“NONE OF MY RACE HAVE, PERHAPS, seen the different phases of one man’s history as I have.”[i] Thus wrote George Copway, near the beginning of his 1847 memoir. Both the book and its author were breaking new ground in the mid-nineteenth century. Copway’s autobiography was the first book published by a Canadian First Nations.[ii] It quickly gained in popularity, “running through six editions by the end of [that] year.”[iii] He was, in his time, “Canada’s most successful author in the United States.”[iv] By 1850, Copway was a major literary celebrity and well-known lecturer – and that summer, he was in Europe to speak before an international audience.
Frankfurt, 1850
The third annual General Peace Congress was held at Saint Paul’s Church, in Frankfurt, Germany.[v] The meeting brought together representatives from France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, England and the United States.[vi] Though he did not appear in person, Victor Hugo sent a letter of support, which was read to the delegates on the morning of August 23rd.[vii]
But it’s not Victor Hugo that we’re interested in. The subject of this piece took the floor the following morning, on August 24th – the third and final day of the Congress. George Copway was part of the delegation from the United States, but he had been born in Upper Canada and had spent much of his early life there. He addressed the delegates on the Congress’ fifth resolution, namely: “That this Congress, acknowledging the principle of non-intervention, recognizes it to be the sole right of every state to govern its own affairs.”[viii] The report on this Congress, published the following year, describes Copway’s speech as “animated.”[ix] A less enthusiastic attendee later characterized it as “windy, wordy . . . extremely ungrammatical and incoherent.”[x] Let’s call it a mixed reception.
Copway concluded his speech with a quote from the final verse of the hymn “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains”:
“Waft, waft, ye winds, the story,
And you, ye waters roll;
Till, like a sea of glory,
It spreads from pole to pole”[xi]
The ‘It’ spreading from pole to pole is Christianity. Earlier verses in the hymn refer to blind heathens being delivered from “error’s chain,” and the need to carry the Christian gospel far and wide, “Till earth’s remotest nation/Has learned Messiah’s name.”[xii]
Accounts of these mid-nineteenth century peace conferences make it clear that the tenets of Christianity were a guiding principle (perhaps the guiding principle) behind the proceedings. Even still, a modern reader could be excused for thinking that, in tabling a resolution on non-intervention, it is perhaps an odd choice to conclude with a hymn on the necessity of imposing Christianity on every society “from pole to pole.” It wouldn’t be outrageous to suggest that there might be a contradiction here.
George Copway was no stranger to contradiction. Some praised him as an eloquent advocate for the rights of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Others thought him a long-winded charlatan. He was the son of an Ojibwe chief and a proud chronicler of his nation’s history, culture and practices – and a vocal critic of those abuses First Nations had suffered at the hands of the government and its representatives. He was also a Methodist minister, who believed that the unconverted Indigenous populations of his time were living in “darkness” and that what North America really needed, among other things, was more missionaries.[xiii]
He was best known for his autobiography, which recounted his childhood, his conversion to Christianity, and his gospel-spreading travels. What the book didn’t mention was that shortly before its publication, Copway had been arrested and defrocked after being accused of two counts of financial mismanagement.[xiv] One thing is certain: by his early thirties, George Copway’s life had undoubtedly passed through many different “phases.”
The best introduction to that life is the memoir that made him famous. So, let’s dive straight into the book that started it all: Recollections of a Forest Life: or, the Life and Travels of Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh, or George Copway, Chief of the Ojibway Nation.
