people mentioned in a yankee in canada - kouroo

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A YANKEE IN CANADA:

HENRY ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

mailto:[email protected] subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A YANKEE IN CANADA: HENRY ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT

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“A YANKEE IN CANADA”: The most interesting object in Canada to mewas the River St. Lawrence, known far and wide, and for centuries,as the Great River. Cartier, its discoverer, sailed up it as faras Montreal in 1535, — nearly a century before the coming of thePilgrims; and I have seen a pretty accurate map of it so far,containing the city of “Hochelaga” and the river “Saguenay,” inOrtelius’s THEATRUM ORBIS TERRARUM, printed at Antwerp in 1575, –the first edition having appeared in 1570,– in which the famouscities of “Norumbega” and “Orsinora” stand on the rough-blockedcontinent where New England is to-day, and the fabulous butunfortunate Isle of Demons, and Frislant, and others, lie off andon in the unfrequented sea, some of them prowling near what isnow the course of the Cunard steamers. In this ponderous folio ofthe “Ptolemy of his age,” said to be the first general atlaspublished after the revival of the sciences in Europe, only onepage of which is devoted to the topography of the Novus Orbis,the St. Lawrence is the only large river, whether drawn from fancyor from observation, on the east side of North America. It wasfamous in Europe before the other rivers of North America wereheard of, notwithstanding that the mouth of the Mississippi, oreven the Hudson, was known to the world. (Schoolcraft was misledby Gallatin into saying that Narvaez discovered the Mississippi.De Vega does not say so.) The first explorers declared that thesummer in that country was as warm as France, and they named oneof the bays in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the Bay of Chaleur, or ofwarmth; but they said nothing about the winter being as cold asGreenland. In the manuscript account of Cartier’s second voyage,attributed by some to that navigator himself, it is called “thegreatest river, without comparison, that is known to have everbeen seen.”

ABRAHAM ORTELIUS


ALBERT GALLATIN

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf



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October: Henry Thoreau would be motivated, in “A YANKEE IN CANADA”, to dispel a myth that had grown up about this period in the history of the exploration of the North American continent: “Schoolcraft [Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, 1793-1864] was misled by Gallatin [Albert Gallatin, 1761-1849] into saying that Narvaez [the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, 1478-1528)] discovered the Mississippi. De Vega [Garcilaso de la Vega, 1539-1616] does not say so.”

1528

“A YANKEE IN CANADA”: The most interesting object in Canada to mewas the River St. Lawrence, known far and wide, and for centuries,as the Great River. Cartier, its discoverer, sailed up it as faras Montreal in 1535, — nearly a century before the coming of thePilgrims; and I have seen a pretty accurate map of it so far,containing the city of “Hochelaga” and the river “Saguenay,” inOrtelius’s THEATRUM ORBIS TERRARUM, printed at Antwerp in 1575, –the first edition having appeared in 1570,– in which the famouscities of “Norumbega” and “Orsinora” stand on the rough-blockedcontinent where New England is to-day, and the fabulous butunfortunate Isle of Demons, and Frislant, and others, lie off andon in the unfrequented sea, some of them prowling near what isnow the course of the Cunard steamers. In this ponderous folio ofthe “Ptolemy of his age,” said to be the first general atlaspublished after the revival of the sciences in Europe, only onepage of which is devoted to the topography of the Novus Orbis,the St. Lawrence is the only large river, whether drawn from fancyor from observation, on the east side of North America. It wasfamous in Europe before the other rivers of North America wereheard of, notwithstanding that the mouth of the Mississippi, oreven the Hudson, was known to the world. (Schoolcraft was misledby Gallatin into saying that Narvaez discovered the Mississippi.De Vega does not say so.) The first explorers declared that thesummer in that country was as warm as France, and they named oneof the bays in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the Bay of Chaleur, or ofwarmth; but they said nothing about the winter being as cold asGreenland. In the manuscript account of Cartier’s second voyage,attributed by some to that navigator himself, it is called “thegreatest river, without comparison, that is known to have everbeen seen.”

ABRAHAM ORTELIUS


ALBERT GALLATIN





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Thoreau seems to have been making reference to a footnote on page 32 of Volume III of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION, RESPECTING THE HISTORY, CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES: COLL. AND PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS PER ACT OF CONGRESS OF MARCH 3RD 1847: “It has been stated by Mr. Gallatin, vide Am. Eth. Trans. Vol. II., p.—, that he [the 1528 expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, 1478-1528)] discovered the mouth of the Mississippi; but this is not sustained by De Vaca, and there is no other authority” (we should make careful note of the fact that Thoreau has here substituted the name “De Vega,” which is to say “Garcilaso de la Vega, 1539-1616, author of the 1605 LA FLORIDA DEL INCA,” for Schoolcraft’s “De Vaca,” meaning “Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, circa 1490/1507-circa 1557/1559, author of the 1543 LA RELACIÓN” — because I do no myself know whether this amounts to Thoreau’s silent correction of an error, or, perhaps, his inadvertent introduction of an error). Here is the actual passage by Albert Gallatin containing that misunderstanding (it had appeared in Transactions of the American Ethnological Society for 1848):

What the 1528 expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez did do was skirt the coast and note that they sailed through fresh water far at sea. This was however not a “first sighting by a white man,” not only because it was not a sighting, but also because already in June 1519, nine years earlier the four ships of Alfonsó Alvaréz Pinéda had reconnoitered the mouth of the Mississippi.

It was in this year that Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and three others off the coast of Texas, at Galveston Island, became castaways from the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez.

1848 TRANS. AM. ETHN. SOC.




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/48/1848_TransactionsAmericanEthnologicalSociety.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/48/1848_TransactionsAmericanEthnologicalSociety.pdf


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March 28, Thursday: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was born at Guilderland near Albany, New York. His father was a glassmaker and he would study to become a glassmaker as well.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1793








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Jane Johnston (Schoolcraft) was born in this year as one of eight children of an Irish fur trader and an influential Chippewa or Ojibwa (alternate Englishings of the same tribal name) woman, daughter of tribal leader Waub Ojeeb (White Fisher). Jane would grow up in Sault Ste. Marie and returned there after being educated in Ireland. She would learn tribal lore from her mother and would speak Ojibwa fluently. War Department agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft would board with the Johnston family when he arrived in 1822, assigned to gain tribal cooperation in new policies concerning control of the Great Lakes area established after the War of 1812. The Johnstons would assist him in researching Indian culture. Jane would help him compile a Chippewa vocabulary and would draw his interest toward tales and legends. They would marry in 1823. With her husband, beginning in 1826, Schoolcraft would publish THE LITERARY VOYAGER OR MUZZENIEGUN (printed document or book), a weekly magazine distributed in eastern cities as well as locally, with articles on Ojibwa culture, history, and biography. Her writings, including Christian devotional poems, tributes to her grandfather, and poems on the death of her son, would appear in the magazine under the pseudonyms Rosa and Leelinau. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft would become widely known as “The Northern Pocahontas” and would be sought out by traveling public intellectuals, among them British authors Harriet Martineau and Anna B. Jameson. She would die in 1841.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1800








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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft matriculated at Union College in Schenectady, New York.1

William Learned Marcy graduated from Brown University and began practicing law in Troy, New York.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1808

1. The name “Union” had been chosen for this new college in expression of a desire that the college never affiliate itself with any particular Protestant religious denomination, such as the Presbyterians or the Congregationalists; they would have named themselves after a major benefactor, as for instance Brown recently had done — except that as luck would have it no such major benefactor ever appeared.





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Zanesville became the Ohio state capitol.

Abandoning his new glassmaking business in upstate New York, the young Henry Rowe Schoolcraft made a journey down the Ohio River to Missouri with his friend Alexander Bryan Johnson.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1810








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December 16, Tuesday: A notice appeared in the Patriot and Patrol of Utica, New York, “Will publish in May, 1818, if subscribers are enough, “Vitrology, or The Art of Making Glass,” by Henry R. Schoolcraft.”

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1817








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In Missouri during this year and the following one, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft made geographical, geological, and mineralogical surveys which would be recorded in A VIEW OF THE LEAD MINES OF MISSOURI.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1818








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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s A VIEW OF THE LEAD MINES OF MISSOURI.

1819





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January 14, Friday: J. Dickinson of Nash Mill in the parish of Abbots Laughley was granted a patent for a machine that could cut paper and other materials into single sheets or pieces.

US Secretary of War John Caldwell Calhoun authorized the governor of the Michigan Territory, General Lewis Cass, to lead a party of scientists, soldiers, Canadian voyageurs to manage the canoes, and native American guides and hunters into the wilderness, to survey the western portion of the Michigan Territory (present-day Minnesota)’s geography and topography for purposes of a new map clarifying a border dispute between the United States of America and Canada, evaluate the flora and fauna, ascertain the numbers of the tribes of natives and their customs (and their loyalties, whether to the United States or to Great Britain), search for commercially valuable deposits of minerals, discover the true source of the Mississippi River (Cass Lake would be determined, erroneously, to be that northern source), and select and purchase sites for forts (especially at the important strait of Sault Ste. Marie). The expedition would consist of 42 men. The geologist would be Henry Rowe Schoolcraft who would in 1821 issue A NARRATIVE JOURNAL OF TRAVELS … FROM DETROIT THROUGH THE GREAT CHAIN OF AMERICAN LAKES TO THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, and then in 1832 correctly identify the source of the great river as Lake Itasca.

