Schoolcraft in the Ozarks

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft hiked down Bull Creek on January 6th, 1819, the first person to write a description of the Ozarks landscape.  He repeated the trip 200 years later to the day in the person of Rick Mansfield as described in this News-Leader story.  I had met him this summer at Round Spring where I was reenacting Henry for school groups and invited him down to the creek.

Here is the back story.  I first got interested in Schoolcraft from reading his journal in the late 1990s.  Then a friend of mine roped me into doing a reenactment of him for a history group.  The last ten years I have done these occasionally and then business picked up with the bicentennial of his travels and his journal that was published in 1821.  Never accused of brevity, Schoolcraft titled his book  Journal of a Tour into the Interior of Missouri and Arkansaw, from Potosi, or Mine a Burton, in Missouri Territory, in a South-West Direction, toward the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1818 and 1819. 

Around 10 years ago it dawned on me that his January 6, 1819 journal entry sounded just like our valley at Bull Mills.  (See this link to his January 6th journal entry. )  Recently this was confirmed by a study by Jack Ray (MSU Archeology) and Curtis Copeland, a local amateur historian and GIS mapper.  Above is their map of his journey that day with our property outlined in the upside down purple "L".

Bull Creek - Click to enlarge

We spent two evenings with "Rick" Schoolcraft, regaled with the adventures of his life, stories that would have made the original Henry proud.  He has hiked several hundred miles of what we can reconstruct as Schoolcraft's route, albeit many of them now paved.  Those changes are all part of the message in Journal of a Tour.  I would encourage you to read his journal which is available on line here.
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Update - February 6, 2019
Rick "Schoolcraft" celebrated his return to Potosi on February 4, 2019, 200 years to the day.  Three "Henry's" gathered to have a small round table discussion before setting off for the final walk to Moses Austin's store site for the return finale.

Three Henrys- Bob Kipfer, Rick Mansfield and Eric Fuller

Arriving at the Austin store, February 4, 2019