Millard Fillmore Writes to the Senate, Sending the First Volume of America’s First Official Census and Cultural Study of the Native American Tribes

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He served as United States Indian agent in Michigan for a period beginning in 1822. There he married Jane Johnston, daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother. Jane taught Schoolcraft the Ojibwe language and much about her maternal culture. They had several children, two of whom survived past childhood. She is now recognized as the first Native American literary writer in the United States.

In 1846 Schoolcraft was commissioned by Congress for a major study. This was a groundbreaking ethnological study of Native Americans, the broadest of its kind, meant to do a variety of things: improve Federal policy, improve relations, and provide a census. A lengthy ethnological questionnaire was also given to all agents and missionaries. This was the first official attempt at a national census and study of the American Indian tribes. The result, still used a reference for early Native American studies is known as “Indian Tribes of the United States.”

Letter signed, August 10, 1850, 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 3, 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.'”