In the diary of Thomas Nuttall we find: “This evening we arrived at the residence of the late Mr. Mosely, and about 20 miles below Harrington’s. His estates were said to be worth not less than 20,000 dollars, which had all been acquired during his residence in this territory. A proof that there is here also scope for industry, and the acquisition of wealth.”

June 16, Friday: Another treaty with native Americans:

7 Stat., 206.

Proclamation, Mar. 2, 1821.

Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. Vol. II (Treaties). Compiledand edited by Charles J. Kappler. Washington: GovernmentPrinting Office, 1904.

Margin Notes: Cession by the Chippewas. Receipt of goodsacknowledged. Perpetual right of fishing at the falls of St.Mary’s secured to Indians. Treaty binding when ratified.Articles of a treaty, made and concluded at the Saúlt de St.Marie, in the Territory of Michigan, between the United States,by their Commissioner Lewis Cass, and the Chippeway tribe ofIndians.

ART. 1. The Chippeway tribe of Indians cede to the United Statesthe following tract of land: Beginning at the Big Rock, in theriver St. Mary’s, on the boundary line between the United Statesand the British Province of Upper Canada; and, running thence,down the said river, with the middle thereof, to the LittleRapid; and, from those [*188] points, running back from the saidriver, so as to include sixteen square miles of land.

ART. 2. The Chippeway tribe of Indians acknowledge to have

1820




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Cass_expedition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Cass_expedition

http://solomon.eena.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/eena/getpart.pl?S2827-D018





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NO

YES





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received a quantity of goods in full satisfaction of thepreceding cession.

ART. 3. The United States will secure to the Indians a perpetualright of fishing at the falls of St. Mary’s, and also a placeof encampment upon the tract hereby ceded, convenient to thefishing ground, which place shall not interfere with thedefences of any military work which may be erected, nor with anyprivate rights.

ART. 4. This treaty, after the same shall be ratified by thePresident of the United States, by and with the advice andconsent of the Senate thereof, shall be obligatory on thecontracting parties. In witness whereof, the said Lewis Cass,commissioner as aforesaid, and the chiefs and warriors of thesaid Chippeway tribe of Indians, have hereunto set their hands,at the place aforesaid, this sixteenth day of June, in the yearof our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty.

Lewis Cass, Shingaubaywassin, his x mark, Kegeash, his x mark,Sagishewayoson, his x mark, Wayishkey, his x mark, Nenowaiskam,his x mark, Wasawaton, his x mark, Wemiguenacwanay, his x mark,Nabinois, his x mark, Macadaywacwet, his x mark, Shaiwabekaton,his x mark, Netaway, his x mark, Kaibayway, his x mark,Nawoquesequm, his x mark, Tawabit, his x mark, Augustin Bart,his x mark. Witnesses present: R. A. Forsyth, secretary, Alex.Wolcott, jr., Indian agent, Chicago, D. B. Douglass, captain U.S. Engineers, Æneas Mackay, Lieutenant corps artillery, John J.Pearce, lieutenant artillery, Henry R. Schoolcraft,mineralogist to the expedition, James Duane Doty, Charles C.Trowbridge, Alex. R. Chase, James Ryley, sworn interpreter.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF








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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s A NARRATIVE JOURNAL OF TRAVELS … FROM DETROIT THROUGH THE GREAT CHAIN OF AMERICAN LAKES TO THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

1821





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NO

YES





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According to Mary Helen Dunlop’s SIXTY MILES FROM CONTENTMENT: TRAVELING THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN INTERIOR (NY: HarperCollins BasicBooks, 1995, pages 113-7),

She has captured and described a series of nine such mythifications, of which this is the 1st:2Mary Helen

Dunlop points out that in the Wisconsin territory in this year, when Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote about his

In a search for pleasant and understandable Indian material todistract them from contemporary conditions too painful to dwell on,numerous travelers turned to retailing legends — not tribal legendsbut white-concocted legends about Indians, sentimental European-style legends about thwarted romance and star-crossed lovers anddeath leaps. Because so much of the fakelore is about death, it canbe read as a series of approaches to a culture under siege;furthermore, the legends are most unstable whenever they concernthose matters of Indian life that travelers least comprehended —family structure, authority, and the position of women. The travelwriter’s favorite among made-up legends was the story of Winona,which had a conveniently visible geographic location –a high bluffon the upper Mississippi– that travelers could easily view from acomfortable position aboard a steamboat or train.

In Henry Schoolcraft’s 1821 telling, the Sioux Winona loves a “youngchief” but her parents wish her to marry an “old chief.” Winonaapparently accedes to their wishes, but while the wedding feast isin preparation, she exits “her father’s cabin,” makes a run for thecliff, throws herself off, and is “instantly dashed to a thousandpieces” on the rocks below. Schoolcraft’s tale is about bothromantic love and European-style male authority over women’s lives;in his framing, a woman’s sole route of resistance to male authorityis suicide. Schoolcraft kept his story contained within tribalsociety and admired it as an “instance of sentiment” that, in hisview, elevated Sioux culture.





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observations of native American cultivation practices, he revealed to posterity more than he herself would have liked to understand, about the manner in which we go about creating racial Others who are, willy-nilly, going to be wrong, because they have been Othered — no matter what they do and no matter how they react to us. They are just the wrong people, so how could they ever be considered to have gotten anything right? This is from page 103 of her SIXTY MILES FROM CONTENTMENT:

2. The subsequent versions awarded this deep reading by Dunlop in her 1995 monograph are:

the Fredrika Bremer 1848 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in volume 2 of 1853’s THE HOMES OF THE NEW WORLD,the Mary Eastman 1853 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in 1849’s DAKOTAH: OR, LIFE AND LEGENDS OF THE SIOUX,the Ida Pfeiffer mid-1850s construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in 1855’s A LADY’S SECOND JOURNEY ROUND THE WORLD,the Laurence Oliphant 1855 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in MINNESOTA AND THE FAR WEST,the Harriet Bishop 1857 construction of this Winona fakelore, contained in FLORAL HOME: OR, FIRST YEARS OF MINNESOTA,the Aleksandr Lakier 1859 construction of this Winona fakelore, and, finally,the Mark Twain 1883 demolition of this Winona fakelore, as contained in his LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

Some travelers, employing an established method of denying landownership, asserted that Indians had no agriculture; meanwhileothers were busy scorning Indians for eating from nature. In 1821,Henry Schoolcraft was so “surprised” to encounter cultivatedfields of squashes, beans, and melons along the Turkey River inWisconsin that he at once denied such evidence by pointing out thatthe fields were “without any enclosures” and thus not properlyowned; when he came upon an asparagus patch, Schoolcraft hastenedto assert that it was not evidence of cultivation: “the seeds,” hewrote, “had probably been dropped by some former traveler.” For atraveler to assign to another traveler's casual loss more evidenceof cultivation than he would assign to the Indian populationconstituted an extreme effort at erasing visible facts. The ease,propriety, and delicacy of Indian table manners were ignored infavor of the assertion that Indians did not say thank-you whenwhites gave them food, and Indian concern that all should shareequally in the food available was transformed into tales of guestsforced to eat anything set before them. If one traveler claimedthat Indians were forced to “eat their dogs when other food fails,”later travelers escalated that detail into claims that dog meatwas an Indian idea of the “greatest delicacy to set before a guest”and that identifiable whole roasted puppies had been set beforethem by Indians.





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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was appointed Indian agent with headquarters at Sault Ste. Marie and began his ethnological researches.

1822





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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Jane Johnston (whose father John Johnston was a fur trader in the Great Lakes region and whose mother, Ozhaw-Guscoday-Wayquay, was the daughter of Waub Ojeeg, headman of the Chequamegon or “Red Cliff” band of the Anishinabe Ojibway) were wed.

1823





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From this year into 1832, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft would be serving in the territorial legislature.

1828





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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft made a 2d journey to the Mississippi River. His account would be published in 1834:

Enoch Cobb Wines’s TWO YEARS AND A HALF IN THE NAVY; OR, JOURNAL OF A CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND LEVANT, ON BOARD OF THE U.S. FRIGATE CONSTELLATION, IN THE YEARS 1829, 1830, AND 1831. Henry Thoreau would read this book. The ship in question was the 36-gun frigate Constellation which had been built in 1797 and would in 1853 be broken up for scrap (the ship presently in Baltimore is a 22-gun sloop-of-war Constellation which would not be launched until 1854).

1832





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The area of administration of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft as Indian agent was considerably increased, with new headquarters at Mackinac.

At Fort Snelling in the Minnesota Territory, Seth Eastman got married “in Indian form” with the daughter of Marpiyawicasta Cloud Man, Wakaninajinwin Stands Sacred (or, Stands Like a Spirit) who had borne him a child (initially known of course as “Winona,” meaning “firstborn girlchild,” in accordance with Dakotah practice) who would be christened Mary Nancy Eastman (this child would because of her involvement with Christianity be called “Holy Spirit woman,” and would additionally be known as Wakantankanwin Goddess).3 The bride was herself baptized under the christening name “Lucy.” Some of the children of this racial mingling, according to a book, would become “noted and useful characters” — imagine that, folks!4

(This seems to have been a parting gesture, since from 1833 to 1840 Eastman would be teaching drawing, useful in mapmaking, at the West Point Military Academy.)