Early Life
“I was born,” George Copway tells us, “sometime in the fall of 1818, near the mouth of the river Trent, called in our language, Sah-ge-dah-we-ge-wah-noong, while my father and mother were attending the annual distribution of the presents from the Government to the Indians.”[xv] From the very beginning, Copway introduces his readers into a world divided. It is a world which, on the one hand, is deeply rooted in Ojibwe tradition, and on the other hand is transforming under the constant influence of traders and government officials – and, later on, missionaries. Nonetheless, it is tradition that prevails in Copway’s earliest childhood memories. The opening chapters of Recollections of a Forest Life consist largely of Copway’s descriptions of the land he was raised on, and the lessons imparted by his father:
“He would always take me with him when going anywhere near, and I learned his movements, for I watched him going through the woods. Often would he tell me that when I should be a man that I must do so and so, and do as he did, while fording the rivers, shooting the deer, trapping the beaver, &c. I always imitated him while I was a hunter.”[xvi]
To teach one’s son to hunt was a father’s duty,[xvii] and it was a skill developed early in life:
“When about five years old, I commenced shooting birds, with a small bow and arrow . . . I used to feel proud when carrying home my own game. The first thing that any of the hunters shot, was cooked by the grandfather and grandmother, and there was a great rejoicing, to inspire the youthful hunter with fresh ardour.”[xviii]
It is through hunting that Copway grows familiar with the land of his people and everything that lives upon it. Under his father’s guidance he learns to track deer, to hunt on the lakes, and even to shoot in the dark, relying solely on his hearing for accuracy.[xix] But these hunting expeditions taught more than marksmanship. Copway relates that his father would often, in the course of a hunt, lecture him on Ojibwe values: generosity, honouring the elderly, caring for the poor, having compassion for “any suffering object” and avoiding the needless killing of game.[xx] All life is to be respected, and Copway exemplifies this respect in the way he speaks of the animals he learned to hunt. He describes them in terms of their personalities: the bear is “cunning,” the otter is “greedy,” and the beaver “is of the kindest disposition.”[xxi]
And what of the land on which these animals lived? Copway grew up in the area of Rice Lake, between Peterborough and Cobourg, in what is today Northumberland County. He describes the area vividly:
“Rice Lake . . . extends about twenty-five miles. On each side of the lake are high hills, which soon rise from the edge of the water to the top. This lake beautifully winds along a mountainous region, and is from two to three miles in breadth, running from north-east to south-west. It contains about twenty islands. Large quantities of wild rice abound in almost every part of the lake; it resembles fields of wheat. As ducks of all kinds resort here in great abundance, to feed upon the rice, there is consequently much good game in the fall of the year. They fly in large flocks, and often appear like clouds.”[xxii]
The picture Copway paints of his early life is often idyllic. Even when describing his fear on first encountering a bear (he shoots at it blindly, and strikes its heart), it is with a sense of thrill and awe, rather than terror, that he recounts the story.[xxiii]
Alcohol, the Fur Trade, and the Government
But the land that Copway describes – much of it – no longer belonged to the Ojibwe by the year of his birth. In fact, it was in that very year – 1818 – that 1.8 million acres of this land, including the islands of Rice Lake, were surrendered to the British.[xxiv] Copway remarks, bitterly:
“In 1818 our people surrendered to the British government a large part of their territory, for the sum of £750; reserving, as they had good reason to believe, all the islands. As they could neither read nor write, they were ignorant of the fact that these islands were included in the sale. They were repeatedly told, by those who purchased for the Government, that the islands were not included in the articles of agreement. But, since that time, some of us have learned to read, and to our utter astonishment, and to the everlasting disgrace of that pseudo Christian nation, we find that we have been most grossly abused, deceived, and cheated. Appeals have been frequently made, but all in vain.”[xxv]
The injustices perpetrated against First Nations in general, and the Ojibwe in particular, are a constantly recurring theme throughout the text. Even while Copway celebrates his childhood, the lessons of his father, and the traditions in which he was raised, he finds in everything marks of the corrupting influence of traders and government officials. No matter what Copway is writing about, he takes various opportunities – some subtle, some rather less subtle – to criticize the exploitation of his people, and the irrevocable changes to their way of life. Take, for instance, the below passage on the commercialization of hunting:
“From these lakes and rivers come the best furs that are caught in Western Canada. Buyers of fur get large quantities from here. They are then shipped to New York city, or to England. Whenever fruit is plenty, bears are also plenty, and there is much bear hunting. Before the whites came amongst us, the skins of these animals served for clothing; they are now sold from three to eight dollars apiece.”[xxvi]
When he later attained celebrity, Copway would take advantage of his public profile to raise awareness of issues affecting the Indigenous populations of North America. During his career as a lecturer, he would often address his audiences on the subject of temperance,[xxvii] and the devastating effects of alcohol are a recurring theme throughout Recollections of a Forest Life. Towards the end of the book, Copway prints an address he had delivered before the legislature of Pennsylvania, in which he says:
