Henry Schoolcraft - Exploration and Geologic Survey

Exploration and Geologic Survey

From November 18 to February 1819, Schoolcraft and his companion Levi Pettibone made an expedition from Potosi, Missouri, to what is now Springfield. They traveled further down the White River into Arkansas, making a survey of the geography, geology, and mineralogy of the area. Schoolcraft published this study in A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri (1819). In this book he correctly identified the potential for lead deposits in the region; Missouri eventually became the number one lead-producing state. He also published Journal of a Tour into the Interior of Missouri and Arkansaw (1821), the first written account of an exploration of the Ozarks.

This expedition and his resulting publications brought Schoolcraft to the attention of the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, who saw him as "a man of industry, ambition, and insatiable curiosity." Calhoun recommended him to the Michigan Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass, for a position on an expedition led by Cass to explore the wilderness region of Lake Superior and the lands west to the Mississippi River. Beginning in the spring of 1820, Schoolcraft served as a geologist on the Lewis Cass expedition. Beginning in Detroit, they traveled nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) along Lake Huron and Lake Superior, west to the Mississippi River, down the river to present-day Iowa, and then returning to Detroit after tracing the shores of Lake Michigan.

The expedition was intended to establish the source of the Mississippi River, and in part to settle the question of an undetermined boundary between the United States and British Canada. The expedition traveled as far upstream as Upper Red Cedar Lake in present-day Minnesota. Since low water precluded navigating farther upstream, the lake was designated the river's headwaters, and renamed in honor of Cass. (Schoolcraft however noted that locals informed the expedition that it was possible to navigate by canoe farther upstream earlier in the year, when water levels were higher.) Schoolcraft's account of the expedition was published as A Narrative Journal of Travels Through the Northwestern Regions...to the Sources of the Mississippi River (1821).

In 1821 he was a member of another government expedition that traveled through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

In 1832, he led a second expedition to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Arriving a month earlier than the 1820 expedition, he was able to take advantage of higher water to navigate to Lake Itasca.