Amazingly, although the white man was an artist, we have no artistic depictions by him of his bride or his child! What we do have is two rough sketches and a portrait sketch done later, in 1851, of the teenage halfbreed Mary Nancy or Goddess, by another white artist, Frank Blackwell Mayer:

1833

3. This daughter “Mary Nancy” would marry in her tribe and bear five children, dying at the birth of the youngest, later known as Charles. After adopting Christianity, her red husband and two of their sons would also take the Eastman name. Mary Nancy Eastman’s eldest son, the Reverend John Marpiyawaku Kida Eastman, would become a Presbyterian missionary at Flandreau, South Dakota. Her 2d son, Dr. Charles Eastman, would make himself the 1st Native American to obtain certification as a medical doctor (he would earn his MD degree at Boston University). While practicing medicine Dr. Eastman also would work for Native American rights. He would author a memoir, INDIAN BOYHOOD, and several other popular books about his experience of Indian cultures, some of which would be translated and published in Europe.4. It may surprise you that the commandant at the local military fortress, Fort Snelling, would permit such a miscegenation. If so, you should come to grips with the fact that such miscegenation, so long as it was by white men upon red women rather than by red men upon white women, was in fact part of the US military’s objective for the region. To appreciate this, you should take the time now to peruse the report on native populations that had been prepared for our War Department in 1822 by the Reverend Jedediah Morse.





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NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION THROUGH THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI TO ITASCA LAKE, THE ACTUAL SOURCE OF THIS RIVER; EMBRACING AN EXPLORATORY TRIP THROUGH THE ST. CROIX AND BURNTWOOD (OR BROULE) RIVERS; IN 1832. UNDER THE DIRECTION OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT (New-York: Harper & Brothers, No. 82 Cliff-Street)

(In about 1852 Henry Thoreau would copy items from this into his Indian Notebook #6.)

1834

TRUE SOURCE OF BIG RIVER




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/34/1834_SchoolcraftNARRATIVE.pdf


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The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that had begun in 1834 in the farm animals with cloven hooves on the Hungarian plains, at this point had spread to Switzerland, Belgium, France, and Holland, affecting all cows, pigs, sheep, and goats. In a few years the infection would spread to the British Isles.

Henry Thoreau copied, from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, into Volume V of his INDIAN NOTEBOOKS, the following paragraph:5

[In his Indian Notebook #7, Thoreau would make four sheets of extracts from Schoolcraft’s “Hiawatha, or the

1837

5. Thoreau’s INDIAN NOTEBOOKS are now at the Pierpont Morgan Library. These notebooks together comprise in total 2,800 handwritten pages. There are 11 of them, the 1st probably being completed during Thoreau’s sojourn at Walden Pond: for instance, on the 1st sheet of his 1st volume Thoreau jotted “Bug ate out of a table in Williamstown 73 years after the egg was laid.” He noted that he had gotten this material which would find its way into the final chapter of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS from J.W. Barber’s MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. See: Fleck, Richard F. (ed). THE INDIANS OF THOREAU: SELECTIONS FROM THE INDIAN NOTEBOOKS. Albuquerque NM: Hummingbird Press, 1974

The small pox “swept through the Missouri Valley in 1837.” Thefirst case was a colored [Thoreau’s change] mulatto man on boarda steam boat 80 miles above Fort Leavenworth. “Every precautionappears to have been taken, by sending runners to the Indians, 2days ahead of the boat; but, in spite of these efforts, thedisease spread. It broke out among the Mandonis [?] about the 15thof July. This tribe, which consisted of 1600 persons, was reducedto 31 souls.” & other tribes lost one half of their number.

VARIOLA




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/WALDEN.html


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Origin of the Onondaga Council-Fire,” which was also Longfellow’s source.]





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From his wife Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (halfbreed daughter of fur trader John Johnston and Ozhaw-Guscoday-Wayquay), Henry Rowe Schoolcraft had been learning over the years the Anishinabeg language, and acquiring a store of Anishinabe Ojibway lore. In this year was published his ALGIC RESEARCHES: COMPRISING INQUIRIES RESPECTING THE MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. FIRST SERIES. INDIAN TALES AND LEGENDS (New-York: Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff-Street).

1839

ALGIC RESEARCHES, IALGIC RESEARCHES, II




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/39/1839_AlgicResearches_I.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/39/1839_AlgicResearches_II.pdf


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When the Whigs came to power, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft lost his Indian agency and moved to the East, where he continued the Native American studies he had begun in 1839 with ALGIC RESEARCHES.

For this year and the following one Francis Joseph Grund, who had by authoring a campaign biography supported the winning Whig party in the general election, would be chosen for the cushy job of serving as US consul at Bremen, Germany. A political plum.

1841





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June 20, Tuesday-21, Wednesday: Frederick Douglass was at the Town Hall in New Bedford for the Bristol County Anti-Slavery Convention.

Henry Thoreau wrote to Mrs. Lidian Emerson from Staten Island:

June 20th 1843

My very dear Friend,

I have only read a page of your letter, and have come out to thetop of the hill at sunset[,] where I can see the ocean to prepare to read the rest. It is fitter that it should hear it than the walls of my chamber. The very crickets here seem to chirp around me as they did not before. I feel as if it were a great daring to go on and read the rest, and then to live accordingly[—] There are more than thirty vessels in sight going to sea — I am almost afraid to look at your letter. I see that it will [make] my life very steep, but it may lead to fairer prospects than this. You seem to me to speak out of a very clear and high heaven, where any one may be who stands so high. Your voice seems not a voice, but comes as much from the blue heavens, as from the paper. My dear friend it was very noble in youto write me so trustful an answer. It willdo as well for another world as for this. Such a voice is for no particular time nor person, but it makes him who may

Page 2hear it stand for all that is lofty and true in humanity. The thought of

1843





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you will constantly elevate my life[;] it will be something always above the horizonto behold, as when I look up at the evening star. I think I know your thoughts without seeing you, and as well here asin Concord. You are not at all strangeto me. I could hardly believe after the lapse had of one night that I such a noble letter ^ still at hand to read — that it was not some [fine] dream. I looked at mid night to be sure that it was real. I feel that I am unworthy to know you, and yet they will not permit it wrongfully. I, perhaps, am more willing to deceive by appear- ances than you say you are[.] [It] would notbe worth the while to tell how willing, — but I have the power perhaps [too much] to forget my meanness as soon as seen, and not be incited by permanent sorrow. My actual life is unspeakably mean, compared with what I know and see that it mightbe — Yet the ground from which I see and say this is some part of it. It ranges from heaven to earth and is all things in an hour. [T]he experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present. We never conceive the greatness of our fates.

Page 3Are not these faint flashes of light, which sometimes obscure the sun, their certain dawn? My friend, I have read your letter as if I was not reading it. After each pause Icould defer the rest forever. The thought of you will be a new motive for every right action. You are another human being whom I know, and might not our topicbe as broad as the universe. What have we to do with petty rumbling news? We have our [own] great [a]ffairs. Sometimes in Concord I found my actions dictated, as it were, by your influence, and though it lead almost to trivial Hindoo obser-





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vances, yet it was good and elevating. To hear that you have sad[]hours is not sad to me. I rather rejoice at the richness of your experience. Only think of some sadness away in Pekin — unseen and unknown there — What a mine it is. Would it not weigh down the [who] Celestial empire, with all its gay Chinese? [O]ur sadness is not [sad,] but our cheap joys. Let us be sad[] about all we see and are, for so wedemand and pray for better. It is theconstant prayer[]and whole Christian religion. I could hope that you would get well soon, and have a health[y] body for this world, but I know this cannot be — and the Fates, after all, are

Page 4the accomplishers of our hopes — Yet I do hope that you may find it a worthy struggle, and life seem grand still through the clouds. What wealth is it to have such friend[s] that we cannot think of them without elevation. And we can think of them any time, and any where, and it {written perpendicular to text in center of page:

Address: Mrs. Lidian Emerson

Concord

Mass.

Postmark: NEW-YORK

JUN

25}

costs nothing but the lofty disposition. I cannot tell you the joy your letter gives me — which will not quite cease till thelatest time. Let me accompany your





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finest thought. I send my love to my other friend and brother, whose nobleness I slowly recognise.

