Horatio Hale

Horatio Emmons Hale
Horatio Hale
Born	May 3, 1817 Newport, New Hampshire
Died	December 28, 1896 Clinton, Ontario Canada
Residence	Clinton, Ontario
Nationality	American
Fields	ethnology
Alma mater	Harvard University

Horatio Emmons Hale (May 3, 1817 – December 28, 1896) was an American-Canadian ethnologist, philologist and businessman who studied language as a key for classifying ancient peoples and being able to trace their migrations. He was the first to discover that the Tutelo language of Virginia belonged to the Siouan family, and to identify the Cherokee language as a member of the Iroquoian family of languages. In addition, he published a work Iroquois Book of Rites (1883), based on interpreting the Iroquois wampum belts, as well as his studies with tribal leaders.

After his marriage to a Canadian woman in 1855, Hale moved to Ontario. He continued to publish articles in American scholarly journals, while living in Canada for the rest of his life.

Horatio was born on 3 May 1817, at Newport, New Hampshire, in the United States, was the son of David Hale, a lawyer, and of Sarah Josepha,who, after the death of her husband, turned to writing and became a prominent magazine editor. Entering Harvard College in 1833, Hale showed a marked faculty for languages. His first essay in original work appeared the next year, and attracted the attention of the college authorities. It consisted of an Algonkin vocabulary, which he gathered from a band of Indians who had camped on the college grounds. Three years later, when the United States Exploring Expedition to little-known portions of the globe was organised under Charles Wilkes, Hale was recommended, while yet an undergraduate, for the post of ethnologist and philologist, and obtained the appointment. From 1838 to 1842, he was employed in the work of the expedition, visiting South America, Australasia, Polynesia, and North-western America, then known as Oregon. From this point he returned overland. The Hale Passages of Puget Sound were named in recognition of his service to the expedition. The expedition went on to Polynesia. Of the reports of that expedition, Hale prepared the sixth volume, Ethnography and Philology (1846), which is said to have laid the foundations of the ethnography of Polynesia. He continued to travel and study abroad.

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