George copway biography

Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway) was an.
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George Copway was a Mississaugas Ojibwa writer, ethnographer, Methodist missionary, lecturer, and advocate of indigenous peoples.

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Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway) National Historic Person (1818–1869)

Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway) was designated a national historic person in 2018.

Historical importance: Mississauga Anishinaabe author, lecturer, publisher, and activist, he gained international literary celebrity as an author of popular non-fiction books in the late 1840s and early 1850s.

Commemorative plaque: No plaque^{Footnote 1}

Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway)

Kahgegagahbowh (George Copway) was an early Anishinaabe author of popular non-fiction books, which expressed pride in his nation, engaged with Victorian and Romantic literatures to challenge their racism, and offered non-Indigenous readers—in Canada and abroad—important insights into Mississauga spirituality, history, and culture. An international literary celebrity, he contributed to general knowledge of the First Nations in Canada, giving well-attended lectures on Mississauga life to audiences in North America, Great Britain, and Western Europe, and speaking on behalf of Indigenous peoples at the Third World Peace C

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The life, history and travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Copway) :

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Help [Albany, N.Y.? : publisher not identified], 1847.; 233 images with full-text search

Creator

Copway, George, 1818-1863?, author

Title

The life, history and travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Copway) : a young Indian chief of the Ojebwa nation, a convert to the Christian faith and a missionary to his people for twelve years; with a sketch of the present state of the Objebwa nation in regard to Christianity and their future prospects : also, an appeal with all the names of the chiefs now living, who have been christianized, and the missionaries now laboring among them

Published

[Albany, N.Y.? : publisher not identified], 1847.

Identifier

oocihm.41779
41779

Subject

Copway, George,1818-1863?
Ojibwe.
Ojibwe -- Missions.
Missionaries -- Biograp

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Canada has had several literary celebrities that have made a name for themselves internationally. There has been Robert Munsch, Farley Mowat, Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Arguably the first literary celebrity to achieve fame outside the country was an Anishinaabe Methodist missionary, advocate and lecturer named George Copway.

Born Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh, which means He Who Stands Forever in 1818 in Trenton, Ontario, his father John Copway was an Anishinaabe chief and medicine man. Copway would describe his father as an excellent hunter and a man who brought in more furs than anyone else. His mother was a member of the Eagle Tribe, whom he described as an active, sensible woman and a good hunter.

He would write of his mother, quote:

“She was as good a hunter as any of the Indians. She could shoot the deer and the ducks flying as well as they. Nature had done a great deal for her, for she was active.”

He would also state that his great-grandfather was an important warrior who helped to defeat the Hurons at Rice Lake and establ