Henry

Margaret Fuller would write of the events of the 20th in her SUMMER ON THE LAKES, IN 1843:

Chicago, June 20.There can be no two places in the world more completelythoroughfares than this place and Buffalo. They are the twocorrespondent valves that open and shut all the time, as thelife-blood rushes from east to west, and back again from westto east.Since it is their office thus to be the doors, and let in andout, it would be unfair to expect from them much character oftheir own. To make the best provisions for the transmission ofproduce is their office, and the people who live there are suchas are suited for this, — active, complaisant, inventive,business people. There are no provisions for the student oridler; to know what the place can give, you should be at workwith the rest; the mere traveller will not find it profitableto loiter there as I did.Since circumstances made it necessary for me so to do, I readall the books I could find about the new region, which now beganto become real to me. Especially I read all the books about theIndians, — a paltry collection truly, yet which furnishedmaterial for many thoughts. The most narrow-minded and awkwardrecital still bears some lineaments of the great features ofthis nature, and the races of men that illustrated them.Catlin’s book is far the best. I was afterwards assured by thoseacquainted with the regions he describes, that he is not to bedepended on for the accuracy of his facts, and indeed it isobvious, without the aid of such assertions, that he sometimesyields to the temptation of making out a story. They admitted,however, what from my feelings I was sure of, that he is trueto the spirit of the scene, and that a far better view can begot from him than from any source at present existing, of theIndian tribes of the Far West, and of the country where theirinheritance lay.Murray’s Travels I read, and was charmed by their accuracy andclear, broad tone. He is the only Englishman that seems to havetraversed these regions as man simply, not as John Bull. Hedeserves to belong to an aristocracy, for he showed his titleto it more when left without a guide in the wilderness, than hecan at the court of Victoria. He has; himself, no poetic forceat description, but it is easy to make images from his hints.Yet we believe the Indian cannot be looked at truly except by apoetic eye. The Pawnees, no doubt, are such as he describes them,filthy in their habits, and treacherous in their character, butsome would have seen, and seen truly, more beauty and dignitythan he does with all his manliness and fairness of mind.





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However, his one fine old man is enough to redeem the rest, andis perhaps the relic of a better day, a Phocion among thePawnees.Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches is a valuable book, though aworse use could hardly have been made of such fine material. Hadthe mythological or hunting stories of the Indians been writtendown exactly as they were received from the lips of thenarrators, the collection could not have been surpassed ininterest both for the wild charm they carry with them, and thelight they throw on a peculiar modification of life and mind.As it is, though the incidents have an air of originality andpertinence to the occasion, that gives us confidence that theyhave not been altered, the phraseology in which they wereexpressed has been entirely set aside, and the flimsy graces,common to the style of annuals and souvenirs, substituted forthe Spartan brevity and sinewy grasp of Indian speech. We canjust guess what might have been there, as we can detect the fineproportions of the Brave whom the bad taste of some white patronhas arranged in frock-coat, hat, and pantaloons.The few stories Mrs. Jameson wrote out, though to these also asentimental air has been given, offend much less in that waythan is common in this book. What would we not give for acompletely faithful version of some among them! Yet, with allthese drawbacks, we cannot doubt from internal evidence thatthey truly ascribe to the Indian a delicacy of sentiment and offancy that justifies Cooper in such inventions as his Uncas.It is a white man’s view of a savage hero, who would be far finerin his natural proportions; still, through a masquerade figure,it implies the truth.Irving’s books I also read, some for the first, some for thesecond time, with increased interest, now that I was to meetsuch people as he received his materials from. Though the booksare pleasing from, their grace and luminous arrangement, yet,with the exception of the Tour to the Prairies, they have astereotype, second-hand air. They lack the breath, the glow, thecharming minute traits of living presence. His scenery is onlyfit to be glanced at from dioramic distance; his Indians areacademic figures only. He would have made the best of pictures,if he could have used his own eyes for studies and sketches; asit is, his success is wonderful, but inadequate.McKenney’s Tour to the Lakes is the dullest of books, yetfaithful and quiet, and gives some facts not to be met witheverywhere.I also read a collection of Indian anecdotes and speeches, theworst compiled and arranged book possible, yet not without clewsof some value. All these books I read in anticipation of a canoe-voyage on Lake Superior as far as the Pictured Rocks, and, thoughI was afterwards compelled to give up this project, they aidedme in judging of what I subsequently saw and heard of theIndians.In Chicago I first saw the beautiful prairie-flowers. They werein their glory the first ten days we were there, —





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“The golden and the flame-like flowers.”The flame-like flower I was taught afterwards, by an Indiangirl, to call “Wickapee”; and she told me, too, that itssplendors had a useful side, for it was used by the Indians asa remedy for an illness to which they were subject.Beside these brilliant flowers, which gemmed and gilt the grassin a sunny afternoon’s drive near the blue lake, between the lowoak-wood and the narrow beach, stimulated, whether sensuouslyby the optic nerve, unused to so much gold and crimson with suchtender green, or symbolically through some meaning dimly seenin the flowers, I enjoyed a sort of fairy-land exultation neverfelt before, and the first drive amid the flowers gave meanticipation of the beauty of the prairies.At first, the prairie seemed to speak of the very desolation ofdulness. After sweeping over the vast monotony of the lakes tocome to this monotony of land, with all around a limitlesshorizon, — to walk, and walk, and run, but never climb, oh! itwas too dreary for any but a Hollander to bear. How the eyegreeted the approach of a sail, or the smoke of a steamboat; itseemed that anything so animated must come from a better land,where mountains gave religion to the scene.The only thing I liked at first to do was to trace with slow andunexpecting step the narrow margin of the lake. Sometimes aheavy swell gave it expression; at others, only its variedcoloring, which I found more admirable every day, and which gaveit an air of mirage instead of the vastness of ocean. Then therewas a grandeur in the feeling that I might continue that walk,if I had any seven-leagued mode of conveyance to save fatigue,for hundreds of miles without an obstacle and without a change.But after I had ridden out, and seen the flowers, and observedthe sun set with that calmness seen only in the prairies, andthe cattle winding slowly to their homes in the “island groves,”— most peaceful of sights, — I began to love, because I beganto know the scene, and shrank no longer from “the encirclingvastness.”It is always thus with the new form of life; we must learn tolook at it by its own standard. At first, no doubt, my accustomedeye kept saying, if the mind did not, What! no distant mountains?What! no valleys? But after a while I would ascend the roof ofthe house where we lived, and pass many hours, needing no sightbut the moon reigning in the heavens, or starlight falling uponthe lake, till all the lights were out in the island grove ofmen beneath my feet, and felt nearer heaven that there wasnothing but this lovely, still reception on the earth; notowering mountains, no deep tree-shadows, nothing but plainearth and water bathed in light.Sunset, as seen from that place, presented most generally, low-lying, flaky clouds, of the softest serenity.One night a star “shot madly from, its sphere,” and it had afair chance to be seen, but that serenity could not beastonished.Yes! it was a peculiar beauty, that of those sunsets and





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moonlights on the levels of Chicago, which Chamouny or theTrosachs could not make me forget.6

Notwithstanding all the attractions I thus found out by degreeson the flat shores of the lake, I was delighted when I foundmyself really on my way into the country for an excursion of twoor three weeks. We set forth in a strong wagon, almost as large,and with the look of those used elsewhere for transportingcaravans of wild beasts, loaded with everything we might want,in case nobody would give it to us, — for buying and sellingwere no longer to be counted on, — with, a pair of strong horses,able and willing to force their way through mud-holes and amidstumps, and a guide, equally admirable as marshal and companion,who knew by heart the country and its history, both natural andartificial, and whose clear hunter’s eye needed, neither roadnor goal to guide it to all the spots where beauty best lovesto dwell.Add to this the finest weather, and such country as I had neverseen, even in my dreams, although these dreams had been hauntedby wishes for just such a one, and you may judge whether yearsof dulness might not, by these bright days, be redeemed, and asweetness be shed over all thoughts of the West.The first day brought us through woods rich in the moccason-flower and lupine, and plains whose soft expanse was continuallytouched with expression by the slow moving clouds which“Sweep over with their shadows, and beneath The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase The sunny ridges,”to the banks of the Fox River, a sweet and graceful stream.We reached Geneva just in time to escape being drenched by aviolent thunder-shower, whose rise and disappearance threwexpression into all the features of the scene.Geneva reminds me of a New England village, as indeed there, andin the neighborhood, are many New-Englanders of an excellentstamp, generous, intelligent, discreet, and seeking to win fromlife its true values. Such are much wanted, and seem like pointsof light among the swarms of settlers, whose aims are sordid,whose habits thoughtless and slovenly.7

With great pleasure we heard, with his attentive andaffectionate congregation, the Unitarian clergyman, Mr. Conant,and afterward visited him in his house, where almost everythingbore traces of his own handiwork or that of his father. He isjust such a teacher as is wanted in this region, familiar enough,with the habits of those he addresses to come home to theirexperience and their wants; earnest and enlightened enough to

6. “From the prairie near Chicago had I seen, some days before, the sun set with that calmness observed only on the prairies. I know not what it says, but something quite different from sunset at sea. There is no motion except of waving grasses, — the cattle move slowly homeward in the distance. That home! where is it? It seems as If there was no home, and no need of one, and there is room enough to wander on for ever.” — Manuscript Notes.7. “We passed a portion of one day with Mr. and Mrs. — — , young, healthy, and, thank Heaven, gay people. In the general dulness that broods over this land where so little genius flows, and care, business, and fashionable frivolity are equally dull, unspeakable is the relief of some flashes of vivacity, some sparkles of wit. Of course it is hard enough for those, most natively disposed that way, to strike fire. I would willingly be the tinder to promote the cheering blaze.” — Manuscript Notes.





