He wrote in his journal, “I begin my tour where other travellers have ended theirs, on the confines of the wilderness and at the last village of white inhabitants between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean….” He and another man began their journey of exploration ignorant about surviving in the wilderness. They did not know how to build a fire; they knew little about hunting; knew nothing about the indians they’d meet and really had no idea where they were going. Despite this lack of knowledge or direction, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft set off into what he would later call a “howling wilderness.”

AOWM – March 28