for their
service. To the young Genevan, brought up in the restrictions of
European civilization, the history of the savage was a favorite study.
In the winter evenings, in the quiet of the log hut, with the aid of one
familiar with the customs and traditions of the race, the foundations
were laid of a permanent interest in this almost untrodden branch of
human science. The Canadian Indians, however, hemmed in by French and
English settlements, were semi-civilized. The Miamis and Shawnees, who
ranged the valley of the Ohio, were the tribes nearest to Gallatin's
home on the Monongahela. These, though for a long time under the
influence of the French, retained their original wildness, and were,
during the first years of his residence, the dread of the frontier.

The interest aroused in the mind of Mr. Gallatin by personal observation
was quickened by his intimacy with Jefferson, whose "Notes on Virginia,"
published in 1801, contained the first attempt at a classification and
enumeration of American tribes. The earlier work of Colden was confined
to the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The arrangement of the
Louisiana territory, ceded by France, brought Mr. Gallatin into contact
with Pierre Louis Chouteau, and an intimacy formed with John Jacob
Astor, who was largely concerned in the fur trade of the Northwest,
widened the field of interest, which included the geography of the
interior and the customs of its inhabitants. Mr. Gallatin's examination
of the subject was general, however, and did not take a practical
scientific turn until the year 1823, when, at the request of Baron
Alexander von Humboldt, he set forth the results of his studies in the
form of a Synopsis of the Indian tribes. This essay, communicated by
Humboldt to the Italian geographer Balbi, then engaged upon his "Atlas
Ethnographique du Globe,"--a classification by languages of ancient and
modern peoples,--was quoted by him in his volume introductory to that
remarkable work published in 1826, in a manner to attract the attention
of the scientific world. Vater, in his "Mithridates," first attempted a
classification of the languages of the globe, but the work of Mr.
Gallatin, though confined in subject, was original in its conception and
treatment. In the winter of 1825-26 a large gathering of southern
Indians at Washington enabled him to obtain good vocabularies of several
of the tribes. Uniting these to those already acquired, he published a
table