London: Chapman and Hall, 1860. First English edition (first published in German in 1859). xii, 428pp, illus. Bound in half leather and marbled boards. Light rubbing to externals, else very good. Johann Kohl was an educated, urbane, and well-trained German geographer, ethnologist, and popular writer. He visited the Lake Superior Ojibwa in 1855, where he made detailed studies of their material culture, religion, and folklore. Kohl's observations are impressive and comprehensive. They cover the fur trade, canoe building, domestic utensils, quillwork, native foods, hunting, fishing, trapping, cooking, toboggans, snowshoes, gardening, lodge building, games and warfare. Sabin declares this, "One of the most exhaustive and valuable treatises n Indian life ever written," while Field notes that the book is "wholly the result of personal experience, and one which only the most fervent scientific zeal and earnest self-abnegation, as well as a very high order of intelligence could produce. [Kohl] endeavored to penetrate the thick veil of distrust, ignorance and superstition which conceal the mind of the Indian, and learn the innate traverses of thought which give motive to his soul." Finally, the Siebert catalog says, "An exhaustive and valuable treatise on Native American life, considered to be one of the best books on the Lake Superior country." Sabin 382a5, Howes K247, Field 342, Lande 1894, Siebert 421. Item #24912

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