“Spiritous liquor has been the great cause of the decrease of the Indians in this country. Disease, war, and famine have alike preyed upon the life of the Indian. But, ah, alcoholic spirits have cut off the existence of those nations who have left the records of their existence upon their rivers and their mountains.”[xxviii]
Another corrupting influence – one which the modern reader might be tempted to make light of, though Copway certainly does not – is blasphemy. “There was no such thing known among our people as swearing, or profaning the name of the Great Spirit. The whites first taught them to swear.”[xxix]
But Copway’s attitude toward the so-called “Palefaces” is complex. He is sharply and continuously critical of the malpractices mentioned above. That being said, from almost the very beginning, it is clear that his feelings are mixed. Take the opening sentence from chapter one as an example:
“From a land of wildness and desolate solitude I come, and at the feet of noble Britons drop the tears of pleasure, and pay a humble homage, not to man, but to the greatness of the Palefaces, – or that which makes them great – science and religion; in presenting myself before them as I do.”[xxx]
That parenthetical qualification (“or that which makes them great”) tells us something about Copway’s conflicted feelings. It is not the “Palefaces” themselves who are great – it’s the knowledge they bring that’s invaluable. While their actions are sometimes deplorable, the foundations of their culture are not. On the one hand, there are the disruptive consequences brought on by the theft of land, the commercialization of fur-trapping, and the effects of alcohol. On the other hand, Copway believes that the long and war-torn history of the Ojibwe and the Sioux can be alleviated only by “Christianity and education.”[xxxi] At several points in the book, Copway implores the government to take a more active interest in the education of First Nations. In what is both a criticism of government inaction, and an acknowledgment of the potential role that government could play in “rais[ing] us to a position of respectability” Copway writes: “Again and again we have asked to be aided in education; if we had asked for whiskey we could have got it; but anything to raise and benefit us we could not get.”[xxxii]
But of all the potential benefits that Copway speaks of, the one he seems to have most valued was the one he actually received. It had come to him unexpectedly – and it changed his life forever. Chapter seven of Recollections of a Forest Life begins as follows: “Several years we had been with the English people . . . and learned to drink the fire-water of the Paleface. The day at last arrived when we were to learn something better from them.”[xxxiii]
Conversion
By the time of Copway’s birth, traders had a long-established relationship with the Ojibwe. The coming of the missionaries, though, is something that the author would experience firsthand.
In 1827, when Copway was only nine years old, he and his father encountered the Methodists for the first time.[xxxiv] The circumstances of the meeting are strange, and the direct outcome, as Copway reports it, is surprising. The story goes as follows. Copway and his father travel to Port Hope to meet with a trader, John D. Smith, with whom they often did business. Among the goods that Copway’s father attempts to procure from Smith is a barrel of whiskey. The trader demurs: “Mr. Smith said [to Copway’s father], ‘John, do you not know that whiskey will yet kill you, if you do not stop drinking? Why, all the Indians at Credit River, and at Grape Island, have abandoned drinking, and are now Methodists. I cannot give you any whiskey.’”[xxxv] But Copway’s father insists, and Mr. Smith eventually supplies him with a keg. Father and son arrive back at Rice Lake in the afternoon and begin to mete out the alcohol. Then, right on cue, the missionaries arrive. The keg is concealed, and the black-clad visitors – Indigenous converts themselves – relate the story of the death and the resurrection of Jesus to a rapt audience, some of whom are already feeling the effects of drink.[xxxvi] The result is as follows:
“My father arose and took the keg of whiskey, stepped into one of the small canoes, and paddled some thirty feet from the shore; here he poured out the whiskey into the lake, and threw the keg away. He then returned and addressed us in the following manner: – ‘You have all heard what our brothers said to us; I am going with them this evening; if any of you will go, do so this evening . . .’ Every one ran at once to the paddles and canoes, and in a few minutes we were on the water.”[xxxvii]
Copway gives other examples of the readiness with which Christianity seems to have been adopted by many in his community. In the pages following the above incident, he recounts “an instance of an Indian who brought his medicine sack with him to [a missionary] meeting, but on being converted, he scattered its contents to the four winds of heaven.”[xxxviii] Later on, he tells a similar story from his early travels. In a place called Aunce Bay, the author and his fellow missionaries are threatened by one of the “unconverted” – a man called Spear Maker, who disdains to participate in “the white man’s religion.” But when, through his daughter, Spear Maker comes to accept Christianity, the acceptance is total:
“He entered our house with his large medicine sack, containing little gods of almost every description. He stood before us, and said . . . ‘Here, take this.’ He cast the bag . . . down upon the floor, and wept and sobbed bitterly, saying, ‘I have done all I could against you, but you have been my friends. I want you to pray for me, and burn these gods, or throw them where I can never see them.’”[xxxix]
Considering the great importance of the medicine sack among the Ojibwe (which Copway himself acknowledges[xl]) it is surprising how completely this time-honoured tradition is abandoned in the stories above.
