Copway, George, 1818-1869

George Copway (1818 – June 27, 1869) was a Mississaugas Ojibwa writer, ethnographer, Methodist missionary, lecturer, and advocate of indigenous peoples. His Ojibwa name was Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh (Gaagigegaabaw in the Fiero orthography), meaning "He Who Stands Forever". In 1847 he published a memoir about his life and time as a missionary. This work made him Canada's first literary celebrity in the United States. In 1851 he published The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of The Ojibway Nation, the first published history of the Ojibwa in English. Copway was born near Trenton, Ontario, into a Mississauga Anishinaabe family; his father John Copway was a Mississauga chief and medicine man. His parents converted to Methodism in 1827. Beginning in the 1830s, the young Copway attended the local mission school.<p/><p>
In July 1834, together with an uncle and cousin, he was invited to work with a Methodist minister as a missionary to Ojibwe who lived near the western part of Lake Superior. His activities in two different areas over the next few years included working with Reverend Sherman Hall in La Pointe, Wisconsin to translate the Christian Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St Luke into Ojibwa. In 1838 the Methodists provided for Copway's education in Illinois, and later ordained him as a minister.<p/><p>
In 1840, Copway met Elizabeth Howell, an English woman whose family were farmers in the Toronto area. They married and moved to Minnesota to serve as missionaries. They had a son, George Albert Copway (1843 – 1873) and a daughter Frances Minne-Ha-Ha (Copway) Passmore (1863–1921) during their marriage.<p/><p>
The couple later returned to Canada in 1842, where Copway served as a missionary for the Saugeen and Rice Lake Bands of the Ojibwa. He was elected vice-president of the Ojibwe General Council. In 1846, he was accused and convicted of embezzlement by the Indian Department. Because of this, he was defrocked by the Methodists.<p/><p>
The Copways moved to New York City, where he wrote and published a memoir, The Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-Bowh (1847), republished in London in 1850 as Recollections of a forest life; or, the life and travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh. It was the first book published by a Canadian First Nations person. It had six printings in the first year and rapidly became a bestseller.<p/><p>
During the 1840s, he toured and lectured in the United States and also traveled to Europe. That travel provided him with the material for his book of sketches of Europe, Running sketches of men and places, in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Scotland, published in 1851 after his book on the history of the Ojibwe. During this period, Copway acted as an advocate for a Native American territory, suggesting a 150-square mile territory be established in what was the American Midwest east of the Missouri River.The tribes in the area were under increasing pressure of encroachment by European-American settlers. This proposal was never approved by the United States Congress, but Copway attracted considerable attention from leading intellectuals of the time, including the historian Francis Parkman.<p/><p>
In 1851, Copway started his own weekly newspaper in New York City, titled Copway's American Indian, which ran for approximately three months. He had attracted "letters of support from the eminent ethnologists Lewis Henry Morgan and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, from Parkman, and from the novelists James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving.<p/><p>
George Copway in 1850<p/><p>
Copway's career subsequently spiralled downward as he began drinking heavily and sank into debt, and in 1858 his wife Elizabeth Howell Copway took his daughter, Frances Minne-Ha-Ha, and left him. Copway traveled throughout New York and Michigan as a herbalist 'street healer' and a Union army recruiter. Copway died in 1869 in Ypsilanti, Michigan.<p/>

KAHGEGAGAHBOWH (Kahkakakahbowh, Kakikekapo) (known as George Copway), Methodist missionary, author, lecturer, and herbal doctor; b. 1818 in Upper Canada near the mouth of the Trent River, the son of John Copway, a Mississauga chief and medicine man; d. 27 June 1869 in Ypsilanti, Mich.

George Copway as a boy shared the traditional migratory existence of his parents, who lived by fishing, hunting, and trapping in the Rice Lake area. In 1827 his parents were converted to Christianity, and early in the 1830s he began to attend occasionally the Methodist mission school at Rice Lake.

Ojibway chief, Methodist missionary, and author. Born in 1818 in Ontario and given the Indian name Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh, Copway was taught to read by an English missionary and converted to Methodism in 1830. From 1834 until his death, Copway was either engaged in missionary work among his people in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois, or in lecturing, writing, and raising funds for the Indian cause. Copway wrote several books on the Indians, translated the gospel of Luke into Ojibway, and proposed and argued for a new Indian territory for the tribes of the Old Northwest. A journalist for a period in New York City, Copway published a newspaper, Copway's American Indian, from July 10 to Sept. 17, 1851, when insufficient funds caused its demise. Copway is presumed to have died in Michigan in 1863.