Henry Schoolcraft's Personal Memoirs (1812-1842)

Personal memoirs of a residence of thirty years with the Indian tribes on the American frontiers: with brief notices of passing events, facts, and opinions, A.D. 1812 to A.D. 1842.


Schoolcraft joined the Cass and Doty expedition in 1820 and served as Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie from 1822 to 1836; after that he served as Michigan's superintendent of Indian Affairs. His memoirs, which at times are simply a transcript of his daily journals, contain a wealth of detail about geographic, political, military, historical, and ethnographic matters. Much of his information about the Lake Superior Ojibwe came from his wife, Jane Johnston (Obahbahmwawageezhagoquay - Woman of the Sound that Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky) and her mother (the daughter of White Fisher of La Pointe and sister to Chief Buffalo). Some historians feel that after the death of his wife in 1842, his voluminous writings contain many inaccuracies and should be used with caution.

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Related Topics: Explorers, Traders, and Settlers
The French Fur Trade
Early U.S. Settlement
Treaty Councils, from Prairie du Chien to Madeline Island
Wild Rice Harvesting
Creator: Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 1793-1864.
Pub Data: Philadelphia, Lippincott, Grambo and co., 1851
Citation: Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe. Personal memoirs of a residence of thirty years with the Indian tribes on the American frontiers... (Philadelphia, Lippincott, Grambo and co., 1851). Online facsimile at:  http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/lhbumbib:@field(TITLE
+@band(Personal+memoirs+of+a+residence+of+thirty+years+with+the+I
ndian+tribes+on+the+American+frontiers:+)); Visited on: 5/2/2024