Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/129

Rh reclamation of the Indians, and, connected with, this, the collection 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 previously taken with those south of that point, to effect a pacification; also, to endeavor to ascertain the actual source of the river. He ascended 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 geographical discovery. Thence he went up the river and its lakes, avoiding too long circuits of the stream by portages, to the junction 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 resting-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 Frontiers, 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