When George Copway was a boy the Great Spirit came to him in a dream, telling him, "You will travel much; the water ... and the winds, will carry your canoe safely through the waves." Those words, from Copway's 1847 autobiography, The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh, would prove truer than he knew when he wrote them. He had already traveled extensively in the regions of the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi and on the eastern seaboard, and in 1850 he would travel to Europe.

Copway's description of his tour of England and the Continent, Running Sketches of Men and Places (1851), was the first travel book written by a Native American. While Native Americans' accounts of travels had been published earlier--such as Hendrick Aupaumut's record of political negotiations with various tribes, A Short Narrative of My Last Journey to the Western Country (1827), or Black Hawk's account of his tour of...