In Copway’s own case, it seems that full-hearted acceptance of Christianity took some time. Although he first encounters the Methodists in 1827, his personal conversion moment came three years later, near the town of Colborne. If you’ve ever driven between Toronto and Montreal or Kingston, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve passed through Colborne. Today it’s best known as the home of The Big Apple – this Big Apple:
In 1830, it was the spot where, in the midst of a terrible lightning storm, a preacher called Wright addressed his congregation on the subject of God’s wrath.[xli] It was here that the now twelve-year-old Copway, for the first time, “began to feel as if [he] was a sinner before God.”[xlii] What precisely prompted this feeling is difficult to say, but it marks a turning point in Recollections of a Forest Life, and the life of its author. Following this event, Copway dedicates himself to his studies, with the goal of one day “[teaching] others how to read the word of God.”[xliii]
A few years later his wish is granted. In the summer of 1834, Copway is selected to travel to Lake Superior, where the missionaries are in need of assistance. Although he is at first reluctant to go, he departs on the sixteenth of July.[xliv] He travels the length of Lake Superior from Sault Ste. Marie to La Pointe, Wisconsin, visiting different communities along the way.[xlv] He then spends two years at Ebenezer Seminary, just north of Jacksonville, Illinois.[xlvi] It would be more than five years before he returned to Rice Lake, on the twelfth of November 1839.[xlvii]
It is to the reader’s benefit that those five years weren’t easy for Copway. He was often hungry and living in disagreeable accommodations. One of the refreshing aspects of this narrative is the fact that George Copway was no unconditional martyr. He comes across as headstrong, determined, and ready to complain when complaint is warranted. Those misfortunes that Copway suffers often come down to his readers in the form of colourful, and sometimes puzzling, anecdotes. For instance, early on in his travels, he finds himself boarding with some less than savoury individuals:
“Our French companions were the most wicked of men. They would gnash their teeth at one another, curse, swear, and fight among themselves. The boat, oars, the winds, water, the teachers, &c., did not escape their execrations. I thought now I understood what hell was, in a very clear manner. My very hairs would seem to stand, while I would be obliged to listen to their oaths, when they gave vent to their malevolence and passions. They would fight like beasts over their cooking utensils, and even while their food was in their mouths. I will just say here that I have often seem then eat boiled corn, with tallow for butter.” [xlviii]
Why this last is such an egregious offense I’m not sure – but that Copway sees it as an affront to decency is beyond doubt.
