HORATIO HALE M.A. (Harvard), F.R.S.C. (1817-1896) BY WILLIAM N. FENTON "The Nestor of American Philologists" (MÜLLER) IT HAS BEEN THE good fortune of Iroquois studies that the field has attracted gifted minds. The pioneer work of Lewis H. Morgan of Rochester, N.Y., in ethnology was paralleled in linguistics by that of Horatio Hale of Clinton, Ontario. Both men were lawyers, both were attracted to Iroquois political organization, and each brought unique gifts to the recording of Indian life which reinforced the other's con- tribution: Morgan's work on kinship and on the structure of the confederacy was enhanced by Hale's gift with languages and his sense of poetry which he fulfilled so beautifully in The Iroquois Book of Rites. Some of the quality of the original Iroquois comes through in his Eng- lish rendering of the lament to the founders of the League (page 123): Hail, my grandsires! Now hearken while your grandchildren cry mournfully to you, —because the Great League which you established has grown old. Hail, my grandsires! You have said that Sad will be the fate of those who come in the latter times. Though not the founder of American linguistics, Hale was, after Gallatin, none the less, its most distinguished practi- tioner, and he came by these qualities naturally. viii WILLIAM N. FENTON Son of a distinguished New England literary family, Horatio Emmons Hale was born at Newport, N.H., on May 3, 1817. His father, David Hale, a lawyer of that town, died within five years, but his mother, Sarah Josepha Hale, who is credited with having authored "Mary Had a Little Lamb," was for nearly half a century editor of the Lady's Magazine (Boston), and afterward of Godey's Lady's Book (Philadelphia); she was a pioneer advocate of higher education for women, she was very active in the missionary movement, and her commitment to patriotic causes ex- tended from successfully raising funds for completion of the Bunker Hill Monument to petitioning presidents and governors to make Thanksgiving Day a national festival. Reared in the two centres of literary and scientific culture in nineteenth-century America, Hale early manifested a talent for languages and was admitted to Harvard at six- teen. During his freshman year, he did his first field work on an unknown language within a stone's throw of Harvard Yard, when he wrote down the vocabulary of an Algonquian dialect of Maine from native speakers who were camping on the college grounds. He personally set the type for his report in a nearby print shop, and struck off fifty copies of his first publication, entitled Remarks on the Language of the St. John's or Wlastukweek Indians, with a Penobscot Vocabulary (Boston, 1834), which he distributed to a few friends. Having established himself as a writer, he promptly dropped his middle initial as unnecessary to distinguish himself in future publications. His first effort indeed had attracted the attention of linguists of the day, for on gradua- ation from Harvard with the class of 1837, he was appointed philologist of the United States Exploring Expedition to the Pacific, under Captain Charles Wilkes, at an annual salary of $2,000, which is a measure of the importance attached to the task. He improved his opportunities during this HORATIO HALE ix memorable voyage of five years (1838-42), and soon made important contributions to knowledge in confirming the affinity of Malay and Polynesian languages, and advancing a theory, based on these relationships, on the migrations of the Polynesians; and he made similar studies of the ab- original languages of Australia. But in the words of Boas, "Nowhere was his genius for linguistic research shown more clearly than in his masterly treatment of the difficult languages of northwest America."1 Only the recent dis- covery of glottal-chronology by Swadesh has altered the classification of these languages, which were studied so intensively by Boas and his students, and this is indeed amazing, considering the state of the linguistic art in Hale's day. Hale's report, Ethnography and Philology, appeared as volume six of the United States Exploring Expedition series; it ran to 700 pages, and, anticipating a small demand, only 300 copies were printed. It soon went out of print and is now quite rare. It was immediately acclaimed by scholars here and abroad as indispensable for the study of Polynesian and American ethnography, which makes it difficult to understand why an academician of this promise and ac- complishment was not summoned to the faculty of one of the great universities.2 It is a tragic footnote to the history of American science that a mind of this calibre could not be devoted completely to the pursuit of ethnological and linguistic studies. Instead, after several Wanderjahren in Europe, he returned in 1853 1 Franz Boas, "Horatio Hale," The Month in Literature, Art, and Life, I(3), 262-3 (New York: The Critic Co., 1897). "Hora- tio Hale" in Memorials of the Class of 1837, Harvard University (Cambridge, 1887), p. 94. 