he chief, whose portrait is before us, deserves honorable mention as one of the very few of his race who condemned, by precept and example, the vindictive and bloody wars...Although we do not learn that his courage was ever questioned, he never took an active part in war, but discouraged it on all occasions, as far as his situation and influence allowed. At the councils, in which, as an able speaker, he was a prominent person...recommended negotiation and remonstrance, rather than revenge and violence.

atawabeda was an orator of no small repute. Expert and ready in debate, his speeches were marked by shrewdness, ingenuity and subtlety of argument, and by a simple brevity of force and expression. Some of these displays of native eloquence were well worthy of preservation, but we are not aware that any of them have been recorded except in the memory of those who sat in the councils of that lonely region of lakes and forest, of which this remarkable Indian was a native and a ruler.

e was the principal village chief-the civil head, as distinguished from the war chief, or military leader-of a band of the Chippeway nation...and was a sensible, prudent, politic man, who was revered by his own people, and looked up to as a safe counselor by the surrounding villages.

History of the Indian Tribes of North America, Volair 1st Edition, 1978, Volume 1, Pages 363-364.

his Chippewa chief cried out in many councils that he hated war and would never lead his people into battle unless they were attacked and had no choice.

enry R. Schoolcraft, the early nineteenth-century explorer and ethnologist, recalled the Chippewa Chief in his journals as "the friend and advocate of peace." He wrote: "He said he was a small boy at the taking of old Mackinac (1763). The French wished him to take the war-club, but he refused. The English afterwards thanked him for this, and requested him to raise the tomahawk in their favor, but he refused. The Americans afterwards thanked him for his refusal, but they did not ask him to go to war."

The McKenney-Hall Portrait Gallery of American Indians by James D. Horan, Bramhall House, 1986, Page 218.