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Revision as of 09:15, 13 December 2005 by Avalon (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)George Copway (1818?-1869) was a Mississauga Ojibwa writer, lecturer, and advocate of American Indians. His Ojibwa name was Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bow or "Standing Firm" or "He who stands firm".
He is best known for writing the books titled:
- Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-Bowh (1847),
- Organization of a New Indian Territory, East of the Missouri River (1850),
- Life, Letters, and Speeches of Kah-ge-ga-gah-Bowh, or G. Copway, a chief of the Ojibwa Nation(1850),
- Ojibwa Conquest (1850), and
- Indian Life and Indian History (1860).
In 1851, he started his own newspaper in New York titled Copway's American Indian which ran for approximately three months.
He began his life near Rice Lake on the north shore of Lake Ontario and converted to Methodism with his entire family. Previous to the conversion, he had been raised in a traditional Ojibwa family. After conversion, he attended the local mission school and eventually became a missionary for the Methodist church.
In 1840, he met the womann who would be his wife, Elizabeth Howell, an English woman whose family were farmers in the Toronto area. Copway and his new wife moved to Minnesota to serve as missionaries. He and his wife later returned to Canada where he served as a missionary for the Saugeen and Rice Lake Bands of the Ojibwa. In 1846, he was accused and convicted of embezzlement and was defrocked by the Methodists.
At this time, he left Canada heading to New York and published his first book in 1847.
References
"George Copway" by Donald Smith Encyclopedia of North American Indians