George Copway (Ojibwe) was most prolific as a nonfiction writer, publishing the first travel book by a Native American writer, Running Sketches of Men and Places in 1851. Also known as Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh ("Standing Firm"), he was born in 1818 near the mouth of the Trent River, Canada West (now Ontario). His parents were of the Missasauga band of Ojibwa (Anishinaabeg). His parents were converted to Christianity in 1827. In 1850, Copway published The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation. The poems included here, from the book "The Ojibway Conquest" have a complicated history. Some scholars believe that these poems were only attributed to Copway, but were actually published by a settler, J. T. Clark, who allowed Copway to publish it under his name in order to raise funds for his Ojibwe tribe. Despite this ambiguity, it might be important to consider how these poems would even be received, as written by an Ojibwe poet, or even if they were coming from the perspective of a white man, yet funneled through a Ojibwe man's persona. This ambiguity might offer more points of consideration in terms of common representations of Native histories than it might foreclose.
