century), Tracy-le-Val, (mainly 12th century), Villers St Paul (12th and 13th centuries), St Germer-de-Fly (a fine example of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture), and St Martin-aux-Bois (13th, 14th and 15th centuries). Pontpoint preserves the buildings of an abbey founded towards the end of the 14th century and St Jean-aux-Bois the remains of a priory including a church of the 13th century. There are Gallo-Roman remains of Champlieu close to the forest of Compiègne. At Ermenonville there is a chateau of the 17th century where Rousseau died in 1778.
OJIBWAY (Ojibwa), or Chippeway (Chippewa), the name given by the English to a large tribe of North American Indians of Algonquian stock. They must not be confused with the Chipewyan tribe of Athabascan stock settled around Lake Athabasca, Canada. They formerly occupied a vast tract of country around Lakes Huron and Superior, and now are settled on reservations in the neighbourhood. The name is from a word meaning “to roast till puckered” or “drawn up,” in reference, it is suggested, to a peculiar seam in their moccasins, though other explanations have been proposed. They call themselves Anishinabeg (“spontaneous men”), and the French called them Saulteurs (“People of the Falls”), from the first group of them being met at Sault Ste Marie. Tribal traditions declare they migrated from the St Lawrence region together with the Ottawa and Potawatomi, with which tribes they formed a confederacy known as “The Three Fires.” When first encountered about 1640 the Ojibway were inhabiting the coast of Lake Superior, surrounded by the Sioux and Foxes on the west and south. During the 18th century they conquered these latter and occupied much of their territory. Throughout the Colonial wars they were loyal to the French, but fought for the English in the War of Independence and the War of 1812, and thereafter permanently maintained peace with the Whites. The tribe was divided into ten divisions. They lived chiefly by hunting and fishing. They had many tribal myths, which were collected by Henry R. Schoolcraft in his Algic Researches (1839), upon which Longfellow founded his “Hiawatha.”
See Indians, North American; also W. J. Hoffmann, “Midewiwin of the Ojibwa,” in 7th Report of Bureau of American Ethnology (1891); W. W. Warren, “History of the Ojibways,” vol. v., Minnesota Historical Society’s Collections; G. Copway, History of the Ojibway Indians (Boston, 1850); P. Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians (1861); A. E. Jenks, “Wild Rice Gatherers,” 19th Report of Bureau of American Ethnology (1900).
OKAPI, the native name of an African ruminant mammal
(Ocapia johnstoni), belonging to the Giraffidae, or giraffe-family,
but distinguished from giraffes by its shorter limbs and neck,
the absence of horns in the females, and its very remarkable type
of colouring. Its affinity with the giraffes is, however, clearly
revealed by the structure of the skull and teeth, more especially
the bilobed crown to the incisor-like lower canine teeth. At
the shoulder the okapi stands about 5 ft. In colour the sides of
the face are puce, and the neck and most of the body purplish,
but the buttocks and upper part of both fore and hind limbs are
transversely barred with black and white, while their lower
portion is mainly white with black fetlock-rings, and in the front
pair a vertical black stripe on the anterior surface. Males have
a pair of dagger-shaped horns on the forehead, the tips of which,
in some cases at any rate, perforate the hairy skin with which
the rest of the horns are covered. As in all forest-dwelling
animals, the ears are large and capacious. The tail is shorter
than in giraffes, and not tufted at the tip. The okapi, of which
the first entire skin sent to Europe was received in England
from Sir H. H. Johnston in the spring of 1901, is a native of the
Semliki forest, in the district between Lakes Albert and Albert
Edward. From certain differences in the striping of the legs, as
well as from variation in skull-characters, the existence of more
than a single species has been suggested; but further evidence
is required before such a view can be definitely accepted.
Specimens in the museum at Tervueren near Brussels show that in fully adult males the horns are subtriangular and inclined somewhat backwards; each being capped with a small polished epiphysis, which projects through the skin investing the rest of the horn. As regards its general characters, the skull of the okapi appears to be intermediate between that of the giraffe on the one hand and that of the extinct Palaeotragus (or Samotherium) of the Lower Pliocene deposits of southern Europe on the other. It has, for instance, a greater development of air-cells in the diplöe than in the latter, but much less than in the former. Again, in Palaeotragus the horns (present only in the male) are situated immediately over the eye-sockets, in Ocapia they are placed just behind the latter, while in Giraffa they are partly on the parietals. In general form, so far as can be judged from the disarticulated skeleton, the okapi was more like an antelope than a giraffe, the fore and hind cannon-bones, and consequently the entire limbs, being of approximately equal length. From this it seems probable that Palaeotragus and Ocapia indicate the ancestral type of the giraffe-line; while it has been further suggested that the apparently hornless Helladotherium of the Grecian Pliocene may occupy a somewhat similar position in regard to the horned Sivatherium of the Indian Siwaliks.
Female Okapi.
For these and other allied extinct genera see Pecora; for a full description of the okapi itself the reader should refer to an illustrated memoir by Sir E. Ray Lankester in the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London (xvi. 6, 1902), entitled “On Okapia, a New Genus of Giraffidae from Central Africa.”
Little is known with regard to the habits of the okapi. It appears, however, from the observations of Dr J. David, who spent some time in the Albert Edward district, that the creature dwells in the most dense parts of the primeval forest, where there is an undergrowth of solid-leaved, swamp-loving plants, such as arum, Donax and Phrynium, which, with orchids and climbing plants, form a thick and confused mass of vegetation. The leaves of these plants are blackish-green, and in the gloom of the forest, grow more or less horizontally, and are glistening with moisture. The effect of the light falling upon them is to produce along the midrib of each a number of short white streaks of light, which contrast most strongly with the shadows cast by the leaves themselves, and with the general twilight gloom of the forest. On the other hand, the thick layer of fallen leaves on the ground, and the bulk of the stems of the forest trees are bluish-brown and russet, thus closely resembling the decaying leaves in an European forest after heavy rain; while the whole effect is precisely similar to that produced by the russet head and body and the striped thighs and limbs of the okapi. The long and mobile muzzle of the okapi appears to be adapted for feeding