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draw the important inferences from the life of every day.8

A day or two we remained here, and passed some happy hours inthe woods that fringe the stream, where the gentlemen found arich booty of fish.Next day, travelling along the river’s banks, was anuninterrupted pleasure. We closed our drive in the afternoon atthe house of an English gentleman, who has gratified, as few mendo, the common wish to pass the evening of an active day amidthe quiet influences of country life. He showed us a bookcasefilled with books about this country; these he had collected foryears, and become so familiar with the localities, that, oncoming here at last, he sought and found, at once, the very spothe wanted, and where he is as content as he hoped to be, thusrealizing Wordsworth’s description of the wise man, who “seeswhat he foresaw.”A wood surrounds the house, through which paths are cut in everydirection. It is, for this new country, a large and handsomedwelling; but round it are its barns and farm-yard, with cattleand poultry. These, however, in the framework of wood, have avery picturesque and pleasing effect. There is that mixture ofculture and rudeness in the aspect of things which gives afeeling of freedom, not of confusion.I wish, it were possible to give some idea of this scene, asviewed by the earliest freshness of dewy dawn. This habitationof man seemed like a nest in the grass, so thoroughly were thebuildings and all the objects of human care harmonized with,what was natural. The tall trees bent and whispered all around,as if to hail with, sheltering love the men who had come to dwellamong them.The young ladies were musicians, and spoke French fluently,having been educated in a convent. Here in the prairie, they hadlearned to take care of the milk-room, and kill the rattlesnakesthat assailed their poultry-yard. Beneath the shade of heavycurtains you looked out from the high and large windows to seeNorwegian peasants at work in their national dress. In the woodgrew, not only the flowers I had before seen, and wealth of tall,wild roses, but the splendid blue spiderwort, that ornament ofour gardens. Beautiful children strayed there, who were soon toleave these civilized regions for some really wild and westernplace, a post in the buffalo country. Their no less beautifulmother was of Welsh descent, and the eldest child bore the nameof Gwynthleon. Perhaps there she will meet with some youngdescendants of Madoc, to be her friends; at any rate, her looksmay retain that sweet, wild beauty, that is soon made to vanishfrom eyes which look too much on shops and streets, and thevulgarities of city “parties.”Next day we crossed the river. We ladies crossed on a littlefoot-bridge, from which we could look down the stream, and see

8. “Let any who think men do not need or want the church, hear these people talk about it as if it were the only indispensable thing, and see what I saw in Chicago. An elderly lady from Philadelphia, who had been visiting her sons in the West, arrived there about one o’clock on a hot Sunday noon. She rang the bell and requested a room immediately, as she wanted to get ready for afternoon service. Some delay occurring, she expressed great regret, as she had ridden all night for the sake of attending church. She went to church, neither having dined nor taken any repose after her journey.” — Manuscript Notes.





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the wagon pass over at the ford. A black thunder-cloud was comingup; the sky and waters heavy with expectation. The motion of thewagon, with its white cover, and the laboring horses, gave justthe due interest to the picture, because it seemed, as if theywould not have time to cross before the storm came on. However,they did get across, and we were a mile or two on our way beforethe violent shower obliged us to take refuge in a solitary houseupon the prairie. In this country it is as pleasant to stop asto go on, to lose your way as to find it, for the variety in thepopulation gives you a chance for fresh entertainment in everyhut, and the luxuriant beauty makes every path attractive. Inthis house we found a family “quite above the common,” but,I grieve to say, not above false pride, for the father, ashamedof being caught barefoot, told us a story of a man, one of therichest men, he said, in one of the Eastern cities, who wentbarefoot, from choice and taste.Near the door grew a Provence rose, then in blossom. Otherfamilies we saw had brought with them and planted the locust.It was pleasant to see their old home loves, brought intoconnection with their new splendors. Wherever there were tracesof this tenderness of feeling, only too rare among Americans,other things bore signs also of prosperity and intelligence, asif the ordering mind of man had some idea of home beyond a mereshelter beneath which to eat and sleep.No heaven need wear a lovelier aspect than earth did thisafternoon, after the clearing up of the shower. We traversed theblooming plain, unmarked by any road, only the friendly trackof wheels which bent, not broke, the grass. Our stations werenot from town to town, but from grove to grove. These grovesfirst floated like blue islands in the distance. As we drewnearer, they seemed fair parks, and the little log-houses on theedge, with their curling smokes, harmonized beautifully withthem.One of these groves, Ross’s Grove, we reached just at sunset,It was of the noblest trees I saw during this journey, forgenerally the trees were not large or lofty, but only of fairproportions. Here they were large enough to form with theirclear stems pillars for grand cathedral aisles. There was spaceenough for crimson light to stream through upon the floor ofwater which the shower had left. As we slowly plashed through,I thought I was never in a better place for vespers.That night we rested, or rather tarried, at a grove some milesbeyond, and there partook of the miseries, so often jocoselyportrayed, of bedchambers for twelve, a milk dish for universalhand-basin, and expectations that you would use and lend your“hankercher” for a towel. But this was the only night, thanksto the hospitality of private families, that we passed thus; andit was well that we had this bit of experience, else might wehave pronounced all Trollopian records of the kind to beinventions of pure malice.With us was a young lady who showed herself to have been bathedin the Britannic fluid, wittily described by a late French





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writer, by the impossibility she experienced of accommodatingherself to the indecorums of the scene. We ladies were to sleepin the bar-room, from which its drinking visitors could beejected only at a late hour. The outer door had no fastening toprevent their return. However, our host kindly requested wewould call him, if they did, as he had “conquered them for us,”and would do so again. We had also rather hard couches (mine wasthe supper-table); but we Yankees, born to rove, were altogethertoo much fatigued to stand upon trifles, and slept as sweetlyas we would in the “bigly bower” of any baroness. But I thinkEngland sat up all night, wrapped in her blanket-shawl, and witha neat lace cap upon her head, — so that she would have lookedperfectly the lady, if any one had come in, — shuddering andlistening. I know that she was very ill next day, in requital.She watched, as her parent country watches the seas, that nobodymay do wrong in any case, and deserved to have met someinterruption, she was so well prepared. However, there was none,other than from the nearness of some twenty sets of powerfullungs, which would not leave the night to a deathly stillness.In this house we had, if not good beds, yet good tea, good bread,and wild strawberries, and were entertained with most freecommunications of opinion and history from our hosts. Neithershall any of us have a right to say again that we cannot findany who may be willing to hear all we may have to say. “A’s fishthat comes to the net,” should be painted on the sign at PapawGrove.





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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s ONEÓTA, OR CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RED RACE OF AMERICA FROM ORIGINAL NOTES AND MANUSCRIPTS (New York & London: Wiley & Putnam).

(In about 1851 Henry Thoreau would copy items from this into his Indian Notebook #4.)

1845

THE RED RACE




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/45/1845_SchoolcraftONEOTA.pdf


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Between the Fort Snelling military base and the settlement of St. Paul, Minnesota, Wakantankanwin Goddess, or Mary Nancy Eastman, the daughter of Captain Seth Eastman with Wakaninajinwin Stands Sacred or “Lucy” and thus the granddaughter of Marpiyawicasta Man of the Clouds, became the bride of Itewakanhdiota Many Lightnings.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION, RESPECTING THE HISTORY, CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES: COLL. AND PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS PER ACT OF CONGRESS OF MARCH 3RD 1847 (this set of volumes would be most carefully considered, as it was being published over a series of years, by Henry Thoreau).

1847

THE INDIAN TRIBES, I, 1851THE INDIAN TRIBES, II, 1852THE INDIAN TRIBES, III, 1854THE INDIAN TRIBES, IV, 1854THE INDIAN TRIBES, V, 1855

THE INDIAN TRIBES, VI, 1857




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_I_1851.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_II_1852.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_III_1854.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_IV_1854.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_V_1855.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_VI_1857.pdf


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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s INFORMATION RESPECTING THE HISTORY, CONDITION, AND PROSPECTS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES (Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge).

1850





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Early in the year: At the age of 41, Captain Seth Eastman was commanded from Texas to Washington DC, where he would be assigned to work on the six volumes of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION, RESPECTING THE HISTORY, CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES: COLL. AND PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS PER ACT OF CONGRESS OF MARCH 3RD 1847, to be published by Lippincott, Grambo and Company in Philadelphia





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between 1851 and 1857.

Henry Thoreau would be accessing these volumes, courtesy of the library of the Boston Society of Natural History and courtesy of the Harvard Library, and making extracts into his Canadian Notebook, and Indian Notebooks #6, #7, #8, and #11,9 as the successive volumes of the set would be published.













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9. The original notebooks are held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, as manuscripts #596 through #606. There are photocopies, made by Robert F. Sayre in the 1930s, in four boxes at the University of Iowa Libraries, accession number MsC 795. More recently, Bradley P. Dean, PhD and Paul Maher, Jr. have attempted to work over these materials.





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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft dedicated his THIRTY YEARS WITH THE INDIAN TRIBES, 1812-1842 to his friend Alexander Bryan Johnson. In this year, also, Schoolcraft and the US Army artist Captain Seth Eastman began issuing, in six volumes, their HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES. (The series would be completed in 1857.)

(Henry Thoreau would be checking out this volume from the library of the Boston Society of Natural History on July 26, 1852.)

In about this year Thoreau copied into his Indian Notebook #4 from Schoolcraft’s ONEÓTA, OR CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RED RACE OF AMERICA FROM ORIGINAL NOTES AND MANUSCRIPTS.

Isaac Smith Homans’s, Alexander Bryan Johnson’s, James William Gilbart’s, John Barnard Byles’s, and John Ramsay McCulloch’s THE BANKER’S COMMON-PLACE BOOK (Phillips, Sampson & Company).

