Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
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ultimate task, whoever may perform it.
He originally went to the west for the purpose of science. His mineralogical rambles soon carried him into wide and untrodden fields; and the share he was called on to take in the exploration of the country, its geography, geology, and natural features, have thrown him in positions of excitement and peril, which furnish, it is supposed, an appropriate apology, if apology be necessary, for the publication of these memoirs. But whatever degree of interest and originality may have been connected with his early observations and discoveries in science, geography, or antiquities, the circumstances which directed his attention to the Indian tribes--their history, manners and customs, languages, and general ethnology, have been deemed to lay his strongest claim to public respect. The long period during which these observations have been continued to be made, his intimate relations with the tribes, the favorable circumstances of his position and studies, and the ardor and assiduity with which he has availed himself of them, have created expectations in his case which few persons, it is believed, in our history, have excited. It is under these circumstances that the following selections from his running journal are submitted. They form, as it were, a thread connecting acts through a long period, and are essential to their true understanding and development. A word may be said respecting the manner of the record which is thus exhibited:-- The time is fixed by quoting exactly the dates, and the names of persons are invariably given wherever they could, with propriety, be employed; |
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