In 1818-19 he made a geological survey of Missouri and Arkansas to the spurs of the Rocky Mountains, published "A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri," and printed "Transallegania," a mineralogical poem. In 1820 appeared his " Journal of a Tour in Missouri and Arkansas." Attracting the attention of government by his writings, he was commissioned by John C. Calhoun, the then Secretary of War, to visit the copper region of Lake Superior, and to accompany General Cass in his expedition to the head waters of the Mississippi. His "Narrative Journal" of this tour was published in 1821: in the same year he was made secretary to the commission for treating with the Indian tribes at Chicago. On the conclusion of his labors there he published “Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley."

His reputation was now pretty generally established as a traveler and a man of science. President Monroe, in 1822, appointed him agent for Indian affairs, and he removed to Saint Mary's on Lake Superior. For the next five or six years he occupied himself with the duties of his station, attending several important convocations of the North-west tribes. In 1831 he was sent on a special embassy to conciliate the Sioux and Ojibbewas, who were then at war with each other; and in 1832 to the tribes near the head waters of the Mississippi: he traced the waters of the river to their true source in Itasca Lake, which he entered on the thirteenth of July, the one hundred and forty-ninth anniversary of the discovery of the mouth of the river itself. In 1834 he published his "Expedition to Itasca Lake."

From 1827 to 1831 he was member of the Legislature of Michigan; in 1828 he established the Michigan Historical Society, and set on foot the Algic Society at Detroit. Before the Algic Society he delivered a course of lectures on the grammatical construction of the Indian languages, and read "The Indian Character," an anniversary poem.

In 1836 Schoolcraft was appointed a commissioner to treat with the North-west tribes for their lands in the regions of the Upper Lakes, and he effected a cession to the United States of some sixteen millions of acres. He was also made acting superintendent of Indian affairs for the Northern department, and in 1839 prin

cipal disbursing agent for the same district. In the same year he published two volumes of "Algic Researches." In 1842 he visited the continent, traversing England, France, Germany, Prussia, and Holland. On his return he made another journey to the West to examine some of the great mounds; the information which he then collected, whatever it may have been, he communicated to the Royal Geographical Society of Denmark, of which he was an honorary member. He also published a collection of his verse under the title of "Alhalla; or, the Lord of Talladega: a Tale of the Creek War," with other miscellanies of an early date. In 1844 he commenced in numbers the publication of "Onesta; or, the Red Race in America; their History, Traditions, Customs, Poetry, Picture-Writing,, &c." In 1845 he delivered an address before a society known as "Phoebus, what a name!"-the "Was-ah-Ho-de-no-sonne, or the new confederacy of the Iroquois ;" published "Observations on Grave Creek Mound in Western Virginia," in the American Ethnological Society; and presented in a report to the Legislature of his native state his "Notes on the Iroquois, or Contributions to the Statistics of Aboriginal History and General Ethnology of Western New-York."

The last, and in some respects the most important of Schoolcraft's works, for which his previous ones are only a preparation, is the "Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States; collected and prepared under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, per Act March 3d, 1847." The first volume of this ponderous work was issued a few years ago. If carried out according to the author's plan, and with the magnitude and ability which the subject demands, it will be one of the most valuable and important books ever issued in this country, and one which will go down to posterity with honor to itself and its author. It is still in the course of publication, and will doubtless extend to six or seven volumes.

From the evident tendencies of Schoolcraft's mind, as seen in the subject and general drift of his books, and from the want of incident in his life, in any except an official point of view, and that in one direction only-Indianism, (if we may

be allowed the term,) it seems to us best to select him as the type of that class of our writers, and judge him accordingly, rather than as a general litterateur. And in so doing, he will, we imagine, fare quite as well, as if we criticised him by himself without any reference to the character of his writings. As is the case with most writers of scientific books, the man will then be lost in the work. On Indianism in general, rather than on Schoolcraft in particular, we offer a few suggestions.

It is now a little over two hundred years since this continent was first peopled by the white races. At the time of its discovery, and for a considerable period afterward, it was inhabited by numerous tribes of Indians, differing from each other in language and manners, but alike in their various features of mind. To the whites, who were fresh from the worn-out formulas of Europe, their radical state of nature, both as regards good and evil, the strangeness and grandness of some parts of their mythology, and above all the mystery which enshrouded them, a mystery which they themselves were incapable of unraveling, were a source of wonder and curiosity. But, as if anticipating the now settled indifference of the American character, the wonder and curiosity were soon over; and instead of speculating and theorizing on the origin of the aborigines, comparing the accounts of the various tribes, and collecting and preserving the most authentic memorials of their past, our good forefathers had an eye to business, and considered how they might use their copper-skinned neighbors to advantage, in a moral and monetary point of view. One portion of the community were for converting them to Christianity; another for converting them to merchandise. The godly preached to them, the ungodly overreached them. The spirit of our Puritan ancestry, that fiery intolerance and bigotry which led them to persecute Anabaptists, Quakers, and other schismatics, not to mention the ducking and hanging of sundry persons of both sexes, was fatal to the peace and permanency of the mass of the Indian tribes. They were not looked upon as men-were merely "bloody savages," "heathen dogs," "worshipers of stocks and stones," whom it was quite safe, if not meritorious even, to kill for any reasonable provocation. With out doubt the Indians themselves were

much to blame, being by nature stubborn, revengeful, and cruel; but it has always seemed to us that they were unfairly treated from the first, their rights being either not recognized or entirely and wantonly disregarded, and their wrongs met with those of a darker dye. Of a darker dye because our forefathers were in a state of perfect civilization; were educated, and by nature full of noble qualities; were nominally Christians, nay, many of them the choicest spirits of Christianity, while the unfortunate red race were exactly the reverse.

