William Joseph Snelling

Background

William was born on December 26, 1804 in Boston, Massachussets, United States, the son of Josiah Snelling and his first wife, Elizabeth Bell. The mother died early, and the boy was left in the hands of relatives.

Education

He was sent to Dr. Luther Stearns's classical school at Medford. In 1818 he entered the United States Military Academy, but was very unhappy there and left after two years.

Career

For some time Snelling lived among the Dakota Indians and eventually became a trapper in the vicinity of Fort Snelling. He shared in putting down the Winnebago Indian revolt of 1827; his life was altogether wild and adventurous.

After the death of his father, Snelling gravitated to Boston, where he appeared in 1828 as a writer. He engaged in hack work for a while, most often under the pseudonym Solomon Bell. Then in 1831 he published Truth: A New Year's Gift for Scribblers, a satire on contemporary poets that rocked the small literary world of Boston for a time.

He next plunged into newspaper work and made a great many powerful enemies as a reformer and social satirist. His most remarkable exploit in this direction was his crusade against gamblers, undertaken while he was an editor of the New-England Galaxy. He was generally successful in his reform activities but he stirred up a wasps' nest against himself. The onslaughts of his political and literary foes, combined with personal misfortunes, gradually drove him to despair, and he took refuge in drink. To the great delight of his ill-wishers, he spent four months in the House of Correction, but he emerged broken rather in health than in spirit.

His Tales of the Northwest; or, Sketches of Indian Life and Character (1830), have both charm and authenticity; and The Rat-Trap; or, Cogitations of a Convict in the House of Correction (1837), written during his term in prison, is a document of unique interest. Only a few of his lesser writings have survived, since he often wrote anonymously and under pen names.

He continued as an independent journalist and in 1847 became the editor of the Boston Herald, which he conducted with great vigor for one year before he died, in Chelsea, at the age of forty-four, burned out.

Achievements

• William Joseph Snelling is best remembered as a satirist of his times and especially as the author of Truth, which is one of the best verse satires ever written in America. He is represented as a poet by one long piece, "The Birth of Thunder". His short stories about American Indian life were the first to attempt to accurately portray the Plains Indians and among the first attempts at realism by an American writer.

Works

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  • Truth, a Gift for Scribblers

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • A Brief and Impartial History of the Life and Actions of Andrew Jackson

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Personality

He was sincere, fiery, and uncompromising, ever a champion of the oppressed and a passionate advocate of his own high ideas of "truth" and "freedom, " but he dissipated his energies, neglected his education, and ruined his health in a series of mad quixotic adventures.

Quotes from others about the person

• In 1923, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote that "his Indian stories are undoubtedly the best written during the early period (of American literature)"

Connections

He married a French girl of Prairie du Chien, but she died during the first winter in their prairie hut. He married Lucy Jordan on March 2, 1838, and had three daughters.

Father:

Josiah Snelling

Mother:

Elizabeth Bell

Spouse:

Lucy Jordan