From the President of the United States, Millard Fillmore

To The Senate Of The United States:

I transmit herewith a communication from the Department of the Interior, and the papers which accompanied it; being the first part of the results of investigations by Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq., under the provisions of an Act of Congress, approved March 3d, 1847, requiring the Secretary of War "to collect and digest such statistics and materials as may illustrate the history, the present condition, and future prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States."

MILLARD FILLMORE.
Washington, 10th August 1850.

Department Of The Interior
Washington, August 9, 1850.

SIR:

I have the honor to transmit herewith, with the view of their being laid before the Senate, a communication from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the papers which accompany it: viz., a letter from Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq., together with the manuscripts and drawings; being the first part of results of investigations under the provisions of an Act of Congress, approved March 3d, 1847, requiring the Secretary of War to collect and digest such statistics and materials as may illustrate the history, present condition, and future prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States.

Very Respectfully,
Your Obedient Servant,
D. C. GODDARD,
Secretary ad interim.
To The President Of The United States.

Department of the Interior
Office Indian Affairs
August 7th, 1850.

Sir:

Under the Act of Congress approved March 3d, 1847, Henry R. Schoolcraft was appointed "to collect and digest such statistics and materials as may illustrate the history, present condition and future prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States."

I have the honor to submit for transmission to Congress, the manuscripts and drawings here with, being the first part of the results of Mr. Schoolcraft s investigations, also a letter from him, explanatory of the nature and extent of his labors, and suggesting the proper course to be pursued in relation to the publication of the work. He naturally feels solicitous as to the correctness and style of the mechanical execution; and in view of the labor, learning, and ability he has devoted to the work, and its nationality of character, I trust his wishes in that respect may be regarded.

Very Respectfully,
Your Obedient Servant,
L. LEA, Commissioner.
D. C. GODDARD, ESQ.,
Secretary of the Interior, ad interim.

Washington, July 22d, 1850.

L. LEA, ESQ.
Commissioner of Indian Affairs

SIR:

In conformity with authority confided to me under the provisions of an Act of Congress, approved March 3d, 1847, requiring the Secretary of War "to collect and digest such statistics and materials as may illustrate the history, the present condition, and future prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States," I have the honor to submit to you the first part of the results of my investigations.

Time was required in order to place an inquiry so comprehensive in its character on a proper basis. Misapprehensions on the part of the Indians, with respect to the object of the collection of their statistics, were to be met. The additional duties required of the agents of Indian affairs presupposed so intimate an acquaintance with the history and languages of the tribes and the distinguishing traits of races that few of this class of officers were prepared to undertake them. The investigation in these particulars was therefore extended to embrace gentlemen of experience, observation, and learning, in various parts of the Union ; including numerous teachers and missionaries employed in moral and intellectual labors among them. Facts were, indeed, solicited from all who had facts to communicate.¹

Introductory Documents

Valuable memoirs and communications have been received as the result of these joint measures, official and unofficial, and a mass of information collected which may serve, it is believed, to rescue the topic, in some measure, from a class of hasty and imaginative tourists and writers, whose ill-digested theories often lack the basis of correct observation and sound deduction.

American and European writers have been, to no small extent, misled by these supposititious views, not only respecting the real character of the tribes, but the policy of the government itself in relation to them, has been extensively prejudged and misapprehended. Some of the most able and profound writers, at home and abroad, whose works will, in their main parts, be long cherished, have taken the mere synonyms of tribes, as distinct and separate tribes, playing different parts in history.

The languages which have so many features to be admired in common with the Shemitic plan of thought, to which they must be referred, have been pronounced, on very slender materials, to contain high refinements in forms of expression; an opinion which there is reason to believe requires great modifications, however terse and beautiful the languages are, in their power of combination.

The aboriginal archaeology has fallen under a somewhat similar spirit of misapprehension and predisposition to exaggeration. The antiquities of the United States are the antiquities of barbarism, and not of ancient civilization. Mere age they undoubtedly have; but when we look about our magnificent forests and fertile valleys for ancient relics of the traces of the plough, the compass, the pen, and the chisel, it must require a heated imagination to perceive much, if anything at all, beyond the hunter state of arts, as it existed at the respective eras of the Scandinavian and Columbian discoveries.

It has been the practice of some writers, astonished at the isolated monuments of labor and skill, which are manifestly intrusive, to speak of the antiquities of the Mississippi Valley as denoting a high state of ancient civilization in the aboriginal race. But when these vestiges of human labor are attentively studied on a broad scale, in connection with all the attending phenomena, they do not appear to sanction the belief of any high and general state of advance in the race before the arrival of Europeans. This may be emphatically said of the tribes within the territory of the United States, whatever judgment may be formed respecting the ruins of Palenque, Cuzco, Yucatan, and the Valley of Mexico.

A predisposition to admire and wonder in viewing objects of archaeological discovery, is not peculiar to this continent, but has stood in the way of sober deduction, founded on an impartial basis of migratory action and reaction in all ages of the world s history.

However these subjects may, in our own land, puzzle and distract inquirers, lying, in some minds, as so many stumbling-blocks in the way of historical truth, it was due to the character of the government, and to a peculiar variety of the race of man, for such we must regard the Indian tribes, to place the record from which both their and its actions are to be judged, on grounds of authentic information while the tribes are yet on the stage of action.

It could not have been anticipated in the beginning of the 16th century, that erratic and predatory hordes of hunters, without agriculture, arts, or letters, and with absolutely nothing in their civil polity that merits the name of government, should have been able to sustain themselves; far less, to cope with the European stocks who landed here with the highest type of industrial civilization.

But justice to every period of our history, colonial and sovereign, requires it to be shown that the great duties of humanity have not been constantly performed towards them ; that their possessory right to the soil has not been at all times fully acknowledged, and that their capacities for improvement and knowledge have not been attempted to be elicited in every way, and unceasingly cultivated and appealed to.

A continent has been appropriated; in the occupancy of -which this race preceded us. For their actual character in peace and war, and capacities for the duties of life; for their history and idiosyncrasies; for their arts and habits; their modes of subsistence, and inter-tribal inter course ; for their languages and mental traits and peculiarities, as developed by curious oral recitals and mythologic dogmas and opinions, which carry the mind back to early oriental epochs ; for their system of mnemonic symbols, and, in fine, for the general facts that go to establish their nationality and character, posterity will look to the present age for its record, whatever may betide the history of the tribes, or the efforts of humanity in their behalf.

In providing for their enumeration and statistics, Congress has regarded these as indispensable points in the illustration of the main design. How far the inquiries are accomplished in the investigations made, there will be better means of judging when the results shall have been fully presented. The present materials are submitted as a part of the information collected, and will be followed by others as early as the returns and papers can be fully examined and digested.

It will occur to you, sir, that this inquiry is of a national character, and that, in bringing the matter forward, there will be a propriety in permitting the same hand that prepared it to supervise the publication. Many of the papers abound in aboriginal expressions to which no one unacquainted with the languages could do justice. The system of pictography, which is for the first time exhibited, imposes a degree of critical care in the typography which is not ordinarily expected. I have the honor, therefore, to suggest that Congress, to whom I request you will refer this communication, be solicited to order that the present manuscripts and the succeeding parts of them, together with the illustrations and engravings, be printed under the special charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, acting for the Library Committee.

Very Respectfully,

HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT,
Historiographical Agent,
Act of 3d March 1847

1. A copy of the Historical Inquiries, drawn up for this purpose, is inserted as an Appendix to this volume.

Archives Of Aboriginal Knowledge

Archives Of Aboriginal Knowledge, Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1860