To him we are indebted for
our first accounts of the geological constitution, and the mineral
wealth and resources of the great valley beyond the Alleghanies, and he
is the discoverer of the actual source of the Mississippi River in
Itasca Lake. For many years, beginning with 1817, he stirred up a zeal
for natural history from one end of the land to the other, and, after
his settlement in the West, he was a point of approach for
correspondents, as his personal memoirs denote, not only on these
topics, but for all that relates to the Indian tribes, in consequence of
which he has been emphatically pronounced "The Red Man's FRIEND."
Mr. Schoolcraft is a native of New York, and is the descendant in the
third generation, by the paternal line, of an Englishman. James Calcraft
had served with reputation in the armies of the Duke of Marlborough
during the reign of Queen Anne, and was present in that general's
celebrated triumphs on the continent, in one of which he lost an eye,
from the premature explosion of the priming of a cannon.
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