The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation

George Copway

Description

The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation (1850) was one of the first books of Indigenous history written by an Indigenous author. The book blends nature writing and narrative to describe the language, religious beliefs, stories, land, work, and play of the Ojibway people. Shelley Hulan's afterword considers Copway's rhetorical strategies in framing a narrative—she considers it a form of "history, interrupted"—for a non-Indigenous readership.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781554589876
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation
Early Canadian Literature Series
The Early Canadian Literature Series returns to print rare texts deserving restoration to the canon of Canadian texts in English. Including novels, periodical pieces, memoirs, and creative non-fiction, the series showcases texts by Indigenous peoples and immigrants from a range of ancestral, language, and religious origins. Each volume includes an afterword by a prominent scholar providing new avenues of interpretation for all readers.
Series Editor: Benjamin Lefebvre
Series Advisory Board: Andrea Cabajsky, D partement d anglais, Universit de Moncton Carole Gerson, Department of English, Simon Fraser University Cynthia Sugars, Department of English, University of Ottawa
For more information please contact:
Lisa Quinn Acquisitions Editor Wilfrid Laurier University Press 75 University Avenue West Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada
Phone: [phone] ext. 2843 Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail]
The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation
George Copway (Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh)
Afterword by Shelley Hulan
Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Copway, George, 1818-1869, author
The traditional history and characteristic sketches of the Ojibway Nation / George Copway.
(Early Canadian literature series) Reissue of the 1850 edition with afterword by Shelley Hulan. Includes bibliographical references. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-55458-976-0 (pbk.).-ISBN 978-1-55458-977-7 (pdf).- ISBN 978-1-55458-987-6 (epub)
1. Ojibwa Indians. I. Hulan, Shelley M. (Shelley Margaret), 1971-, writer of added commentary II. Title. III. Series: Early Canadian literature series
E99.C6C8 2014
971.004 97333
C2014-901189-X