En route to La Pointe, Copway is reduced to chewing tea leaves for sustenance (they give him horrible stomach pain), and sleeping in the open, on the shores of Lake Superior, with “a little bank of sand for a pillow.”[xlix] Portaging for miles, Copway boasts of his strength in being able to carry upward of 200 lbs worth of provisions.[l] And the colourful incidents continue into his later travels, in the early 1840s. Take, for instance, the following passage:
“On the seventeenth July, we arrived at Winnebago Lake . . . After leaving this place, we had to kindle up a fire in the groves several times, in order to cook something for breakfast . . . there being no settlers within twenty miles. Some men seem to have come to these ‘diggings’ only for the purpose of defrauding travellers out of their goods and money . . . There is a house between Fort Winnebago and Prairie du Chien which I can never forget. We had to pay fifty cents for each meal (?); twenty-five cents for lodging in beds swarming with fleas and bugs. Sleep was out of the question; so I spent the hours of the night on the seat of what was called a chair.”[li]
It’s anecdotes like these that bring Copway to life. The reader sees not merely a representative of the Methodists or an advocate for the Ojibwe, but a human being: one who goes hungry, and gets cramps, and dislikes his travelling companions and loses his patience.
Though Copway appears to have been a devout and sincere convert to Christianity, his relationship with religion (like his feelings toward the government) is complex. “You will see that I once served the imaginary gods of my poor blind father,”[lii] he writes. And yet, he never seems to fully renounce the religious beliefs of his early childhood. In fact, Christianity is frequently interpreted though the language and the customs of the Ojibwe. Copway often refers to the God of Christianity as the Great Spirit (ke-sha-mon-e-doo) of Ojibwe tradition. When confronted with difficulties in his missionary work, it is the mah-jee mon-e-doo (Bad Spirit) who is at work.[liii] The missionaries who arrive at Rice Lake in 1827 describe Jesus as “the Benevolent Spirit’s Son.”[liv] Copway at one point says that the Ojibwe belief in “the multiplied deities of the earth” is “absurd”[lv] – and yet when, during his travels, he encounters a Sioux war party en route to massacre a group of Ojibwe, it is the “God of battles” that Copway appeals to for strength,[lvi] harkening back to the Ojibwe belief in numerous tutelary deities, all subservient to the Great Spirit.[lvii]
Copway’s 1839 visit to Rice Lake was brief, and he soon returned the United States to continue his missionary work. This time, he was travelling with Elizabeth Copway (neé Howell), whom he’d met and married in the space of his brief Canadian sojourn.[lviii] Donald Smith writes that the couple were “devoted to each other”[lix] and he suggests that Elizabeth may have helped her husband greatly with the revision of Recollections of a Forest Life.[lx]
One of the most telling anecdotes on the subject of his conversion comes from Copway’s account of his missionary work after returning to the United States with his wife in the early 1840s:
“On the twenty-sixth September, we had to mount the bluffs of the Mississippi river; here we found a number of Indian deities, made of stone. Mrs. Copway and her sister tumbled them all down into the river. Their worshippers must have been astounded and mortified when they returned, and discovered that their gods had vanished.”[lxi]
For all the talk of his benighted father’s imaginary gods, it is worth noting that Copway himself does not seem to have participated in this destruction of the stone deities. This is just one of numerous indications throughout Recollections of a Forest Life that he maintained a deep respect for Indigenous religions long after his conversion.
What Copway Doesn’t Tell Us
The following brief passage hints at much of what Copway doesn’t tell us in his memoir:
“. . . I became acquainted with Captain Howell’s family, of Toronto, formerly of England, and after an intimate acquaintance of some six months, I was united in marriage to his daughter Elizabeth. My wife has been a help-meet indeed; she has shared my woes, my trials, my privations, and has faithfully laboured to instruct and assist the poor Indians, whenever an opportunity occurred. I often feel astonished when I reflect upon what she has endured, considering that she does not possess much physical strength. I can truly say that she has willingly partaken of the same cup that I have, although that cup has often contained gall.”[lxii]
One would never know, in reading the above passage, that the marriage of George Copway and Elizabeth Howell took place in spite of the opposition of the Howell family[lxiii] – though one can understand how Copway might have chosen to leave out such a detail in consideration for his wife’s feelings. But what of the trials, the privations, and the gall-containing cup? Copway never tells his readers which particular misfortunes he is referring to here, but a few trials in particular must surely have been foremost in his mind. For all the difficulties he endured though the mid to late 1830s, Copway’s real trouble began only after returning from his second trip to the United States.
