Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793–1864) was an American geologist, explorer and ethnologist. Trained in glassmaking and mineralogy in New York, he explored the lead region of Missouri and the upper Mississippi, and in 1832 led the expedition that identified Lake Itasca as the river's source. As federal Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie he married Jane Johnston, an Ojibwe and Irish writer, with whose family he collected the stories published in Algic Researches. Longfellow drew on that work for The Song of Hiawatha. Schoolcraft later compiled a vast government survey of the history and condition of Native American tribes.