C2014-901190-3
Cover design and text design by Blakeley Words+Pictures. Cover image: Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh-G. Copway (ca. 1860), photographic print from the Marian S. Carson Collection, Library of Congress.
2014 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada.
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Contents
Series Editor s Preface by Benjamin Lefebvre
The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation
Afterword by Shelley Hulan
Series Editor s Preface
George Copway-or Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh, which has been translated as He Who Stands Forever and as Standing Firm (Smith 6, 30n7)-was born near Trenton, Canada West (now Ontario), in 1818. Raised as a traditional Ojibwa until his parents converted to Methodism in 1827, he assisted Methodist missionaries as an adolescent following his own conversation to Christianity and eventually attended the Ebenezer Manual Labor School in Jacksonville, Illinois; he remained there for less than two years. After marrying Elizabeth Howell, an English woman and a talented writer, in 1840, the Copways pursued their work as missionaries to Aboriginal communities in the Midwestern United States. Elected Vice President of the Grand Council of Methodist Ojibways of Upper Canada in 1845, Copway was imprisoned briefly following accusations of embezzlement, and after his expulsion from the Canadian Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, he left for the United States in disgrace. He then began his career as a writer, translator, herbalist, newspaper editor, and lecturer, but his success and the popularity of his work were short-lived. After several years of professional and financial struggles, he died in Oka, Quebec, in 1869.
His first book, The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Copway), a Young Indian Chief of the Ojibwa Nation, a Convert to the Christian Faith, and a Missionary to His People for Twelve Years (1847), is believed to be the first book to be published by an Aboriginal person in North America; it was reissued in 1850 as The Life, Letters and Speeches and as Recollections of a Forest Life . Calling it the autobiography of the young man who was neither a Canadian Indian chief nor any longer a Methodist missionary, Donald B. Smith notes that this story of the pagan savage turned civilized Christian proved extremely popular (17). Published in 1850, The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation is probably Copway s most famous work (Petrone 385) and marks the first tribal history in English by a North American Indian (Smith 22). Copway was also the author of Organization of the New Indian Territory (1850) and Running Sketches of Men and Places, in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Scotland (1851), and he edited the short-lived New York newspaper Copway s American Indian for four months in 1851.
As some of the earliest published work by an Aboriginal person, Copway s writing is unique in several ways. As Smith notes, in cultures with an oral tradition of transmitting knowledge the greatest experts do not write, and in targeting non-Aboriginal readers Copway went against that tradition by becoming one of the few nineteenth-century Indians to leave behind substantial written accounts in English (5). Daniel Coleman adds that Copway s writing flies in the face of the denial of history, legend, and literacy in the Pamashkodeyong district described in Catharine Parr Traill s The Backwoods of Canada (1836), one of the most reprinted books in the canon of early Canadian literature (66, 63). The Traditional History , notes Smith, was the first tribal history in English by a North American Indian (22), and, as Penny Petrone notes in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature , One contemporary newspaper praised [Copway s] biting satire, pungent anecdote, strokes of wit and humour, touches of pathos, and most poetical descriptions of nature (385).
This Early Canadian Literature edition contains the complete text of the original edition (as well as all of its illustrations), published by the London firm Charles Gilpin in 1850. While this edition corrects obvious typographical errors, it lets stand a number of archaic and inconsistent spellings, including names of people (Frontenac/Frontinac, Nicolett/Nicollet), places (Belville, Menesotah/Minesota/Minisota, Milwaukie, Oriellea, Peterboro/Peterborough, Simcos), and Aboriginal nations (Algonquin instead of Algonquian, Chippeway instead of Chippewa, Gananoque/Gononaque, Iroquis instead of Iroquois, Monomone/Menomonies/Menomenies/Menomenee/Nenomenees instead of Menominee, Missisaga/Mississiga, Pottawatamie/Pottawatomie instead of Pottawattamie, Siouxs as a plural form, and Ojibway instead of Ojibwa). It also lets stand Copway s occasional usage of the term christianity in its uncapitalized form. Several chapter titles appear inconsistently in the original edition, and these have all been made consistent here. All footnotes appeared in the original edition. Since its original publication in 1850, the text was republished twice in facsimile form by Toronto firms: the Coles Publishing Company, in 1972, and Prospero Books, in 2001.
BENJAMIN LEFEBVRE
Works Cited
Coleman, Daniel. Grappling with Respect: Copway and Traill in a Conversation That Never Took Place. English Studies in Canada 39.2-3 (2013): 63-88. Print.
Copway, George (Kahgegagahbowh). Indian Life and Indian History by an Indian Author . Boston: A. Colby and Co., 1860.
---. The Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh . Albany: Weed and Parsons, 1847; Philadelphia: Harmstead, 1847. Print.
---. The Life, Letters and Speeches of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh or, G. Copway, Chief Ojibway Nation . New York: S.W. Benedict, 1850. Print.
---. Organization of the New Indian Territory, East of the Missouri River . New York: S.W. Benedict, 1850. Print.
---. Recollections of a Forest Life; or, The Life and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh, or George Copway, Chief of the Ojibway Nation . London: H. Lea, 1850.
---. Running Sketches of Men and Places, in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Scotland . New York: J.C. Riker, 1851. Print.
---. The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation . London: C. Gilpin, 1850. Print.
Jaenen, Cornelius J. Aboriginal Communities. History of the Book in Canada . Vol. 2: 1840-1918 . Ed. Yvan Lamonde, Patricia Lockhart Fleming, and Fiona A. Black. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. 33-40. Print.
Petrone, Penny. Indian Literature. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature . Ed. William Toye. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1983. 383-88. Print.
Smith, Donald B. The Life of George Copway or Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1818-1969)-And a Review of His Writings. Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d tudes canadiennes 23.3 (1988): 5-38. ProQuest . Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
Traill, Catharine Parr. The Backwoods of Can