George Copway

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George Copway (1818 – January 1869) was a Mississauga Ojibwa writer, lecturer, and advocate of Native Americans. His Ojibwa name was Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh or "Standing Firm" or "He who stands firm".

Copway was born near Trenton, Ontario, into a traditional Ojibwa family who later converted to Methodism. After conversion, he attended the local mission school and eventually became a missionary for the Methodist church.

In 1840, he met English woman Elizabeth Howell whose family were farmers in the Toronto area. They married and moved to Minnesota to serve as missionaries. The couple later returned to Canada where Copway 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.

He then left Canada for New York City and wrote The Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-Bowh (1847), the first published book by a First Nations person.

In 1851, he started his own weekly newspaper in New York City titled Copway's American Indian which ran for approximately three months. He died in Oka, Quebec.

[edit] Selected bibliography

The Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-Bowh (1847)
Organization of a New Indian Territory, East of the Missouri River (1850)
The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation (1850)
The Life, Letters, and Speeches of Kah-ge-ga-gah-Bowh, or G. Copway, a chief of the Ojibwa Nation (1850)
Ojibwa Conquest (1850)
Running Sketches of Men and Places, in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Scotland (1851)
Indian Life and Indian History (1860)