Horatio Emmons Hale was born on May 3, 1817 in Newport, New Hampshire. His mother raised him and his four siblings alone after his father died when he was just five years old. Hale later attended Harvard University, where he took up interest on the vanishing Indians of the Northwest. A chance encampment of Indians on the campus gave Hale the opportunity of getting familiar with the Indian vocabulary. From that study, he drew the conclusion that the group was a branch of the Algonquian-speaking Micmac. In 1836, Congress authorized its first overseas expedition and was lead by Captain Charles Wilkes. They were to collect scientific and navigational data as well as explore commercial possibilities in the South Pacific. After graduating in 1837, Hale joined the exploration as an ethnologist and philologist.
Five years after the expedition began it had to be cut short after one of the ships was destroyed while traveling along the Northwest coast. From his findings, Hale published a 700-page book entitled Ethnology and Philology. Reviewed very favorably, R.G Latham described it as “the greatest mass of philological data ever accumulated by a single inquirer.” His comparison of carefully collected vocabularies and grammars, which he used as the basis for determining the widespread migration of Polynesian groups, was a forerunner of comparative linguistics a generation later. Despite the recognition and the success of his findings, Hale seemed to have given up his scientific interests. He then wrote his memoir, which he left with his mother.
He met and married his wife Margaret Pugh in 1954 and together they spent some time in Europe. When he returned he began to study law and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1855. A year later Hale and his wife moved to a piece of land owned by his wife’s parents in Clinton, Ontario, Canada. Hale then met Lewis Henry Morgan, the most distinguished ethnologist of his time, whom brought his love of ethnology out again. Hale took advantage of the nearby Indian settlements at Six Nations Reserve. From his first visit in 1870, Hale was again an ethnologist.
One of his biggest contributions was his influence on the work of Franz Boas the most distinguished and influential anthropologist for half a century. From a meeting with the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Hale was appointed the Field Surveyor of a survey to be done on the Northwest coast. Hale decided he was too old for this work and gave the position to Boas. Hale instead became its Active Director. Although Boas did not like Hale’s methods over the two years of work, it was important to Boas’ development. Boas went on to use much of Hale’s work to help further his own.
Horatio Emmons Hale died at his home in Clinton, Ontario at the age of 79. Boas wrote at Hale’s death “Ethnology has lost a man who contributed more to the knowledge of human race than perhaps any student.”
Garraty Carnes, American National Biography, v.9 p.824-825.
Marquis Company, Who Was Who in America, Historical Volume 1607-1896 p.226.
Written by: Brandon Keillor, 2001.