The History of the Indian Tribes of North America
Thomas McKenney and James Hall
Chippewa Squaw and Child
Unlike many early nineteenth-century frontier American males, Colonel McKenney was sympathetic toward Indian women whose life he considered “one of continual labour and unmitigated hardship.”
The Chippewa were not McKenney’s favorite Indians. He frequently described them as “wretched” people whose women, strong and resourceful in times of adversity, were forced to share major hardships of the hunt. Chippewa women followed the hunters, skinning and dressing, and even carrying heavy chunks of meat for long distances- many times with a child on their backs.
Painter: Original by James Otto Lewis, Fond du Lac council, 1826, later copied in Washington by Charles Bird King