From the body of Puritan settlers, especially those who dabbled in literature, these last were mostly musty and combative theologians, and mercantile voyagers, they had nothing to hope. The only way by which they could be at all benefited was by the utter sacrifice of all their previous habits of life, their nationality in fact, and that of all others was the most repugnant to them. Hence the prejudiced and unreliable manner in which they are mentioned by most of our early writers, and the scarcity of anything truly genuine and really worth preserving concerning them; the little which has been preserved being confined more to outward facts, such as their tribal geography and battles, than to that which distinguished them from the whites, and made them what they were.

And this, by the way, has been the case with nearly all the inhabitants of America, the essential has been overlooked, while the non-essential has been carefully preserved. The fanaticism of the early Spanish monks destroyed the symbolical picture-writing, the historical hieroglyphs of ancient Mexico, while the ignorance and cupidity of the soldiers leveled its monuments and works of art. Glowing as is" Prescott's History," we know next to nothing of Mexico, while Marmontel's novel, "The Incas," is the most popular, if not the most reliable picture of the old Peruvians. How, indeed, could it well be otherwise, when so many years have passed since their extinction, and those who were the cause of their extinction were so indifferent to their history? When history neglects a nation, they are certain to be taken up by fiction.

There is no lack of books, such as they are, about the Indians, and those of a recent date. Ever since we have begun to write, our critics have been insane for an Ameri

can literature, and most of our authors have been just as insane to oblige them, to do which they found it necessary to "do" a certain number of Indians, chiefs, squaws, and papooses. We cannot now stop to name the mass of novels, poems and plays, prepared after the stereotyped Indian recipe. Cooper, among our novelists, is fresh in the minds of all, most of us having at some time or other read some one of his many admired fictions, while all of us are, more or less, acquainted with his fame. Without subscribing to the intense admiration which most American critics feel for his writings, we consider him the most successful, if not the most truthful of all our prose writers who have made the Indians the subject of romance. He has been successful in his treatment of the Indian character, because he has succeeded in making it poetical and ideal, in fact, almost too poetical and ideal at times, or rather, perhaps, poetical and ideal in a wrong direction, in the region of the sentimental and melo-dramatic, rather than in that of the simple, the strange, and the mysterious. The absence of the simple, the strange, and the mysterious in our Indian literature is the cause of its non-success in an art point of view. Our writers deal in Indians who are too modern; they do not go back far enough in the twilight of antiquity. They take Indians of the last year, or the last century, in preference to the abstract idea of the Indian, the poetical savage of the mysterious world of imagination. Instead of painting dusk figures on a dusk, but rich background, in the shade of primeval forests, in the immensity of pathless prairies, and in the light of sunsets, they draw them more like incarnate brutes than men, and contrast them with a superior race, and the prominent elements of civilization, besides which they are shockingly imperfect and out of place. To appear to advantage to the thoughtful, they should be surrounded by the wild and magnificent in nature, should be placed in the golden age of poetry, and not in any age since the discovery and settlement of America.

"Sometimes the dusky islanders

Lie all day long beneath the trees,
And watch the white clouds in the sky,
And birds upon the azure seas;
Sometimes they wrestle on the turf,

And chase each other down the sands;
And sometimes lie in bloomy groves,
And pluck the fruit with idle hands;

And dark-eyed maids do braid their hair

With starry shells, and buds, and leaves;
And sing wild songs in dreamy bowers,
And dance on dewy eves-
When daylight melts, and stars are few,
And west winds frame a drowsy time,
And all the charmèd waters sleep,
Beneath a yellow moon!"

Something like this is the effect which a successful Indian literature demands.

That which we conceive to be the most prominent element of Indianism, and which is the most difficult to be imbodied, is radiant in the pages of Schoolcraft's "Algic Researches." Others may have described the race better, may have shed more light on their manners and origin, but none have approached him in Indian legendary lore, and the poetry thereto attached.

It is well to paint the surroundings of Indianism-the forests, lakes, and wigwams; better to paint well its mixed qualities, making them ideal and poetical; but to give, as Schoolcraft does, its very life and spirit, as imbodied in tales and legends, is the best of all, and what no one, save himself, seems to have thought of doing. Others have either neglected the legendary lore as unworthy of being collected, or have lacked the proper means of collecting it.

One of the first things that strikes us in reading the "Algic Researches," is the extreme originality and uniqueness of most of the tales therein. Given the tales, we could, by a process of reasoning, trace out the peculiar people to whom they belong; analysis would give them only to the Indians of North America. They are really, what it is professed they are, the legendary lore of a race of savages. The impress of the Indian mind, and its mode of thought, is visible on every page. And yet there is enough that is merely general about them to show their affinity to the fairy lore of all nations and times. The fairy lore of a nation comes to perfection only in a nation's childhood, and to that it must always be referred. A semi-barbarous people like the Indians being always in a state of mental childhood, it is not so easy to trace out the date of their fairy lore; still there are, even among them, certain periods of greater or lesser barbarism, to some one of which a careful analysis is able to refer it. Proving their originality then in their choice of subjects, and their manner of treatment, the legends in the "Algic