 It is in fact likely that a very large percentage of the " white " population reported in the 1850 census was of partially Native American ancestry . Many men of mixed racial ancestry became respected members of " white " society . William W. Warren , for example , was the son of an American entrepreneur ( who hailed from New York before he began working in John Jacob Astor 's American Fur Company ) and a mixed @-@ blood Ojibwe mother ( whose father had been in the old French and British fur trade ) was educated in the East and in the early 1850s lived on the Upper Mississippi , in part working as an independent translator and Indian Agency contractor . Warren was a good writer — his newspaper articles were eventually published as the only 19th century compendium of Ojibwe history and was elected to the territorial legislature before his death from consumption . 