(In this publication, the contribution of “A.B. Johnson, Esq., President of the Ontario Branch Bank, Utica,” to wit “A Treatise on Banking, the Duties of a Banker, and his Personal Requisites therefor,” is foregrounded, and provides the basis for the various other contributions by the various other authors.)

1851

THE INDIAN TRIBES, I, 1851

THE RED RACE





http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/45/1845_SchoolcraftONEOTA.pdf


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Harland Coultas’s THE PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY, AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE CRYPTOGAMIA; FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES (Philadelphia).

Publication of the 2d volume of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Captain Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES:

It was probably in this year that Henry Thoreau copied into his Indian Notebook #6 from the initial volume of a 1771 edition of Mark Catesby’s THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CAROLINA, FLORIDA AND THE BAHAMA ISLANDS: CONTAINING THE FIGURES OF BIRDS, BEASTS, FISHES, SERPENTS, INSECTS AND PLANTS: PARTICULARLY THE FOREST-TREES, SHRUBS, AND OTHER PLANTS, NOT HITHERTO DESCRIBED, OR VERY INCORRECTLY FIGURED BY AUTHORS.

Also, probably in this year, Thoreau copied into his Indian Notebook #610 from NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION THROUGH THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI TO ITASCA LAKE, THE ACTUAL SOURCE OF THIS RIVER; EMBRACING AN EXPLORATORY TRIP THROUGH THE ST. CROIX AND BURNTWOOD (OR BROULE) RIVERS; IN 1832. UNDER THE DIRECTION OF HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT.

Also probably in this year, Thoreau copied into his Canadian Notebook11 from a chart of the gulf and river of

1852

10. The original notebooks are held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, as manuscripts #596 through #606. There are photocopies, made by Robert F. Sayre in the 1930s, in four boxes at the University of Iowa Libraries, accession number MsC 795. More recently, Bradley P. Dean, PhD and Paul Maher, Jr. have attempted to work over these materials.11. Henry Thoreau’s Canadian Notebook is now at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

THE INDIAN TRIBES, II, 1852

BIOLOGY

MARK CATESBY, VOL. I





http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/DLDecArts.CateNatHisV1


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St. Lawrence that had been made by British naval officer Henry Wolsey Bayfield.

CAPTAIN BAYFIELD




http://www.hull.ac.uk/mhsc/FarHorizons/Documents/Henry_Wolsey_Bayfield.pdf


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November 28, Monday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the Reverend William Gilpin’s OBSERVATIONS ON THE COASTS OF HAMPSHIRE, SUSSEX, AND KENT, RELATIVE CHIEFLY TO PICTURESQUE BEAUTY: MADE IN THE SUMMER OF THE YEAR 1774 (London, Printed by A. Strahan for T. Cadell and W. Davies).12 He also checked out the Reverend’s THREE ESSAYS: ON PICTURESQUE BEAUTY; ON PICTURESQUE TRAVEL; AND ON SKETCHING LANDSCAPE: WITH A POEM ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING. TO THESE ARE NOW ADDED, TWO ESSAYS GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPLES AND MODE IN WHICH THE AUTHOR EXECUTED HIS OWN DRAWINGS (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies), in its 3d edition issued in 1808.

Having already perused the volumes for the years 1633-1638 and 1640, Thoreau checked out the JESUIT RELATION volumes for the years 1640-1641 and 1642.13

http://www.canadiana.org

At the Boston Society of Natural History, Thoreau checked out the 3d volume of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Captain Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES.

1853

12. He would copy from this into his Fact Book, and use some of the material in CAPE COD.13. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU

R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. PAUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637

THREE ESSAYS, 3D EDITION

THE INDIAN TRIBES, III, 1854





http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433070986900;page=root;seq=5;view=image;size=100;orient=0



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Monday Nov. 28Saw boys skating in Cambridge-Port the first ice to bear– Settled with J. Munroe & Co — and on a new Actplaced 12 of my books with him on sale. I have paid him directly out of pocket since the book was published290 dollars and taken his receipt for it— This does not include postage on proofsheets &c &c— I have received from other quarters about 15 dollars. This has been the pecuniary value of the book– Saw atthe Nat Hist– Rooms the skeleton of a moose — with horns– The length of the spinal processes (?) over theshoulder was very great– The hind legs were longer than the front — & the horns rose about 2 feet above theshoulders & spread between 4 & 5 I judged–Dr Harris described to me his finding a species of Cicindela at the White mts this fall — (the same he had foundthere one specimen of som time ago–) supposed to be very rare — found at st Peter’s River & at Lake Superior— but he proves it to be common near the Wht. mts.

CAPE COD: To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which I should notbefore have accepted. There were distinct patches of the color of apurple grape with the bloom rubbed off. But first and last the seais of all colors. Well writes Gilpin concerning “the brilliant hueswhich are continually playing on the surface of a quiet ocean,” andthis was not too turbulent at a distance from the shore. “Beautiful,”says he, “no doubt in a high degree are those glimmering tints whichoften invest the tops of mountains; but they are mere coruscationscompared with these marine colors, which are continually varying andshifting into each other in all the vivid splendor of the rainbow,through the space often of several leagues.” Commonly, in calmweather, for half a mile from the shore, where the bottom tinges it,the sea is green, or greenish, as are some ponds; then blue for manymiles, often with purple tinges, bounded in the distance by a lightalmost silvery stripe; beyond which there is generally a dark-bluerim, like a mountain ridge in the horizon, as if, like that, it owedits color to the intervening atmosphere. On another day it will bemarked with long streaks, alternately smooth and rippled, light-colored and dark, even like our inland meadows in a freshet, andshowing which way the wind sets.Thus we sat on the foaming shore, looking on the wine-colored ocean,—

Here and there was a darker spot on its surface, the shadow of acloud, though the sky was so clear that no cloud would have beennoticed otherwise, and no shadow would have been seen on the land,where a much smaller surface is visible at once. So, distant cloudsand showers may be seen on all sides by a sailor in the course of aday, which do not necessarily portend rain where he is. In July wesaw similar dark-blue patches where schools of Menhaden rippled thesurface, scarcely to be distinguished from the shadows of clouds.Sometimes the sea was spotted with them far and wide, such is itsinexhaustible fertility. Close at hand you see their back fin, whichis very long and sharp, projecting two or three inches above water.From time to time also we saw the white bellies of the Bass playingalong the shore.

PEOPLE OFCAPE COD

WILLIAM GILPIN




Whenever and wherever you see this little pencil icon in the pages of this Kouroo Contexture, it is marking an extract from the journal of Henry David Thoreau. OK?

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/CAPE/PeopleMentionedInCAPE.pdf


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November 29, Tuesday: Professor Sandra Harbert Petrulionis has described the entries of this day in the journal of Henry Thoreau in the following manner:

On November 29, 1853, sandwiched in between the Journal’sdiscussion of a rare beetle and a local boy’s find of a NativeAmerican artifact, Thoreau records a story told to him by localfarmer George Minott — a tale of a rabid dog which met its demisein Concord many years before. Francis H. Allen included thistale in his 1936 MEN OF CONCORD, a compilation of the Journal’scharacter sketches. As a way of leading in to it, Thoreau relatesthe fact that recently a boy in nearby Lincoln had been fatallybitten by a rabid dog. Thoreau — who calls what he’s about towrite a “story” — justifies the digression as “worth telling forit shows how much trouble the passage of one mad dog through thetown may produce” (Journal V 522). In classic storytelling fashion, Thoreau begins by establishingthe time and setting: “It was when he [Minott] was a boy andlived down below the Old Ben Prescott House — over the CellarHole on what is now Hawthorne’s Land.” The following excerptssummarize Minott’s description of the dog’s progress throughtown:

... On Saturday, the 26th, a dog on whose collar the words “Milton Hill,” or equivalent ones, wereengraved ran through the town, having, as the story went, bitten a boy in Lincoln. He bit several dogs in thistown and was finally shot. Some of the dogs bitten have been killed, and rumor now says that the boy diedyesterday. People are considerably alarmed. Some years ago a boy in Lincoln was bitten by a raccoon and diedof hydrophobia. I observed to Minott to-night that I did not think that our doctors knew how to cure this disease,but he said they could cure it, he had seen a man bitten who was cured. The story is worth telling, for it showsho much trouble the passage of one mad dog through the town may produce.It was when he was a boy and lived down below the old Ben Prescott house, over the cellar-hole on what is nowHawthorne’s land. The first he remembers a couple of men had got poles and were punching at a strange dogtoward night under a barn in that neighborhood. The dog, which was speckled and not very large, would growland bite the pole, and they ran a good deal of risk, but they did not know that he was mad. At length they routedhim, and he took to the road and came on toward town, and Minott, keeping his distance, followed on behind.When the dog got to the old Ben Prescott Place, he turned up into the yard, where there were a couple of turkies,drove them into a corner — bit off the head of one, and carried the body off across the road into the meadowopposite. They then raised the cry of mad dog. He saw his mother and Aunt Prescott, two old ladies, comingdown the road, while the dog was running the other way in the meadow, & he shouted to them to take care ofthem selves — for that dog was mad — The dog soon reentered the road at some bars and held on toward town.Minott next saw Harry Hooper — coming down the road after his cows ... & he shouted to him to look out forthe dog was mad — but Harry, who was in the middle of the road, spread his arms out, one on each side, and,being short, the dog leaped right upon his open breast & made a pass at his throat, but missed it, though itfrightened him a good deal; and Minott, coming up, exclaimed “Why, you’re crazy, Harry; if he’d ’a’ bitten ye,’t would ’a’ killed ye.” When he got up as far as the red house or Curtis place, the dog was about in the middleof the road, and a large and stout old gentleman by the name of Fay — dressed in small-clothes, was comingdown the sidewalk. M. shouted to him also to take care of himself, for the dog was mad, and Fay said afterwardthat he heard him but he had always supposed that a mad dog would n’t turn out for anything; but when this dogwas nearly abreast of him, he suddenly inclined toward him, and then again inclined still more, and seized himby the left leg just below the knee, and Fay, giving him a kick with the other leg, tripped himself up; and whenhe was down, the dog bit him in the right leg in the same place. Being by this time well frightened, and fearingthat he would spring at his throat next, Fay seized the dog himself by his throat and held him fast, and calledlustily for someone to come and kill him. A man by the name of Lewis rushed out of the red house with an oldaxe and began to tap on the dog’s nose with it, but he was afraid to strike harder, for Fay told him not to hit him.

