William Warren (American Indians (Ready Reference series))
Author Profile
William Whipple Warren was the son of Lyman Warren, a white blacksmith, fur trader, and Indian agent, and his Chippewa-French wife, Mary Cadotte. As a young boy, Warren attended both the LaPointe Indian School and the Mackinaw Mission School and later studied at the Oneida Institute in New York. Thoroughly schooled in English, he returned to his people as a young man seeking to polish his Chippewa language skills. In 1845, he moved to Crow Wing, Minnesota, where he lived with his wife, Matilda Aiken.
With his considerable command of the Chippewa language, Warren was employed as a U.S. government interpreter. He was elected to the Minnesota State Legislature in 1850, where he earned a reputation for diligence. In 1852, he completed a one-volume history of the Chippewa people containing information he gathered during interviews with many of the tribal elders. Warren died of tuberculosis before finding a publisher for his History of the Ojibways, Based Upon Traditions and Oral Statements, published posthumously in 1885.
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