The son of devout Quakers from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Thomas Loraine McKenney was appointed by James Madison as Superintendent of the Indian Trade in 1816. A strident opponent of the emerging Jacksonian Democracy, McKenney's years in office were marked by partisan strife and improfitability. His zealous support for John C. Calhoun's bid for the presidency in 1824 earned him the wrath of Congress, and a special investigation of his Office. McKenney was fully exonerated, and after Calhoun removed himself from the race in return for the vice presidency, McKenney was rewarded for his loyalty with an appointment as the nation's first Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

In both his Superintendencies, McKenney allied himself with the policies of his predecessors in the Washington and Adams administrations, aiming to "civilize" the Indians rather than merely exterminate them. He was the prime supporter of the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, which provided funds for Indian education, but he was also supported the Removal Act of 1830 with its devastating consequences for the Indians of the eastern states. McKenney later justified his support for the act by arguing that removal was more humane than the alternative. Regardless of his intentions, shortly after the act went into effect in the fall of 1830 he was dismissed from office by Andrew Jackson. Although he remained active in anti-Democratic politics, he was never again appointed to office, and spent the last decade of his life in obscurity, living in Brooklyn. He died on February 20, 1859.

Kenney's long-term reputation is based in large part, as he predicted it would, on the Office (later Bureau) of Indian Affairs that he helped establish, but above all on his two major proto-ethnographic works: Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes (1827) and the History of the Indian Tribes of North America (1844). His later Memoirs, Official and Personal (1846) were written in defensive mode, justifying his actions while in office against his many detractors.

The Sketches is an engaging account of a treaty negotiation in 1826 between the federal government and the Cippewa, Menominee, and Winnebago Indians, all vital elements in the fur trade in the upper Midwest. Part travel narrative, part ethnography, the Sketches includes a detailed description of the trip across the Great Lakes undertaken by McKenney and Lewis Cass, later governor of Michigan Territory. The bulk of the volume, however, is devoted to a description of the "character," language, and beliefs of the Chippewa Indians and of the treaty negotiations held at the American Fur Company headquarters at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The artist James Otto Lewis accompanied the party, and his illustrations formed the basis for the 29 lithographic plates that appeared in the Sketches.

McKenney's efforts to establish a reference collection on the American Indian in the War Department (home of the Office of Indian Affairs) resulted in his collaboration with the artist Charles Bird King, among others, to accumulate portraits of prominent Native Americans. After leaving office, he collaborated with the writer, James Hall, conceiving a plan to publish these as a massive color plate book, adding biographies to accompany the portraits. Although he abandoned the project before completion, the McKenney and Hall History of the Indian Tribes of North America remains an important work both in the history of printing and the history of American ethnography.

The manuscript of Thomas McKenney's Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes is a fair copy of the original intended for use by an English publisher. The manuscript is bound in half leather over plain boards in three volumes with chaotic pagination.

The manuscript contains a copy of the Chippewa (Ojibwa, Anishinabe) vocabulary using the Schoolcraft-Gallatin orthography, but it lacks the appendices that accompany the Lewis edition. Interspersed throughout the volumes are 29 watercolor illustrations that differ in detail from those in the Fielding Lewis edition of 1827, with somewhat stronger color. These include depictions of scenery along the Great Lakes, particularly the rock formations in Lake Superior, the American Fur Company headquarters, the council, a Chippewa dance, and portraits of Chippewa men and women.

Native American Images Note : Twenty-nine watercolor illustrations by artist James Otto Lewis, companion images to Thomas Loraine McKenney's three volume journal. Vividly colored, the sketches display landscapes, customs and portraits of the Chippewa in 1826. Of particular note, a portrait of O-Shee-Gwun, one of the signers of the Fond du Lac treaty at Lake Superior. See also the APS Photograph Collection for photographs of some sketches.

Physical description

3 vols.; 0.5 linear feet

3 vols.; 0.5 linear feet

Provenance

Gift of Thomas L. McKenney, 1831.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Thomas McKenney, Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Recatalogued by rsc, 2002.

Other finding aids

Indexed in the online Daythal Kendall Guide to Native American Collections at the American Philosophical Society.

Bibliography

Early American History Note

This is a manuscript copy of Thomas McKenney's Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes, which was a chronicle of his tour of the Great Lakes region when he served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. His journal was eventually published in Baltimore in 1827. The original journal not only records his observations and interactions, but, as the federal official in charge of Indian policy, reflects his thinking on federal Indian policy. His observations also reflect, to some extent, his interpretation of Indian history. A color image of O Shau Gus Coday Way Gua (Mrs. Johnson) in included in the volume. This image graces the cover of the book in black and white. There are other watercolor sketches as well.

• Art
• Landscapes
• Official Government Documents and Records
• Portraits
• Sketchbooks
• Travel Narratives and Journals
• Watercolors

• Great Lakes -- Description and travel
• Michigan -- Description and travel
• Wisconsin -- Description and travel

• Cass, Lewis, 1782-1866
• Lewis, James Otto, 1799-1858
• McKenney, Thomas Loraine, 1785-1859

• Government Affairs
• Indians of North America -- Great Lakes (North America)
• Indians of North America -- Treaties
• Native America
• Ojibwa Indians
• Ojibwa language -- Dictionaries -- English