DOG





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Minott saw it all, but kept still his distance. Suddenly Fay, not knowing what he did, let go, and the man, givingthe dog a blow across the back, ran into the house, but, it being a dull meat axe, the dog trotted along, still towardtown.He turned and went round the pond by Bowers’s and, going down to the brook by the roadside, lapped somewater. Just then, Peter coming over the bridge, the dog reared up and growled at him and he, seeing that he wasmad, made haste through the bars out of his way and cut across the fields to Reuben Brown’s. The dog went on,it being now between sundown and dark, to Peter Wheeler’s, and bit two cows, which afterward died ofhydrophobia, and next he went to where Nathan Snow now lives, and bit a goose in the wing, and so he kept onthrough the town. The next that was heard of him, Black Cato, that lived at the Lee place, now Sam Wheeler’s,on the river, was waked up about midnight by a noise among the pigs, and, having got up, he took a club andwent out to see what was the matter. Looking over into the pen, this dog reared up at him, and he knocked himback into it, and, jumping over, mauled him till he thought he was dead and then tossed him out. In the morninghe thought he [would] go out and see whose dog he had killed, but lo! he had picked himself up, and there wasno dog to be found.Cato was going out into the woods chopping that day, and as he was getting over a wall lined with brush, thesame dog reared up at him once more, but this time, having heard of the mad dog, he was frightened and ran;but still the dog came on, and once or twice he knocked him aside with a large stone, till at length, the dogcoming close to him, he gave him a blow which killed him; and lest he should run away again, he cut off hishead and threw both head and body into the river.

Cato succeeds where esteemed white citizens fail; his heroic actrids the town of danger.From the vantage of our safe hindsight, the story’s humor isinseparable from its potential tragedy. Anyone who comes incontact with this dog could, of course, be killed. Nevertheless,Thoreau has a bit of fun at the expense of the townsfolk. Mr. Faywas possibly Grant Fay, a local farmer whose son Addison was acontemporary of Thoreau. As “a large and stout old gentleman...dressed in small-clothes,” twice bitten by the dog largelythrough his own ineptitude, Fay suffers at Thoreau’s hands.Moreover, Thoreau concludes with the information that “Fay wenthome ... drank some spirit ... went straight over to Dr. Heywoods... & ... was doctored 3 weeks ... cried like a baby. The Dr cutout the mangled flesh & ... Fay ... never experienced any furtherill effects from the bite” (525).Thoreau’s recording of this incident may have been influencedby his reading of Henry Schoolcraft’s ONEÓTA, a book he had readtwo years prior, that details many customs and traditions of theChippewa and Algonquin Indians (Sattelmeyer 266). Within it,Schoolcraft inserts a brief sketch entitled “The Rabid Wolf,”in which a diseased wolf enters a small town, and like Minott’smad dog, bites various farm animals before sinking its teethinto “a gentlemen of standing... who came to a melancholy end.”The wolf, according to Schoolcraft, “seemed to have a perfectubiquity — it was everywhere.” Finally, “old Colonel S.,” thetown’s Revolutionary War hero, shoots and kills the animal (375-379).Like Schoolcraft, Thoreau also posits a Revolutionary Warveteran as the mad dog’s nemesis, except that his story’s herois a black man rather than a venerated white citizen. Who was“Black Cato?” The former slave of prominent Concord citizenDuncan Ingraham, he had fought in the Revolution, after which





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he continued to live in Concord, dying there in 1805 (Bartlett129-130). Cato had obtained his freedom in 1795; from then on,like most free blacks in Concord at this time, he lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Thoreau memorialized him in the “FormerInhabitants; and Winter Visitors” chapter of WALDEN as one of ahandful of blacks who had preceded Thoreau in Walden Woods(257). J. Lyndon Shanley has documented that Thoreau amplifiedthis chapter in 1853, the same year he writes down the story ofthe mad dog (66-67, 87, 196-197). Prior to Thoreau’s portrayals,Cato had been depicted as a hapless albeit lucky slave: in oneanecdote, he manages to avoid being shot during the war whenBritish Major Pitcairn put a gun to his head; and in another,he begs for sustenance from his former master (Brooks 58-59,Bartlett 129).That Thoreau casts as his hero a free black man who lived —literally and figuratively — on the margins of town appears apurposeful decision — one that possibly modifies the detailsMinott told. Although of course we can’t know if Thoreau changedany of the particulars as Minott related them, it is certainlyconceivable that Thoreau elevated Cato’s stature as he recordedthe events. To be sure, little effort was needed to heroize Cato:he did kill the dog after several others failed to halt itsprogress. Yet Thoreau seems to juxtapose Cato’s bravado with thepanic and incompetence of the white characters. In contrast totheir near hysterics, Cato acts decisively to hinder and, atlast, to decapitate the dog. Although he doesn’t realizeinitially that he’s wrestling a rabid dog, when he learns thisfact, Cato has the wisdom (unlike Mr. Fay) to try to get awayfrom it. But when forced to deal with the dog literally head-on, Cato deals it a death blow. His swift, instinctual responseto the dog reflects Cato’s connection to a way of life thatThoreau respects — to a culture that lives closer to nature thando the white townsfolk.What other reasons might Thoreau have had in the fall of 1853for enthroning a black man as the hero of his narrative? At thistime, Concord’s antislavery residents — including those in theThoreau household — were in the throes of revolt against the1850 Fugitive Slave Law. That July, the Thoreaus had hidden arunaway slave in their home; and just weeks before Minott’sstory, the Thoreau family provided lodging to a free black womanwho was attempting to raise the money needed to purchase herhusband, enslaved in Virginia. And six months later, in May andJune 1854, Thoreau ranted in his Journal against the slave powerwhen fugitive slave Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston(Journal 4 113, Journal V 472, Journal 8 163-210).Unquestionably, Thoreau was affected by the heroism of theseblack people whose lives were on the line in ways that he andConcord’s other white citizens could never comprehend. In hisstudy of the black folk hero, John Roberts argues that authorsusually create “heroes ... who ... appear to possess personaltraits ... that exemplify our conception of our ideal self” (1).Roberts believes that “folk heroic creation occurs because





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groups, at critical moments in time, recognize in the actionsof certain figures ... qualities or behaviors that they havereason to believe would enhance culture-building” (5). At thejuncture of what Thoreau may have perceived to be just such a“critical moment,” he elevated Cato to the status of a blackfolk hero, countering previous depictions of him in the annalsof Concord history.





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Mary Henderson Eastman’s CHICORA AND OTHER REGIONS OF THE CONQUERORS AND THE CONQUERED features the local color of the native tribes of the Pueblos in New Mexico.14

Publication of the 3d and 4th volumes of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Captain Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES.

Henry Thoreau would be checking out Volume III from the library of the Boston Society of Natural History on November 28, 1853 and Volume IV from Harvard Library on December 7, 1854.

1854

14. If this author ever visited the Southwestern region of the United States, I don’t know of that. It seems to me to be more than likely that in constructing this volume she would have been relying on missives from her hubby, Captain Seth Eastman — whom the US Army had posted to Texas.

THE INDIAN TRIBES, III, 1854THE INDIAN TRIBES, IV, 1854







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Yet another publication by the indefagitable Connecticut publisher Henry Trumbull, INDIAN NARRATIVES: CONTAINING A CORRECT AND INTERESTING HISTORY OF THE INDIAN WARS, FROM THE LANDING OF OUR PILGRIM FATHERS, 1620, TO GEN. WAYNE’S VICTORY, 1794. TO WHICH IS ADDED A CORRECT ACCOUNT OF THE CAPTURE AND SUFFERINGS OF MRS. JOHNSON, ZADOCK STEELE, AND OTHERS; AND ALSO A THRILLING ACCOUNT OF THE BURNING OF ROYALTON (Claremont, N.H.:Tracy and Brothers; Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry):

(This edition would be found in the personal library of Henry Thoreau.)

INDIAN NARRATIVES




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/54/1854_IndianNarratives.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/54/1854_IndianNarratives.pdf


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January 19, Thursday: While visiting the metropolis to testify in a court case, Henry Thoreau stopped by Harvard Library to turn in the 3d volume of HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES,

that he had checked out on the 28th of November, and check out the first of the three volumes of Sir Uvedale Tomkyns Price (1747-1829)’s ESSAYS ON THE PICTURESQUE, AS COMPARED WITH THE SUBLIME AND THE BEAUTIFUL, AND ON THE USE OF STUDYING PICTURES, FOR THE PURPOSE OF IMPROVING REAL ESTATE (London: Mawman, 1810) (1st edition, London: J. Robson, 1794).

