Horatio Hale

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Horatio Hale

Horatio Emmons Hale (born May 3, 1817 in Newport , New Hampshire , † December 28, 1896 in Clinton , Ontario ) was an American-Canadian lawyer , ethnologist and eminent linguist . He is the author of several studies on North American Indians.

Life

Horatio Hale was born to lawyer David Hale and his wife Sarah Josepha Buell. There were numerous lawyers in his family. His mother worked as a journalist and editor, she was also a committed advocate of women's rights. After the father died in 1822, the family, now consisting of the mother and her five children, lived on the mother's income.

Hale showed an early interest in Indians. At 16 he went to a college at Harvard to study oriental languages ​​and literature. As early as his first year of study, he conducted a field study to investigate a previously unknown Algonquin dialect of the Indians living near the university and created a dictionary of the dialect that could be assigned to the Micmac language . In 1834 he printed 50 copies of the dictionary under the title Remarks on the language of the St. John's or Wlastukweek Indians, with a Penobscot vocabulary and distributed them among friends. This publication ensured a certain level of awareness in specialist circles. In 1837 he completed his university education.

After graduating, he took part as a linguist from 1838 on the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes to the Pacific . During this time, he recorded the grammar and vocabulary of the tribes on the Pacific coast. He published the results in 1846 in Ethnography and Philology. In the last year of until 1842 he toured the Oregon Territory and studied the language of the peoples between California and British Columbia . After returning from the expedition, he went to his mother in Philadelphia and wrote the manuscript of his expedition report. His mother took the proofreading of the work that in 1847 under the title Ethnography and philology appeared as first publication on the expedition. Hale was traveling in Europe at this time until 1853.

On his return he studied law and married the Canadian Margaret Pugh in Jersey City in 1854 . He was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1855 and initially settled in Chicago . The couple moved to Clinton, Ontario in 1856. As a lawyer there, he dealt with the administration of his father-in-law's property. With the elevation of Clinton to an independent parish in 1858, the place began to grow significantly. Hale played a key role in the development of building land, which was reflected in the naming of streets with the names of literary figures. He was chairman of the local school committee and campaigned for the establishment of a high school for girls too. In 1875 he achieved that Clinton was connected to the rail network of the London, Huron and Bruce Railway .

It was not until 1867 that he began to work scientifically again. From around 1867 to 1877, in collaboration with the Mohawk chief George Henry Martin Johnson, he studied the language , culture and history of the Iroquois living on a reservation near Amherstburg . Here he examined, among other things, the wampum belt, by means of which the oral tradition of the Iroquois peoples was recorded.

In 1872 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .

Works (selection)

  • Ethnography and Philology. 1846
  • Indian Migrations as Evidenced by Language . 1882
  • The Origin of Languages ​​and the Antiquity of Speaking Man . 1886
  • The Development of Language . 1888
  • Language as a Test of Mental Capacity: Being an Attempt to Demonstrate the True Basis of Anthropology . 1891

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Horatio E. Hale. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 19, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Hale, Horatio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hale, Horatio Emmons (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American-Canadian lawyer, ethnologist, and linguist
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Newport , New Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1896
Place of death Clinton , Ontario