Book Description

France held dominion over much of North America when Nicolas Perrot, a Jesuit, entered the fur trade among the Ottawa Indians in 1665. He became well acquainted with the Algonquian tribes of the upper Mississippi valley and Great Lakes region. Perrot’s Memoir on the Manners, Customs, and Religion of the Savages of North America, written in French from about 1680 to 1718, is an invaluable record of early aboriginal life. First published in 1864, it can be found in The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and the Region of the Great Lakes. Also included is the History of the Savage Peoples Who Are Allies of New France by Claude Charles Le Roy, Sieur de Bacqueville de la Potherie. First published in 1716, it portrays the Indian tribes west of Lake Huron and contains much first-hand information about their customs, history, and relations with each other and the French. Finally, documents by Major Morrell Marston and Thomas Forsyth, commander and agent, respectively, at Fort Armstrong in present-day Illinois, provide richly detailed accounts on the Sauk and Fox tribes in the 1820s. This Bison Books edition is the first in more than eighty years to make widely available The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes, which was originally published in two volumes in 1812. It retains the text and feature of the original two volumes. Emma Helen Blair, a respected scholar, died in 1911, before her monumental work was released.