This important Henry Rowe Schoolcraft work, first issued by Michigan State University Press in 1953, is now available as the second title in MSU Press' Schoolcraft Series. The book was originally published in 1821 under the long and pretentious title Narrative Journey of travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States, extending from Detroit through the Great Chain of American Lakes to the Sources of the Mississippi River, Performed as a Member of the expedition under Governor Cass, in the Year 1820; it recounts Schoolcraft's participation in the John C. Calhoun-sponsored 1820 expedition to explore the cast, uncharted territory stretching from the upper Great Lakes into what is now northern Minnesota. This volume, a marvelous blend of reportage, scientific findings, and the author's personal observations, contains a wealth of information about geography and topography woven together with vivid descriptions of scenic beauty, Native American culture, and day-to-day life as a member of an exploring expedition.
Author
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of American Indians in the 1850s. He served as a United States Indian agent for a period beginning in 1822 in Michigan, where he married Jane Johnston, mixed-race daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother, herself a daughter of Ojibwa war chief Waubojeeg. She taught him the Ojibwe language and much about her maternal culture. They had several children, two of whom survived past childhood. She is now recognized as the first Native American literary writer in the United States. In 1846 the widower Schoolcraft was commissioned by Congress for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States, which was published in six volumes from 1851 to 1857. He married again in 1847, to Mary Howard, from a slaveholding family in South Carolina. In 1860 she published the bestselling The Black Gauntlet, an anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin novel.
