ds, and dealing with them, was in many things false and unjust. These
new views produced conviction in enlightened minds, and, during the
following session, in the winter of 1847, an appropriation was made,
authorizing the Secretary of War to collect the statistics of all the
tribes within the Union; together with materials to illustrate their
history, condition, and prospects. Mr. Schoolcraft was selected by the
government to conduct the inquiry, in connection with the Indian Bureau.
And he immediately prepared and issued blank forms, calling on the
officers of the department for the necessary statistical facts. At the
same time a comprehensive system of interrogatories was distributed,
intended to bring out the true state and condition of the Indian tribes
from gentlemen of experience, in all parts of the Union.

These interrogatories are founded on a series of some thirty years'
personal observations on Indian society and manners, which were made
while living in their midst on the frontiers, and on the data preserved
in his well-filled portfolios and journals; and the comprehensive
character of the queries, consequently, evince a complete mastery of his
subject, such as no one could have been at all prepared to furnish, who
had had less full and favorable advantages. In these queries he views
the Indian race, not only as tribes having every claim on our sympathy
and humanity, but as one of the races of the human family, scattered by
an inscrutable Providence, whose origin and destiny is one of the most
interesting problems of American history, philosophy, and Christianity.

The first part of this work, in an elaborate quarto volume, was
published in the autumn of 1850, with illustrations from the pencil of
Capt. Eastman, a gentleman of the army of the United States, and has
been received by Congress and the diurnal and periodical press with
decided approbation. It is a work which is national in its conception
and manner of execution; and, if carried out according to the plan
exhibited, will do ample justice, at once to the Indian tribes, their
history, condition, and destiny, and to the character of the government
as connected with them. We have been reproached by foreign pens for our
treatment of these tribes, and our policy, motives, and justice
impugned. If we are not mistaken, the materials here collected will show
how gratuitous such imputations have been. It is believed that no stock
of the aborigines found by