Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
Photo of Henry Schoolcraft in 1855.
Born	Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-03-28)March 28, 1793 Guilderland, United States
Died	December 10, 1864(1864-12-10) (aged 71)
Nationality	American
Spouse	Jane Johnston Mary Howard
Children	Several
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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of American Indians in the 1850s.

He served as a United States Indian agent for a period beginning in 1822 in Michigan, where he married Jane Johnston, mixed-race daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother, herself a daughter of Ojibwa war chief Waubojeeg. She taught him the Ojibwe language and much about her maternal culture. They had several children, two of whom survived past childhood. She is now recognized as the first Native American literary writer in the United States.

In 1846 the widower Schoolcraft was commissioned by Congress for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States, which was published in six volumes from 1851 to 1857. He married again in 1847, to Mary Howard, from a slaveholding family in South Carolina. In 1860 she published the bestselling The Black Gauntlet, an anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin novel.

Schoolcraft was born in 1793 in Guilderland, Albany County, New York, the son of Lawrence Schoolcraft and Anne Barbara (née Rowe) Schoolcraft. He entered Union College at age 15 and later attended Middlebury College. He was especially interested in geology and mineralogy.