made. They carried
the camp of Sir John Johnson; took all his baggage, military-chest,
and papers; drove him through the Mohawk River; and then turned upon
the howling Mohawks and swept and fired their camp. The results of
this battle were brilliant. The plunder was immense. The lines of
the besiegers, which had been thinned by the forces sent to Oriskany,
were carried, and the noise of firing and rumors of a reinforcement,
animated the hearts of the indomitable men of that day.
After the victory, Herkimer was carried by his men, in a litter,
thirty or forty miles to his own house, below the present town of
Herkimer, where he died, from an unskillful amputation, having just
concluded reading to his family the 38th Psalm.
But the most dangerous enemy to the cause of freedom was not to be
found in the field, but among neighbors who were lurking at midnight
around the scenes of home. The districts of Albany and Schoharie was
infested by Tories, and young Schoolcraft was ever on the _qui vive_
to ferret out this most insidious and cruel of the enemy's power. On
one occasion he detected a Tory, who had returned from Canada with a
lieutenant's commission in his pocket. He immediately clapped spurs
to his horse, and reported him to Gov. George Clinton, the Chairman
of the Committee of Safety at Albany. Within three days the
lieutenant was seized, tried, condemned and hanged. Indeed, a volume
of anecdotes might be written of Lawrence Schoolcraft's
revolutionary life; suffice it to say, that he was a devoted,
enthusiastic, enterprizing soldier and patriot, and came out of the
contest with an adjutant's commission and a high reputation for
bravery.
About the close of the Revolutionary war, he married Miss Margaret
Anne Barbara Rowe, a native of Fishkill, Duchess County, New York,
by whom he had thirteen children.
His disciplinary knowledge and tact in the government of men, united
to amenity of manners, led to his selection in 1802, by the Hon.
Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, as director of his extensive glass works at
Hamilton, near Albany, which he conducted with high reputation so
many years, during which time he bore several important civil and
military trusts in the county. The importance of this manufacture to
the new settlements at that early day, was deeply felt, and his
ability and skill in the management of these extensive works were
widely known and appreciated.
When the war of 1812 appeared inevitable, Gen. Ganzevoort, his old
commanding officer at Fort Stanwix, who was now at the head of the
U.S. army, placed him in command of the first regiment of uniformed
volunteers, who were mustered into service for that conflict. His
celebrity in the manufacture of glass, led capitalists in Western
New York to offer him large inducements to remove there, where he
first introduced this manufacture during the settlement of that new
and attractive part of the State, in which a mania for manufactories
was then rife. In this new field the sphere of his activity and
skill were greatly enlarged, and he enjoyed the consideration and
respect of his townsmen for many years. He died at Vernon, Oneida
County, in 1840, at the age of eighty-four, having lived long to
enjoy the success of that independence for which he had ardently
thirsted and fought. A handsome monument on the banks of the
Skenando bears the inscription
"A patriot, a Christian, and an honest man."
A man who was never governed by expediency but by right, and in all
his expressions of opinion, original and fearless of consequences.
These details of the life and character of Col. Lawrence
Schoolcraft, appeared proper in proceeding to speak of one of his
sons, who has for so considerable a period occupied the public
attention as an actor in other fields, requiring not less energy,
decision, enterprise and perseverance of character.
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was born in Albany County, on the 28th of
March, 1793, during the second presidential term of Washington. His
childhood and youth were spent in the village of Hamilton, a place
once renowned for its prosperous manufactories, but which has long
since verified the predictions of the bard--
"That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps
the labored mole away."
Its location is on one of the beautiful and sparkling affluents of
the Towasentha or Norman's Kill, popularly called the Hongerkill,
which he has in one of his occasional publications called the Iosco,
from an aboriginal term. That picturesque and lofty arm of the
Catskills, which is called the Helderberg, bounds the landscape on
the west and south, while the Pine Plains occupy the form of a
crescent, between the Mohawk and the Hudson, bearing the cities of
Albany and Schenectady respectively on its opposite edges. Across
this crescent-like Plain of Pines, by a line of sixteen miles, was
the ancient Iroquois war and trading path. The Towasentha lies on
the south borders of this plain, and was, on the first settlement of
the country, the seat of an Indian population. Here, during the
official term of Gen. Hamilton, whose name the village bears, the
capitalists of Albany planted a manufacturing village. The position
is one where the arable forest and farming lands are bounded by the
half arabic waste of the pine plains of the Honicroisa, whose deep
gorges are still infested by the wolf and smaller animals. The whole
valley of the Norman's Kill abounds in lovely and rural scenes, and
quiet retreats and waterfalls, which are suited to nourish poetic
tastes. In these he indulged from his thirteenth year, periodically
writing, and as judgment ripened, destroying volumes of manuscripts,
while at the same time he evinced uncommon diligence at his books
and studies. The poetic talent was, indeed, strongly developed. His
power of versification was early and well formed, and the pieces
which were published anonymously at a maturer period, as "Geehale,"
and "The Iroquois," &c., have long been embodied without a name in
our poetic literature. But this faculty, of which we have been
permitted to see the manuscript of some elaborate and vigorous
trains of thought, did not impede a decided intellectual progress in
sterner studies in the sciences and arts. His mind was early imbued
with a thirst of knowledge, and he made such proficiency as to
attract the notice of persons of education and taste. There was
developed, too, in him, an early bias for the philosophy of
language. Mr. Van Kleeck, a townsman, in a recent letter to Dr. R.W.
