Lewis Henry Morgan

MARQUETTE — Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was an important founder of modern anthropology in the United States. An attorney and politician by profession, Morgan is best known in the world of anthropology for his ethnographic work recording the culture of the Iroquois nation in his home state, New York.

Morgan’s cultural evolutionist theory dominated American anthropology in the 1870s and influenced Karl Marx. Morgan’s focus on kinship also foreshadowed an appreciation of emic cultural categories that characterized later anthropological theories. He was particularly interested in matrilineal descent traditions.

Morgan came to the Upper Peninsula in 1855, during the area’s iron boom, as a railway investor. Along with Marquette locals including members of the Burt family and attorney Samuel P. Ely, Morgan formed the Bay de Noquet and Marquette Railroad Company. The corporation was later owned by the Marquette and Ontonagon Railroad Company then merged into the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway system.

While living in Marquette County, Morgan authored ethnographic and linguistic studies of the local Ojibwa people. These works are presently housed in the University of Rochester’s Lewis Henry Morgan Papers Collection. Morgan lived in or near Rochester for much of his life and left his papers to that city’s prominent higher educational institution.

Despite not being housed here, these documents are of great importance to Marquette County local history.

During his time in the Upper Peninsula, Morgan was impressed with Marquette’s beautiful climate and lively character. He stated that “Marquette is destined to become a city; and the principal centre of business on Lake Superior.”

The acclaimed anthropologist also made several keen observations about the growing Marquette community. He noted that Marquette had “drawn to it a higher and more intelligent class of business men than is usually found in villages of its size; and this, in turn, has given Marquette, in a social sense, its superior and attractive character.” His description remains apt to this day. Marquette is one of the most cosmopolitan small cities in America.

In Marquette County, this famed anthropologist turned his attention to zoology. Specifically, Morgan became keenly interested in Castor canadensis, the North American Beaver. He described that the county’s tempting trout streams turned him into an avid angler, and that while fishing he came to observe the behavior of beavers.

Morgan stated that the land granted to the railroad company “passed through a beaver district, more remarkable, perhaps, than any other of equal extent to be found in any part of North America.” He meticulously mapped out locations of beaver dams.

After unsatisfying attempts to sketch beaver behavior in natural habitat, he enlisted the help of an emerging technology, photography. Morgan led local camera enthusiasts into the wetlands of Marquette County to engage in some of the earliest scientific wildlife photography in the Upper Peninsula.

Based on his extensive field observations, and using photos to render illustrative plates, Morgan published The American Beaver and His Works in 1868. This book was long considered the authoritative treatment of the species, covering beaver anatomy, feeding habits, social interactions, dam and canal building, and traditional modes of beaver trapping. Remarkably for its time, the book also explored beaver mental processes and brain structure, and may be read as a sophisticated early modern discourse on animal psychology.

Though Lewis H. Morgan is associated most strongly with his home state of New York, his time in the Upper Peninsula resulted in what was then cutting-edge anthropological and biological scholarship. His presence is still recalled in several local place names.

Examples include Morgan Creek, Morgan Heights, and Morgan Meadows Road, located between Marquette and Negaunee. Morgan Street, a short road between Washington Street and Bluff Street west of Harlow Park in Marquette is also named for this giant of American anthropology.

To learn more about how Marquette local history has helped shape American culture, join the Marquette Regional History Center. Memberships start at $35 per year. It’s a great lifestyle investment.