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Rh years in foreign travel and in the study of law, and in 1855 was admitted to the bar of Illinois at Chicago. In the following year he removed with his family to Canada West, taking up his abode in the then newly formed town of Clinton, on an estate which had descended to his wife, a lady of Anglo-Canadian birth. Here he has since devoted his time partly to professional pursuits and to local undertakings of public utility, and partly to scientific researches. For the latter, an ample field was found among the Indians inhabiting the many "reserves" which the considerate legislation of the various provinces has set apart for them. One of the most important of these is the "Six Nations' Reserve," near Brantford, occupied by about three thousand Indians, mostly Iroquois, but with several groups belonging to other stocks. Here he had the good fortune of discovering two native manuscripts in different Iroquoian dialects—Canienga (or Mohawk) and Onondaga—one of them dating from about the middle of the last century (soon after the language was reduced to writing by the missionaries), which proved to be of much historical and ethnological interest. They gave an account of the renowned confederation of the Five (afterward Six) Nations, or Iroquois tribes, which was formed about four hundred years ago, under the celebrated Onondaga chief Hiawatha. This great chief and lawgiver, whom Longfellow, following Schoolcraft's lead (though well aware of the absurd misapplication of the name), has transported to the shores of Lake Superior and converted into an Ojibway hero of romance, was a genuine historical personage, as authentic as Alfred or Washington. At the request of the. distinguished ethnologist. Dr. D. G. Brinton, Mr. Hale prepared a translation of these manuscripts, which was published in 1883 in Dr. Brinton's well-known Library of American Aboriginal Literature, with several introductory chapters on the history, customs, and character of the Iroquois people, the whole forming an octavo volume of about 220 pages. Of this work, which is entitled The Iroquois Book of Rites, the eminent historian and philologist. Dr. J. G. Shea, has said: "It is a philosophical and masterly treatise on the Iroquois league and the cognate tribes, their relations, language, mental characteristics, and policy, such as we have never before had of any nation of this continent." The American Journal of Philology adds: "Mr. Hale's book is likely to make an epoch in North American Indian history, giving as it does a clearer insight than we have had before into the political constitution and fortunes and the personal character of the famous 'Six Nations,' who played so prominent a part in the land before and during the. Revolutionary War."

On the same reserve Mr. Hale made another notable discovery. He had heard that there was living on the reserve an Indian of