One would not know this from reading Recollections of a Forest Life – for it is at this point that the book takes an odd turn towards anti-climax. We’ll begin with what Copway tells us. In the fall of 1842, two years after having left Rice Lake, George Copway returns to Canada via Lake Superior, travelling from La Pointe, Wisconsin to Sault Ste. Marie, down though Michigan, east to Buffalo, and then up to Toronto, where he arrives, with his wife, on October the 28th, 1842. Copway then spends the rest of the year teaching and preaching at the Credit River, before setting out on a three-month missionary tour in the direction of Montreal, in the company of Reverend William Ryerson.[lxiv] (This Reverend Ryerson, by the way, was a brother of the more famous Egerton.[lxv]) So far, so good. Copway is next assigned to the post from which all of his troubles would flow. He was “appointed by the Missionary Society to labour at the Saugeen mission.”[lxvi] Copway arrives at his post only to find that he is low on provisions – and, disinterested in becoming a martyr for lack of funds, he resolves to leave:
“I met with difficulties, for I could obtain nothing without money; and even when a request was made, it was not met by the society. I could not be convinced that it was my duty to starve, and, therefore, I concluded I must leave.”[lxvii]
He is, however, convinced to stay, after being granted a government-approved stipend of 400 dollars a year.[lxviii]
What happens next is unclear for anyone going by Copway’s own account. At this point in his book, the narrative begins to taper off into brief historical accounts of the various Ojibwe nations, followed by speeches, articles and other sources of general information about, and advocacy on behalf of, the Indigenous populations of North America in general, and the Ojibwe in particular.
What Copway leaves unsaid is the following. In the period directly preceding the publication of Recollections of a Forest Life, he was accused of mismanaging funds at both the Saugeen mission and at Rice Lake (at the latter, he’d been appointed the council’s clerk in the fall of 1845). Confronted with these accusations and unable to pay the debts incurred, Copway was expelled from the Canadian Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church and imprisoned.[lxix]
Though he was jailed, Copway was never charged with any crime.[lxx] Donald Smith suggests that it was improvident generosity (rather than any deliberate, calculated wrongdoing) that landed him in prison. Of Copway’s stateside missionary work in the early 1840s, Smith writes:
“Unconditional generosity to others was a core value of Ojibwe society . . . The recently appointed Methodist superintendent of missions recalled Copway’s initial placement at the Fond du Lac mission. He had provided [Copway] with supplies for twelve months, but ‘as soon as provisions became scarce in the fall, he divided with every hungry Indian that came, and, as a matter of course, when the long winter came on he had nothing to eat, and came very near starving to death.’”[lxxi]
In recounting the events that led up to Copway’s being jailed in 1846, Smith writes: “George Copway was without question a highly intelligent individual, but one who made important financial decisions on his own without proper consultation.”[lxxii]
Whatever the circumstances leading to his imprisonment, George Copway, on being released, sought out a fresh start. Once again refusing to be convinced that it was his duty to starve, he, along with his wife and children, left for New York state in the summer of 1846.[lxxiii] It was there that he would seek his fortune as a writer.
Life After the Book
The publication of Recollections of a Forest Life led Copway into an itinerant life of public speaking. Throughout 1847 and 1848, Copway travelled the United States, lecturing on Ojibwe culture and history.[lxxiv] It was during this period that Copway began promoting a new idea of his: the development of an independent Indigenous territory in what is today central and southern South Dakota, called “Kahgega” (meaning “Ever-to-Be”). The name derived from Copway’s own Ojibwe name, Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh.[lxxv] In 1850, Copway followed his autobiography up with another book, The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation.[lxxvi] And then, in July of that year, Copway left for Frankfurt to attend the World Peace Congress[lxxvii] – which brings us back to where our story began.
