- Date
- 1821
- Eras
- Early American era
- Concepts
- maritimeshippingtoponymyhistoriography
- Within
- Beaver Island archipelago
Summary
Schoolcraft’s 1821 travel narrative describes a visible cluster as the “Beaver islands” while passing the Lake Michigan coast between Sleeping Bear and L’Arbre Croche. It says the islands were “noted as affording safe anchorage ground to vessels navigating the lakes.”
This is an early-American printed maritime attestation for the plural name and for a general navigational reputation. It supplies a historical comparison point for later coast-pilot and chart records, not a specific harbor description.
Evidence and limits
The book supports only what its cited passage says: a visible cluster, the printed plural form, and a general statement about safe anchorage. It does not locate that anchorage within the group, identify which winds or vessels were contemplated, establish a harbor’s depth or facilities, document a voyage, or make the islands safe for present navigation.
The account’s route language is a nineteenth-century travel narrative, not a survey, chart, or legal geographic definition. Detailed maritime claims require edition-specific charts, sailing directions, hydrographic records, and other evidence appropriate to the claimed date.
See also
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Sources
- Held public-domain scan. The cited passage calls a visible cluster the Beaver islands and says they were noted as affording safe anchorage ground to vessels navigating the lakes. It does not identify an exact anchorage, vessel, route, date of use, harbor facility, or modern navigational condition.
- OCR aid locating the printed passage. It supports source discovery, but quotations and exact historical typography should be verified against the held scan.
- Project provenance sidecar for Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels (1821).Records the Internet Archive source URL, 2026-07-31 retrieval timestamp, SHA-256 checksum, 26,040,212-byte file size, and public-domain availability note. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Internet Archive DjVu provenance sidecar for Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels (1821).Records the Internet Archive derivative URL, retrieval metadata, checksum, and derivative status for the OCR navigation aid. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels in 1820, 1821”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/documents/schoolcraft-narrative-journal-1821/, accessed [date], citing Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit Northwest through the Great Chain of American Lakes to the Sources of the Mississippi River in the Year 1820 (Albany, 1821), p. 403. (and 3 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-02. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels in 1820, 1821”RIS for “Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels in 1820, 1821”