Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 137parents were converted to Christianity in 1827 and he himself similarly converted
three years later; the third describes his role as a mediator between Indians and whites;
and the fourth records the recent history of relations between whites and Ojibwas.
“The Christian will no doubt feel for my poor people, when he hears the story of one
brought from that unfortunate race called the Indians,” Copway begins. “The lover of
humanity will be glad to see that once powerful race can be made to enjoy the bless-
ings of life.” What follows is nothing if not conflicted, in ways that are at once intrigu-
ing and a typical consequence of the process of acculturation Copway himself had
experienced. He celebrates the blessings of white civilization but he also describes
how the whites robbed the Indians of their land. He rejoices in his conversion, and the
conversion of others to Christianity: “unchristianised Indians,” he says, “are often like
greedy lions after prey.” But he also portrays his early life with the Ojibwa, prior to
conversion, as a pastoral idyll. Invoking the familiar idea of the Indian as a noble sav-
age, Copway also taps that vein of romantic nationalism that sees American nature as
superior to European culture: “I would much more glory in this birthplace, with the
broad canopy of heavens above me, and the giant arms of the forest trees for my shel-
ter,” he declares, “than to be born in palaces of marble, studded with pillars of gold!”
That does not stop him, however, from insisting on the adaptability of the Indian to
what the opening of his book refers to as “the blessings of life:” that is, the culture,
brought to America from Europe, that he elsewhere chooses to scorn.
The autobiography of Copway, in short, is a rich mosaic of inconsistencies,
precisely because Copway himself, not unusually, was trying to reconcile different
cultures. He was also trying to make his way in a literary world the rules for which
were largely dictated by whites. Influential white scholars like Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
and Francis Parkman, and equally influential white writers like Washington Irving
and James Fenimore Cooper, supplied him with encouragement and support for his
later publishing projects. The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the
Ojibway Nation appeared in England in 1850 and in the United States in 1851, and
was far more critical of whites than his autobiography had been. This was followed
by Running Sketches of Men and Places, in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and
Scotland later in 1851, one of the first travel accounts written by an Indian. But
gradually white interest and encouragement waned. The journal Copway tried to
establish, Copway’s American Indian, was inaugurated in July 1851, but lasted only a
few months. His influential friends dropped him as his requests for financial and
other assistance grew ever more insistent. He was adopted by a group calling
themselves “native Americans” for a while. But, for them, the defining features of the
“native American” were that he or she was not an immigrant nor Roman Catholic:
Copway was simply a convenient tool for their purposes. Gradually, Copway dropped
out of literary and political circles, and into obscurity.
The first recorded use of the term “Native American” as we understand it today,
not as the group that briefly adopted Copway interpreted it, was by a Mahican, John
Wannuaucon Quinney (1797–1855). In a speech to Congress in 1852, Quinney called
himself “a true Native American”; and the speech as a whole reflects his passionate
awareness of the Mahican presence in American history. When he delivered thisGGray_c02.indd 137ray_c 02 .indd 137 8 8/1/2011 7:54:40 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 40 AM