Though he was only in his early thirties at the time, one wishes Copway’s story could end with this appearance at the Peace Congress. The remaining two decades of his life were filled with setbacks, disappointments, and tragedy. Unable to replicate the success of his first book, Copway’s subsequent publishing attempts met with diminishing interest.[lxxviii] A short-lived newspaper, Copway’s American Indian, fared no better – it lasted only a few months before folding in the fall of 1851. Though he continued to lecture, invitations to do so became more infrequent.[lxxix] Beginning in the 1850s, he was in desperate need of money.[lxxx]
Though still in contact with his father and brother, Copway was cut off from the community into which he’d been born at Rice Lake. As Donald Smith writes in Mississauga Portraits:
“From his father, [Copway] must have learned of the continued bad feelings towards him at home. Rice Lake resented his handling of their band funds five years earlier. Half a century later, older members of the band still remembered George Copway as the young man who ‘committed a forgery and fled from justice to the United States’”[lxxxi]
Cut off from his culture, his past, and no longer of interest to the reading public that had made him into a bestselling author, Copway grew increasingly isolated in his later years.[lxxxii] He separated from his wife – and, in spite of the vehemence with which he had always attacked alcohol in his writing and in his lectures, he began to drink.[lxxxiii]
Little is known of Copway’s life in the 1860s, the final decade of his life. Sources indicate that he lived in New York state and worked as a herbalist alongside his brother, David. The brothers then worked as Civil War recruiters, “collecting bounties for enlisting North American Indians in Canada in the Union Army.”[lxxxiv]
George Copway died on June 27th, 1869 in Ypsilanti, Michigan.[lxxxv] Donald Smith cites his obituary as it appeared in the Ypsilanti Commercial, on July 3rd 1869:
“The renowned Indian Doctor died in this city last Sunday night at the residence of Rev. Mr. Spear. His latter days owing to family difficulties have been shrouded in sorrow and unhappily he betook himself to the Indian’s special enemy ‘fire water.’ In this last sickness he seemed to manifest a penitent spirit, reverting to his better days with pleasure.”[lxxxvi]
Standing Firm
Depending on the source one consults, Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh is variously translated as “He Who Stands Forever,” “Firm-standing,” “Standing Forever,” and “Standing Firm.” The name and its various translations invite easy ironies, given the constantly changing nature of George Copway. But easy ironies are unjust. Copway lived in a world that was itself constantly changing. The certainties he had been born into turned out not to be certainties at all. He changed with his changing surroundings – or he tried to, in any case. He attempted to be a bridge between the world he was born into and the one he died in. He ended up caught in the middle, belonging, in the end, to neither the one world nor the other. After years of struggle, he died in obscurity in 1869.[lxxxvii] His book, though little read today, does still stand.
In his biography of Copway in Mississauga Portraits, Donald B. Smith writes of Recollections of a Forest Life:
“. . . the volume is an important contribution. Alone of all the Mississauga written accounts, only Kahgegagahbowh’s fully describes an Ojibwe boyhood before the acceptance of Christianity. The published book is a cornucopia of riches: ethnology, oral traditions, and personal experience.”[lxxxviii]
Time has turned George Copway into a very minor figure in the history of this country and its literature. However, time has also gradually revealed him in all his contradictions. He is all too human – in his hopes and his failings, in his ambitions (some realized, some not) and his wild confidence. We modern readers like our characters flawed. And Copway, who, like all of us, seems often to have fallen short of his goals, is a hero for our time.
We know exactly when and where George Copway died. His birthplace is less clear. In his autobiography, Copway mentions having been born “near the mouth of the river Trent.” Today, the place is generally considered to be near Trenton, Ontario.[lxxxix] What we can be certain of is that his early life was spent travelling extensively throughout what is now Southern Ontario. Cobourg, Belmont Lake, Port Hope, Colborne, Peterborough – these are all locations that come up in Copway’s Recollections. And, of course, we know that he considered Rice Lake his home.
The above photos were taken at Lock 18 on the Trent-Severn Waterway, in Hastings, Ontario. Given that Copway’s book abounds with references to Northumberland County locales, this place and its surroundings were probably well-known to him.
18 is the last of the waterway’s locks before the Trent flows into Rice Lake. It’s a spot where one thing flows, and transforms, into another.
[i] Copway, George. 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: C. Gilpin, 1881), 1.
