Horatio Emmons Hale (May 3, 1817December 28, 1896) was an American-Canadian ethnologist, philologist and businessman. He is known for his study of languages as a key for classifying ancient peoples and being able to trace their migrations. based on his translation of their only two known historic manuscripts. It was supported by his studies with tribal elders in interpreting the Iroquois wampum belts to establish the people's prehistory.
Early life and education
Horatio Hale was born on May 3, 1817, at Newport, New Hampshire, in the United States, the son of Sarah Josepha Hale (née Buell), a writer and prominent magazine editor, and David Hale, a lawyer who died when Hale was five.
Entering Harvard College in 1833, Hale showed a marked faculty for languages. His first original work was published the next year, and attracted the attention of the college authorities. It consisted of an Algonkian vocabulary, which he gathered from a band of Native Americans who had camped on the college grounds.
United States Exploring Expedition
Three years later, when the United States Exploring Expedition was organized under Charles Wilkes, Hale was recommended, while yet an undergraduate, for the post of ethnologist and philologist. He was appointed to the position.
The expedition also traveled to Polynesia. Of the reports of that expedition, Hale prepared the sixth volume, Ethnography and Philology (1846), which is said to have laid the foundations of the ethnography of Polynesia.
Personal life
Having completed his master's degree at Harvard, Hale made a short tour of Europe. On his return, he studied law, and was admitted to the Chicago bar in 1855. In 1854, at Jersey City, New Jersey,<!-- Jersey City is the title of the city --> he married Margaret Pugh, whom he met in Ontario.
He continued to reside in Clinton until his death, devoting much attention to the development of the Ontario school system. They were likely destroyed by the Mohawk from central New York, who were competing for control of hunting grounds and the fur trade.
Hale made many valuable contributions to the science of ethnology, attracting attention particularly by his theory of the origin of the diversities of human languages and dialects. He also emphasized the importance of languages as tests of mental capacity, and demonstrated that Native American languages were complex and had a high capacity for classification.
He used language as a criterion for the classification of human groups. He was the first to discover that the Tutelo language of Virginia belonged to the Siouan family,
In 1884, he reorganized the section of anthropology as an independent department of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at its meeting in Montreal that year. He had already performed a like service for the American Association.
Hale was an honorary fellow of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, to which he contributed a number of papers.
Death
Hale died on December 29, 1896, in Clinton, Ontario. In an appreciation of his life, Franz Boas wrote: "Ethnology has lost a man who contributed more to the knowledge of human race than perhaps any student".