Author: Henry Schoolcraft

Henry Schoolcraft, whose full published name was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, worked as a geologist, explorer, government agent, and ethnological collector. Algic Researches gathered Indigenous stories and legends in two volumes. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and members of her Johnston family wrote, collected, and translated source material that Henry edited and altered for publication. Their direct contributions are essential to understanding the collection and the unequal structures through which it reached print. Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History was an 1846 address to the New-York Historical Society calling for closer study of antiquities, languages, monuments, and early cultures. A Memoir On The Geological Position Of A Fossil Tree belongs to Schoolcraft’s geological career and describes a specimen from the secondary rocks of the Des Plaines River. Together, these works move from geology to historical inquiry and oral tradition, while the Schoolcraft papers preserve evidence of the family collaboration behind Algic Researches.