[ii] “The Life History and Travels of Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh, 1847: About the Book,” Toronto Metropolitan University Pressbooks, November 17, 2024. https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/kahgegahbowh/about/.
[iii] Smith, Donald B. “KAHGEGAGAHBOWH (Kahkakakahbowh, Kakikekapo) (George Copway),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 9, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2015. November 17, 2024, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/kahgegagahbowh_9E.html.
[iv] Smith, Donald B. Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 19.
[v] “History of the Peace Congresses.” The Advocate of Peace (1894-1920) 62, no. 9 (1900): 188. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25751651.
[vi] Report of the Proceedings of the Third General Peace Congress, Held in Frankfort, On the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th August, 1850, (London: Charles Gilpin, 1851).
[vii] Ibid, 22.
[viii] Ibid, 42.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 220.
[xi] Report of the Proceedings of the Third General Peace Congress, 42.
[xii] Heber, Reginald. From Greenland’s Icy Mountains (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1884).
[xiii] Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, 65.
[xiv] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 203-204.
[xv] Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, 11.
[xvi] Ibid,18.
[xvii] Ibid, 19.
[xviii] Ibid, 24-25.
[xix] Ibid, 20-21.
[xx] Ibid, 19-20.
[xxi] Ibid, 24.
[xxii] Ibid, 52.
[xxiii] Ibid, 22-23.
[xxiv] Ibid, 14-15.
[xxv] Ibid, 53.
[xxvi] Ibid, 15.
[xxvii] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 210.
[xxviii] Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, 203-204.
[xxix] Ibid, 41.
[xxx] Ibid, 1.
[xxxi] Ibid, 142.
[xxxii] Ibid, 132.
[xxxiii] Ibid, 56.
[xxxiv] Ibid.
[xxxv] Ibid.
[xxxvi] Ibid, 56-57.
[xxxvii] Ibid, 59.
[xxxviii] Ibid, 69.
[xxxix] Ibid, 79.
[xl] Ibid, 69.
[xli] Ibid, 66.
[xlii] Ibid, 67.
[xliii] Ibid, 69.
[xliv] Ibid, 70-71.
[xlv] Ibid, 84-92.
[xlvi] Ibid, 97.
[xlvii] Ibid, 111.
[xlviii] Ibid, 75.
[xlix] Ibid, 86-87
[l] Ibid, 13, 89.
[li] Ibid, 125.
[lii] Ibid, 3.
[liii] Ibid, 80.
[liv] Ibid, 57-58.
[lv] Ibid, 27.
[lvi] Ibid, 135.
[lvii] Copway, George. The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojbway Nation. (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014), 104.
[lviii] Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, 116.
[lix] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 198.
[lx] Ibid, 208.
[lxi] Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, 126.
[lxii] Ibid, 116-117.
[lxiii] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 198.
[lxiv] Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, 148.
[lxv] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 200.
[lxvi] Copway, Recollections of a Forest Life, 149.
[lxvii] Ibid.
[lxviii] Ibid.
[lxix] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 202-204.
[lxx] Ibid, 204.
[lxxi] Ibid, 199.
[lxxii] Ibid, 204.
[lxxiii] Ibid, 205.
[lxxiv] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 207.
[lxxv] Ibid, 211-212.
[lxxvi] Ibid, 215.
[lxxvii] Ibid, 217.
[lxxviii] Ibid, 219-221.
[lxxix]Ibid, 223.
[lxxx] Ibid.
[lxxxi] Ibid, 222-223.
[lxxxii] Ibid, 223.
[lxxxiii] Ibid, 224.
[lxxxiv] Ibid, 227.
[lxxxv] Smith, “KAHGEGAGAHBOWH (Kahkakakahbowh, Kakikekapo) (George Copway),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, November 17, 2024.
[lxxxvi] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 228.
[lxxxvii] Smith, “KAHGEGAGAHBOWH (Kahkakakahbowh, Kakikekapo) (George Copway),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, November 17, 2024.
[lxxxviii] Smith, Mississauga Portraits, 208.
[lxxxix] Lefebvre, Benjamin. Introduction to The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojbway Nation. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014, vii.
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