Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is mostly known for his book Walden (1854) and his political essay "Resistance to Civil Government," better known as "Civil Disobedience" (1849). However, one of his most compelling interests was in American Indian cultures. He began taking notes from his readings on tribal peoples of North American while he still resided in his hut at Walden Pond in 1847. This note-taking process continued until 1861 that culminated in eleven volumes, a year before his death. Note taking was not his only mode of becoming thoroughly acquainted with language, customs, beliefs, religions and mores of American and Canadian Indians. He also traveled deep into the Maine woods to meet and befriend Penobscot Indians including Joe Aitteon and Joe Polis who both taught him their language and legends. He went to Minnesota in 1861 to become acquainted with Sioux tribal members as well.
What Books Did He Read About American and Canadian Indians?
One of Thoreau's best sources for Canadian Indian beliefs reflected in their mythologies and legends was The Jesuit Relations ( 1632-1673) being a collection of Jesuit journals from the 1600's that recorded such things as the Huron's belief in the hereafter as well as extensive commentary on their language. He also read Henry Roe Schoolcraft's multi-volumeHistorical and Statistical Information Respecting...The Indian Tribes of the United States (1851-1857). In this reference work he gained immense knowledge of tribal myths and legends as well as their words for many things of nature. Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages from Montreal (1802) introduced him to comparative vocabulary charts of English, Knisteneaux and Algonquin for various natural objects and phenomena. These are but a few of the over sixty books that he studied from a cultural anthropological perspective.
Where Did Thoreau Obtain All These Books ?
As a Harvard University graduate (class of 1837), Thoreau had borrowing rights from the college library. In fact, legend has it that some poor Harvard students had to walk all the way out to Thoreau's hut to get a book they neede4d for classroom assignments. As He took notes, he placed them under thirty different categories including traveling, feasting, tradition and history, marriage customs, education, government, superstitions and religion, language and arts derived from the Indians. In all, Thoreau's eleven volumes (mostly unpublished) consist of over one half million words that constitute one of the largest nineteenth-century anthropological bodies of knowledge on American Indians. He did make use of some of these notes in his books Walden and The Maine Woods (1863).
Where Are These Indian Notebooks?
Thoreau's Indian Notebooks are currently housed in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. Permission to examine them must be obtained from the Curator of Manuscripts before actually going to the library. A Representative sampling of these notebooks can be found in my out-of-print book, The Indians of Thoreau: Selections from the Indian Notebooks(1974) and on the internet at the website of The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods under the category of Research, e-texts.
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