A reviewer said of this that it is “the best book on the Lake Superior country.” Another called it “one of the most exhaustive and valuable treatises on Indian life ever written”. The author traveled among people of the Ojibway (Ojibwa, Chippewa) tribe along the shores of Lake Michigan, observing and collecting information. A few of the very numerous and diverse topics he addressed are: The Indian Agent, face painting, the canoe (use and construction), Indian dogs, medicine bag, a palaver, Indian generosity and hospitality, sports and pastimes, Hiawatha, death of a child, polygamy, Indian geography, the fur trade, symbolic writing, Catholic missionaries, the path of the dead, Ojibway songs, and snow shoes. He relates numerous Indian legends.