William Whipple Warren

William Whipple Warren (May 27, 1825 – June 1, 1853) was a historian, interpreter, and legislator in the Minnesota Territory. The son of Lyman Marcus Warren, an American fur trader and Mary Cadotte, the mixed ancestry daughter of fur trader Michel Cadotte, he was of Ojibwe and French descent. William lived in two cultures, because his father was white, he was not considered Ojibwe, but an Ojibwe "relative", because in the Ojibwe patrilineal culture, inheritance and property were passed through the paternal line. His mother was Ojibwe and he learned her culture from her family. He is the first historian of the Ojibwe people in the European tradition.

Bilingual and educated in the United States style, Warren started collecting stories from the oral tradition of the Ojibwe to tell their history. He drew from oral history to tell about the people prior to their encounter with Europeans, and combined it with documentation in the European style. After suffering from tuberculosis for many years, he died as a young man of 28 from a hemorrhage on June 1, 1853 and was buried in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

As the Ojibwe had a patrilineal system, children were considered to be born into their father's clan and lines of descent. Those born to a non-Ojibwe father had no clan or formal place within the tribe, unless specifically adopted by a man of the tribe. They and their mothers could usually find protection within the tribe. Such multiracial children of the period often also faced discrimination by European-American society, whose people considered them more "Indian" than white, regardless of the lines of ancestry.

Lyman and Mary had a second son Truman (named after his brother) In 1840 at the age of 15, Warren returned to his family in La Pointe.

Career Warren liked to sit with his mother's people and hear the Ojibwe stories. At age 17, he started working as an interpreter, as he was bilingual. At the same time, he made notes on the stories and history of the Ojibwe when he could. In the fall of 1845, he moved to Crow Wing, Wisconsin Territory (now Minnesota) to work as an interpreter for the trader Henry Mower Rice.

The trader Henry Rice also became a politician and was elected several years later by the state legislature as a United States Senator (1858–1863). In 1865, he ran as a candidate for governor of Minnesota.

Selected works of William W. Warren Warren, William W. "Answers to Inquiries Respecting the History, Present Conditions and Future Prospects of the Ojibwas of Mississippi and Lake Superior." Minnesota Pioneer, 6 Sept., 5 Dec., 12 Dec., 19 Dec, 26 Dec., 1849. Reprinted as "Answers to Inquiries Regarding Chippewas" in Minnesota Archaeologist, Vol. 13, No.1 (Jan. 1947), 5-21. Warren, William W. History of the Ojibways, based upon Traditions and Oral Statements. Annotated by E.D. Neill. In Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Volume V. Saint Paul, MN: Published by the Society. Philadelphia: Collins Printer, 1885.