THE INDIAN TRIBES, III, 1854






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Thoreau also checked out Dr. James H. McCulloh, Jr. (1793-1870)’s RESEARCHES ON AMERICA: BEING AN ATTEMPT TO SETTLE SOME POINTS RELATIVE TO THE ABORIGINES OF AMERICA, &C. (Baltimore: Joseph Robinson, 1st edition 1816, 2d edition 1817).

Thoreau also checked out John Josselyn’s ACCOUNT OF TWO VOYAGES TO NEW-ENGLAND (1674).15

15. Refer to Philip F. Gura’s “Thoreau and John Josselyn” in NEQ 48 (December 1975), pages 505-18:

It is my contention that people tracing the sources ofThoreau’s singular literary development haveoverlooked influences very close to home.... Could itnot be that Thoreau’s true affinity is not to peoplelike Emerson, but to those seventeenth-century men whowere, in Urian Oakes’s words, “the Lord’sRemembrancers or Recorders”?... Is it accidental thatthe excursion was Thoreau’s chosen form, or that hewould compose a botanical index for his trips to theMaine woods?





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Jan 19th 54Went to Cambridge to Court.Dr Harris says that my coccoons found in Lincoln in Dec. are of the Atticus Cecropia. the largest of our emperormoths. He made this drawing of the 4 kinds of Emperor moths which he says we have– The Cecropia is thelargest The coccoon must be right end uppermost when they are ready to come out. The A. Promethia is the onlymoth whose coccoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf & round the shoot — the leaf partlyfolded round it.That spider whose hole I found — & which I carried him, he is pretty sure is the Lycosa fatifera.In a large & splendid work on the insects of Georgia by Edwards & smith (?) near end of last century upstairs,I found plates of the above moths — called not atticus but phalaena — and other species of phalaena.He thinks that small beetle slightly metallic which I saw with grubs &c on the Yellow lily roots last fall — wasa Donax or one of the Donasia?In Josselyn’s account of his voyage from London to Boston in 1638 he says “June the first day in the afternoon,very thick foggie weather, we sailed by an inchanted island,” &c This kind of remark to be found in so manyaccounts of voyages — appears to be a fragment of tradition come down from the earliest account of Atlantis& its disappearance–

Varro having enumerated certain writers on Agriculture says accidentally that they wrote soluta ratione [shouldbe soluta oratione] i.e. in prose. This suggests the difference between the looseness of prose & the precision ofpoetry. A perfect expression requires a particular rhythm or measure for which no other can be substituted– Theprosaic is always a loose expression

Varro makes Fundanius say “I could not live [in Italy?] in a summer day of non diffinderem meo insititio [should

THE MAINE WOODS: There may be some truth in what he said about themoose growing larger formerly; for the quaint John Josselyn, aphysician who spent many years in this very district of Maine inthe seventeenth century, says, that the tips of their horns “aresometimes found to be two fathoms asunder,” —and he is particularto tell us that a fathom is six feet,— “and [they are] in height,from the toe of the fore foot to the pitch of the shoulder, twelvefoot, both which hath been taken by some of my sceptique readersto be monstrous lies”; and he adds, “There are certaintranscendentia in every creature, which are the indeliblecharacter of God, and which discover God.” This is a greaterdilemma to be caught in than is presented by the cranium of theyoung Bechuana ox, apparently another of the transcendentia, inthe collection of Thomas Steel, Upper Brook Street, London, whose“entire length of horn, from tip to tip, along the curve, is 13ft. 5 in.; distance (straight) between the tips of the horns, 8ft. 8 1/2 in.” However, the size both of the moose and the cougar,as I have found, is generally rather underrated than overrated,and I should be inclined to add to the popular estimate a part ofwhat I subtracted from Josselyn’s.

JOHN JOSSELYN

COLL.MASS.HIST.SOC. 1833

LIBRIS GRAMMATICIS




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/33/1833_CollMassHistSoc.pdf

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16400/16400-h/varrolat.htm


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be insiticio] somno meridie — if I did not split it with my inserted sleep at noon” — i.e. on account of the heat–

Cato makes much account of the leaves of elms & poplars for sheep & oxen & Varro particularly recommendsto plant elms along the confines of a farm because this not merely preserve the boundary & the fence but bearsome baskets of grapes & afford the most palatable leaves for sheep & oxen.Varro divides fences into four kinds — unum naturale, alterum agreste, tertium militare, quartum fabrile. (manykinds of each)– The first is the living hedge– One kind of sepes agrestis is our rail fence — & our other deadwooden farm fences would come under this head– The military sepes consists of a ditch & rampart — iscommon along highways — sometimes a rampart alone. The 4th is the mason’s fence of stone — or brick (burntor unburnt) or stone & earth together.

Seges dicitur quod aratum satum est; arvum, quod aratum necdum satum est: novalis, ubi satum fuit ante, quamsecunda aratione renovetur.

DE AGRI CULTURA LIBER

DE AGRI CULTURA, I




http://books.google.com/books?id=xaBJAAAAYAAJ&q=insititio#v=snippet&q=insiticio&f=false

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/varro.rr1.html


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December 7, Thursday: Louis Pasteur was appointed as Dean of the new Faculty of Sciences in Lille. The advice he offered in his inaugural address has been variously translated into the English as “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind” and “Chance favors the prepared mind” and “Fortune favors the prepared mind” and “In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind” and as “Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind” and as “Prepare your mind so when your one big break come along, you will be ready to seize it” and as “Prepare yourself for opportunity.” I prefer a bumper-sticker-style: “Prepare for it.”

“Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.”

— Louis Pasteur, at the Universityof Lisle on December 7, 1854

PREPARE FOR IT





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Henry Thoreau walked through Olneyville in Johnston, Rhode Island, 21/2 or 3 miles west of Providence. On the way back from Providence to Concord he stopped at Harvard Library and checked out:

— John Dunn Hunter’s MEMOIRS OF A CAPTIVITY AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA, FROM CHILDHOOD TO THE AGE OF NINETEEN (Philadelphia, 1823)16

http://www.merrycoz.org/adults.htm

16. Thoreau would register his notes on this reading in his Indian Notebook #8 and in his Fact Book.

MEMOIRS OF A CAPTIVITY




http://www.merrycoz.org/HUNTER.HTM

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/23/1823_JohnDunnHunterMEMOIRS.pdf


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— Cadwallader Colden’s THE HISTORY OF THE FIVE INDIAN NATIONS OF CANADA, WHICH ARE

DEPENDENT ON THE PROVINCE OF NEW-YORK IN AMERICA... (London: Printed for T. Osborne, 1747)

CADWALLADER COLDEN

CADWALLADER COLDEN

CADWALLADER COLDEN

CADWALLADER COLDEN

CADWALLADER COLDEN

CADWALLADER COLDEN

CADWALLADER COLDEN

CADWALLADER COLDEN




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_CadwalladerColden.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_Colden5NATIONS1.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_Colden5NATIONS2.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_ColdenCHARTERS.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_ColdenJULY1742.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_ColdenJUNE1744.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_ColdenNEWYORK.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/40DECADE/47/1747_ColdenTREATIES.pdf


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— the 4th volume of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and CaptainSeth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF

THE UNITED STATES

— JESUIT RELATIONS FOR 163917


17. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU

R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. PAUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637He had already perused the volumes for 1633-1638 and 1640-1642. Harvard Library had just obtained this 1639 volume from Québec.

THE INDIAN TRIBES, IV, 1854







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WALDEN: The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, beingburned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to theirtormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimeschanced that they were superior to any consolation which themissionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be doneby fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those, who, fortheir part, did not care how they were done by, who loved theirenemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgivingthem all they did.

PEOPLE OFWALDEN

THE JESUITS




This would be a major resource for Thoreau.

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/PeopleOfWALDEN.pdf


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Mary Henderson Eastman’s THE AMERICAN ANNUAL: ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA.

Publication of the 5th volume of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Captain Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES:

December 7, Friday: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft rose to the defense of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by writing to the Washington DC National Intelligencer that all the episodes of THE SONG OF “HIAWATHA” derived from Native American lore as it was understood by him, and that he had himself never so much as heard of this Finnish KALEVALA thing (if anyone ought to be accused of plagiarism in this regard, it would be Schoolcraft for the manner in which he here dissimulated in describing as his own without giving due credit native American materials collected in 1843 and supplied to him by another researcher, Joshua V.H. Clark).

1855

THE INDIAN TRIBES, V, 1855






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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Captain Seth Eastman completed, at six volumes, their HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES. (The series had begun in 1851.)

Royal B. Stratton, LIFE AMONG THE INDIANS: BEING AN INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE CAPTIVITY OF THE OATMAN GIRLS, AMONG THE APACHE AND MOHAVE INDIANS ... San Francisco CA: Whitton, Towne & Company’s Excelsior Steam Power Presses.

1857













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Here is what San Francisco, California looked like in this year:





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December 10, Saturday: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft died.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1864








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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2010. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: December 9, 2014

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST




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Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.


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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.





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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.




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