Running Sketches of Men and Places in England, France, Germany, Belgium and Scotland by COPWAY, George (KAH-GE-GA-GAH-BOWH) [1818-1869] - 1851

New York: J.C. Ricker, 1851. 1st Edition. Hard Cover. Fair. First edition. 18.5cm x 13cm, (7-1/4 x 5 inches) ix, (1), [11]-346, [2 (ads)], 5 full page b&w plates total (all portraits, including one of the author and frontis). Original cloth blind embossed brown cloth with gilt stamping on the spine and front cover. Spine has top and bottom 1/4 inch section missing, soiling on covers and bumped corners. Covers are weak but holding. Inside previous owner small stamp on front endpaper, pencil writing on title page about page references to Jenny Lind. Insides with age toned paper and in good condition. Overall condition would be considered fair. This was Copway's third, and last, book. Born in Canada (1818, Upper Canada near the mouth of the Trent River), Copway was a full-blood Ojibwa and the son of John Copway, a Mississauga chief and medicine man; according to his claims he was, by inheritance, a chief of the Mississauga. He first lived a traditional Ojibwa life, but in adolescence was drawn to Methodism and eventually became a missionary. Thereafter his life was lived at the margin between Indian and white cultures, and it was a checkered one - as is suggested by the fact that his greatest successes were not in Canada but in the United States, to which he emigrated after an 1846 imprisonment on charges of embezzlement from a native church council and a concomitant expulsion from the Canadian conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Copway was a talented speaker and a well-published writer. His autobiography, The life, history, and travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (Albany first, then Philadelphia, 1847), went through several editions. He describes what he saw and whom he met (Disraeli, Baron de Rothschild, Lord John Russell, and others), as well as how he was received by the Europeans. The main purpose of the trip was to represent Christian American Indians at the 1850 General Peace Conference at Frankfurt am Main, where in full native attire he delivered a protracted and passionate antiwar speech.