Kitchi-Gami: Life Among the Lake Superior Ojibway

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.