Griswold, says:--
"I revert with great pleasure to the scenes of my residence, in the
part of Albany County which was also the residence of Henry R.
Schoolcraft. I went to reside at the village of Hamilton, in the
town of Guilderland, in 1803. Col. Lawrence Schoolcraft, the father
of Henry, had then the direction of the large manufactories of
glass, for which that place was long noted. The standing of young
Henry, I remember, at his school, for scholarship, was then very
noted, and his reputation in the village most prominent. He was
spoken of as a lad of great promise, and a very learned boy at
twelve. Mr. Robert Buchanan, a Scotchman, and a man of learning,
took much pride in his advances, and finally came to his father and
told him that he had taught him all he knew. In Latin, I think he
was taught by Cleanthus Felt. He was at this age very arduous and
assiduous in the pursuit of knowledge. He discovered great
mechanical ingenuity. He drew and painted in water colors, and
attracted the notice of the Hon. Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, Lt.
Governor of the State, who became so much interested in his
advancement, that he took the initial steps to have him placed with
a master. At an early age he manifested a taste for mineralogy and
natural science, which was then (I speak of about 1808) almost
unknown in the country. He was generally to be found at home, at his
studies, when other boys of his age were attending horseraces,
cock-fights, and other vicious amusements for which the village was
famous.
"At this time he organized with persevering effort, a literary
society, in which discussions took place by the intelligent
inhabitants on subjects of popular and learned interests. At an
early age, I think sixteen, he went to the west, and the first that
was afterwards heard of him was his bringing to New York a splendid
collection of the mineralogy and natural history of the west."
5
In a part of the country where books were scarce, it was not easy to
supply this want. He purchased several editions of English classics
at the sale of the valuable library of Dirck Ten Broeck, Esq., of
Albany, and his room in a short time showed the elements of a
library and a cabinet of minerals, and drawings, which were arranged
with the greatest care and neatness. Having finished his primary
studies, with high reputation, he prepared, under an improved
instructor, to enter Union College. It was at the age of fifteen
that he set on foot, as Mr. Van Kleeck mentions, an association for
mental improvement. These meetings drew together persons of literary
tastes and acquirements in the vicinity. The late John V. Veeder,
Wm. McKown, and L.L. Van Kleeck, Esqs., Mr. Robert Alsop, the late
John Schoolcraft, Esq., G. Batterman, John Sloan, and other
well-known gentlemen of the town, all of whom were his seniors in
age, attended these meetings.
Mineralogy was at that time an almost unknown science in the United
States. At first the heavy drift stratum of Albany County, as seen
in the bed of Norman's Kill; and its deep cuttings in the slate and
other rocks, were his field of mineralogical inquiries. Afterwards,
while living at Lake Dunmore, in Addison County, Vermont, he revised
and systematized the study under the teaching of Professor Hall, of
Middlebury College, to which he added chemistry, natural philosophy
and medicine. Having now the means, he erected a chemical furnace,
and ordered books, apparatus, and tests from the city of New York.
By these means he perfected the arts which were under his direction
in the large way; and he made investigations of the phenomena of the
fusion of various bodies, which he prepared for the press under the
name of Vitriology, an elaborate work of research. Amongst the facts
brought to light, it is apprehended, were revealed the essential
principles of an art which is said to have been discovered and lost
in the days of Tiberius Caesar.
He taught himself the Hebrew and German, with the aid only of
grammars and lexicons; and, with the assistance of instructors, the
reading of French. His assiduity, his love of method, the great
value he attached to time, and his perseverance in whatever study or
research he undertook, were indeed indomitable, and serve to prove
how far they will carry the mind, and how much surer tests they are
of ultimate usefulness and attainment, than the most dazzling genius
without these moral props. Self-dependent, self-acting, and
self-taught, it is apprehended that few men, with so little means
and few advantages, have been in so peculiar a sense the architect
of their own fortunes.