2United States Exploring Expedition, during the years 1838- 1842, under the command of Charles Wilkes, U.S.N., volume VI, Ethnology and Philology, by Horatio Hale, philologist of the Expedi- tion (Philadelphia, 1846). D. G. Brinton, "Horatio Hale," American Anthropologist, X(1897), 25-27. X WILLIAM N. FENTON and studied law, the profession of his father and brother, and then following the trend of his generation of New Englanders toward the west, he tried Chicago, where he was admitted to the bar of Illinois in 1855. What is more he had meanwhile married Margaret, daughter of William Pugh, sometime of Goderich Township, Huron County, Canada West, from whom she had inherited lands. Here was a job for a barrister and Hale was appointed adminis- trator of the estate. The young couple removed to Canada almost immediately and settled in 1856 in Clinton, which abutted on the Pugh tract. Hale, supposing that the work "would occupy a short time," left most of his books in Philadelphia.3 But Clinton flourished, as Hale writes to Morgan after fourteen years, "and presently spread over it [the Pugh tract], giving me so much to do that though every year postponing to return I have not yet been able to get away." Hale had meanwhile worked the estate into a general conveyancing business, laying out the tract in streets to which he characteristically gave literary names— "Addison," "Cowper," "Milton," "Newton," "College"— and one "Pugh's Terrace." Rich deposits of salt were dis- covered to underlie the area at a depth of a thousand feet, and a flourishing salt works sprang up a mile east of the town. This industry enabled Hale to get the London, Huron and Bruce Railway extended to Clinton, but even so busi- ness was slow and in Hale's lifetime most of the lots were never built on or the streets opened up.4 Hale's law prac- tice kept him too busy to leave but did not make him rich like his friend Morgan in the booming flour town of Rochester. And so it went for over forty years while Hale 3Hale to L. H. Morgan, Nov. 29, 1869, A.L.S. 4 pp. ms., Lewis Henry Morgan Collection, Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester. 4Professor R. H. Coats, University of Toronto, private com- munication, July 11, 1945. HORATIO HALE xi assisted in civic endeavours, pursued his ethnological and philosophical studies, corresponded widely, travelled oc- casionally on business and to consult libraries, and to attend meetings of learned societies, until death claimed him on December 28, 1896. Notable among his accomplishments as a citizen of Clin- ton and chairman of the school board was success in pro- moting a public high school for both sexes and obtaining legislation for provincial grants to secondary schools. Less successful were his readings before a literary society which he founded, I was once told by Professor R. H. Coats who remembered them from boyhood with some amusement, and quite disastrous was his lone attempt to remonstrate with noisy Saturday drunks from the salt works in the hotel bar across the street from his office.5 His international re- putation as a scholar seems not to have impressed his towns- men, neither of his two sons distinguished himself, and as late as 1945 Hale's grave in the Clinton cemetery, where he rests with his wife and younger son, went unmarked by any stone until this oversight was remedied recently by the Institute of Iroquoian Studies. Nor have his papers survived, although a few of his pamphlets are in the library of the University of Western Ontario, and, some years ago, the writer secured copies of his extant reprints from the family. His literary remains went up in smoke.6 If Clinton proved an unlucky choice for a law practice, it was a strategic location for ethnology because it was within easy reach by rail of Brantford, doorway to the lands of the Six Nations on the Grand River, and there were Wyan- 5Ibid. 6Fred Landon, Librarian, Lawson Memorial Library, University of Western Ontario, private communication, July 25 and August 13, 1945, mentions "One rather extensive manuscript which I find is a portion of his report made upon his return from the Wilkes' Expedition"; this was "apparently returned to him from the printer." xii WILLIAM N. FENTON dots at Amherstburg towards Detroit. A Clinton ac- quaintance, John Fraser, was destined to become a high chief of the Mohawk nation, and I assume that Hale took paradigms from him and learned of the struggle of the descendants of the old chiefs to maintain the old system and adapt it for local government on the Six Nations Reserve.