While there was controversy about the "Walam Olum", it was treated as an accurate account by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists for many years. Ephraim G. Squier, widely regarded as an influential figure of American 19th-century archaeology, republished the text in 1849. He accepted it as genuine, partially on internal evidence but also because the educated Indian chief (Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh) (George Copway), to whom he showed the manuscript, "unhesitatingly pronounced it authentic, in respect not only to the original signs and accompanying explanations in the Delaware dialect, but also in the general ideas and conceptions which it embodies. He also bore testimony to the fidelity of the translation." More recently, Barnhart noted that Copway was "fluent in his native dialect and knowledgeable of the traditions of the Ojibwa and other Algonquian groups such as the Lenape, but he was certainly not an expert on the traditions and language of the Delaware." On February 16, 1849, after the documented was republished, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote to Squier that he believed the document is "well sustained by comparisons with such transcripts as I have obtained from bark scrolls, and the tabular pieces of wood called music boards".