He commenced writing for the newspapers and periodicals in 1808, in
which year he also published a poetic tribute to a friend, which
excited local notice, and was attributed to a person of literary
celebrity. For, notwithstanding the gravity of his studies and
researches, he had indulged an early poetic taste for a series of
years, by compositions of an imaginative character, and might, it
should seem, have attained distinction in that way. His remarks in
the "Literary and Philosophical Repertory," on the evolvement of
hydrogen gas from the strata of Western New York, under the name of
Burning Springs, evinced an early aptitude for philosophical
discussion. In a notice of some archaeological discoveries made in
Hamburgh, Erie County, which were published at Utica in 1817, he
first denoted the necessity of discriminating between the antique
French and European, and the aboriginal period in our antiquities;
for the want of which discrimination, casual observers and
discoverers of articles in our tumuli are perpetually
over-estimating the state of ancient art.
About 1816 he issued proposals, and made arrangements to publish his
elaborated work on vitreology, which, so far as published, was
favorably received.
In 1817 he was attracted to go to the Valley of the Mississippi. A
new world appeared to be opening for American enterprise there. Its
extent and resources seemed to point it out as the future residence
of millions; and he determined to share in the exploration of its
geography, geology, mineralogy and general ethnology, for in this
latter respect also it offered, by its curious mounds and
antiquities and existing Indian tribes, a field of peculiar and
undeveloped interest.
He approached this field of observation by descending the Alleghany
River from Western New York to the Ohio. He made Pittsburgh,
Cincinnati, and Louisville centers of observation. At the latter
place he published in the papers an account of the discovery of a
body of the black oxide of manganese, on the banks of the Great
Sandy River of Kentucky, and watched the return papers from the old
Atlantic States, to see whether notices of this kind would be copied
and approved. Finding this test favorable, he felt encouraged in his
mineralogical researches. Having descended the Ohio to its mouth one
thousand miles, by its involutions below Pittsburgh, and entered the
_Mississippi_, he urged his way up the strong and turbid channel of
the latter, in barges, by slow stages of five or six miles a day, to
St. Louis. This slowness of travel gave him an opportunity of
exploring on foot the whole of the Missouri shore, so noted, from
early Spanish and French days, for its mines. After visiting the
mounds of Illinois, he recrossed the Mississippi into the mineral
district of Missouri. Making Potosi the centre of his survey and the
deposit of his collections, he executed a thorough examination of
that district, where he found some seventy mines scattered over a
large surface of the public domain, which yielded, at the utmost, by
a very desultory process, about three millions of pounds of lead
annually. Having explored this region very minutely, he wished to
ascertain its geological connection with the Ozark and other
highland ranges, which spread at the foot of the Rocky Mountains,
and he planned an exploratory expedition into that region. This bold
and hazardous journey he organized and commenced at Potosi early in
the month of November, 1818, and prosecuted it under many
disadvantages during that fall and the succeeding winter. Several
expert and practiced woodsmen were to have been of this party, but
when the time for setting out came all but two failed, under various
excuses. One of these was finally obliged to turn back from _Mine au
Breton_ with a continued attack of fever and ague. Ardent in the
plan, and with a strong desire to extend the dominions of science,
he determined to push on with a single companion, and a single
pack-horse, which bore the necessary camp conveniences, and was led
alternately by each from day to day. A pocket compass guided their
march by day, and they often slept in vast caverns in limestone
cliffs at night. Gigantic springs of the purest crystalline water
frequently gushed up from the soil or rocks. This track laid across
highlands, which divide the confluent waters of the Missouri from
those of the Mississippi. Indians, wild beasts, starvation, thirst,
were the dangers of the way. This journey, which led into the vast
and desolate parts of Arkansas, was replete with incidents and
adventures of the highest interest.
1: Simms' Schoharie.
2: "Chronicles of the Border Warfare in
North-western Virginia". By Alex Withers, Clarksbury, Virginia,
1831. 1 vol. 12mo. page 319.
3: This officer was shot in the trenches, which
devolved the command on Sir William.
4: Annals of Teyon County.
5: Letter of L.L. Van Kleeck, Esq., to Dr. R.W.
Griswold, June 4th, 1851.
This site includes some historical
materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language
of a particular period or place. These items are presented as part of the
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any way endorse the stereotypes implied.
Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the
Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers, 1851
Thirty
Years with the Indians
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