A rare presentation copy from the publisher, Charles Engel, to his cousin, Florence Miller.
A member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, Simon Pokagon (1830-1899) was both an author and an advocate for Native American rights. He received some education, most likely from the Sisters of St. Mary’s Academy near Notre Dame, and is recognised as a ninteenth century Native American author. He was lauded by contemporaries as “one of the most remarkable men of our time… . His great eloquence, his sagacity, and his wide range of information mark him as a man of exceptional endowments” (Shaw).
O-Gi Maw-Kwe Mit-I-Gwa-Ki is his longest publication. A romance set among the Potawatomi, it was typeset at the time of his death, and only published afterwards. This is his major work in his oeuvre, with the events “derived directly from Pokagon’s private life, [it] is the best exemplar of his literary style” (Dickason).
A wonderful example of Pokagon’s activism is his work printed on birch-bark, The Red Man’s Rebuke (which was later changed to the The Red Man’s Greeting). It was produced for the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition and remains a powerful critique of settler colonialism, presented at an event designed explicitly to celebrate the same.
Dickason, D., “Chief Simon Pokagon: ‘The Indian Longfellow’” in Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 57, No. 2 (June, 1961), p.130; Shaw, A., “Simon Pokagon on Naming the Indians: in Review of Reviews, XVI (September, 1897), p.320.
