Kitchi-Gami ; Life Among the Lake Superior Ojibway

"Johann Kohl was an educated, urbane, and well-trained German geographer, ethnologist, and popular writer. During his visit with the Lake Superior Ojibwa in 1855, he made useful and unbiased studies of their material culture, religion, and folklore. . . . The extent of Kohl's observations is really amazing. They cover the fur trade, canoe building, domestic utensils, quillwork, native foods, hunting, fishing, trapping, cooking, toboggans, snowshoes, gardening, lodge building, games and warfare."—Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly Johann Georg Kohl's classic work about the Ojibway of Lake Superior is a fascinating study in contrasts and similarities. An urbane, well-traveled European, a trained ethnologist, and an accomplished popular writer, Kohl (1808-1878) visited the Ojibway in 1855 and turned his sensitive powers of observation on a nation of people he found not unlike his own. He describes daily life, detailing religious practices, legends, foods, games, medicines, homes, clothing, and methods to travel, hunting, and fishing. Kohl's respect for the Ojibway makes his writing especially appealing to the modern reader.