Historians and anthropologists (including archaeologists, ethnographers, and many linguists) have tried to describe and understand continuity and change in Native societies both prior to and after European arrival. In recent years, ethnographers, who conduct research in communities, have tried to explain how present-day innovations are related to long-held Native values and understandings as well as global developments. All these scholars obtain information in a variety of ways, including using accounts of oral historians and Native writers, then interpret that data to arrive at explanations.
How do archaeologists interpret the meaning of the earthworks that were the focus of religious ceremonies long before Europeans arrived on this continent? One approach is to study the belief systems of the Native peoples who met the first Europeans and see if these ideas are reflected in sacred landscapes. Consider the effigy mounds. The forms of these sculptures in Wisconsin seem to be compatible with the depictions of spirit beings in the origin stories of people such as the Ho-Chunk and Menominee, who have lived in this region since before the arrival of Europeans. For example, the “lizard” figure fits Winnebago accounts of the “water serpent” in the early twentieth century. In the cosmology of these peoples, the world has Upper and Lower dimensions. The Upper World has spirit beings associated with the Sky, and beings of the earth and water are associated with the Lower World. Rituals work to maintain balance between these dimensions and to maintain good relations with the spirit beings who control food resources in their respective realms.
The mound clusters in Wisconsin represent this belief system. Note that in the illustration “Effigy Mound Distribution” the majority of the bird-shaped effigy mounds are in the upland region of western Wisconsin (near the Mississippi River route of millions of migratory birds). Effigies of bears and other land-dwelling animals are most frequent in central Wisconsin. Effigy mounds of the water spirit type are in the eastern part of the state, close to wetlands. On virtually every site of a mound cluster there is at least one representative of the opposing realm. Where there is a cluster of birds, there will be at least one water spirit mound. This distribution symbolically maintains balance. Archaeologists also link the mound symbolism to the social organization of groups like the Ho-Chunk and Menominee, whose people were organized into Sky and Earth divisions. Each division had family groups or “clans” that belonged to it, and people in the Sky division had to marry people from the Earth division and vice versa. The Sky division had the Thunderbird, Eagle, and Hawk clans. The Earth division had the Bear, Buffalo, Deer, Snake and Water Spirit Clans.
What other evidence do archaeologists draw on to link historic peoples to the moundbuilder sites? If archaeologists excavate a site and find deposits of objects with no European association and these are later covered with deposits of European objects, they might establish a link between the people living there before contact with Europeans and those whose descendants are living today. But these sites are difficult to find in the Midwest. The research of linguists offers another type of information.
When groups of people who speak the same language move away from each other and remain apart for a long time, they develop different dialects then, over time, lose the ability to readily understand each other. They eventually speak different languages. Linguists compare languages to calculate how many years probably passed for distinct languages to develop from an original or “proto” language. They compare basic vocabulary terms for native plants or numbers or natural features such as water. The more similarity there is, the more recently the speakers spoke the same language. The more dissimilar the terms, the longer the time the speakers of the languages were apart. “Proto-Algonkian” was the original language spoken by groups including Ojibwa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Menominee, Miami, and Shawnee. Linguists theorize that about 3,000 years ago their original homeland was west of Lake Ontario in what is now southwestern Ontario Province in Canada. From there, Ojibwas moved west, the Potawatomi moved to the east of Lake Michigan, the Menominee moved to west of Lake Michigan, and the others moved farther south into Illinois and Indiana. Other Algonkian speakers traveled far to the east. Eventually the Algonkian-speaking groups in the Midwest developed different languages or different dialects of languages. Some of their vocabulary shows evidence of more recent borrowing from Siouan speakers.
The Proto-Siouan homeland probably was in the Ohio River valley. There, 3,000 years ago, lived the ancestors of the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) and Dakota, who would have been associated with the ceremonial centers in Ohio. Over time, groups migrated to the southeast (for example, the Tutelo to Virginia), to the south (the Biloxi to Mississippi), and others to the Cahokia region, then to the north up the Mississippi River (the Winnebago and Dakota), or farther west. Note the similarities between Dakota, Winnebago, Biloxi, and Tutelo:
Linguists also look for borrowed words or new vocabulary in languages. These new words may indicate significant contact between people, as well as something of the nature of interpersonal relations.
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Historians and ethnohistorians (who use approaches of both anthropologists and historians) rely on primary sources to document what has happened in the past. What are primary sources? People write letters and reports, publish newspapers, sit for photographs, grant interviews, draw maps, take censuses, and make drawings. Historians studying a particular time period look for documents like these “primary” ones that were produced then. They try to learn what went on and also how different individuals and groups viewed events and interacted. Black Hawk’s autobiography sheds light on his actions in 1832. In another example, historians studying the fur trade have learned much from journals of fur traders such as Joseph Marin, a French official and trader in the mid-18th century. Marin recorded his efforts to use gifts to attract trade and to prevent Indian wars that made trade difficult. As Marin’s journal shows, the highest ranking French official had the kinship role of “father” to his Indian allies.
Ethnographers spend time in Indian communities observing and talking with people to try to understand the way of life and the ideas people have in these communities. One of the ways these anthropologists try to understand change is by working with autobiography. Nancy Lurie’s autobiography of a Ho-Chunk woman (1884-1960) is one of the best examples. This individual, whose name was Mountain Wolf Woman, joined the Medicine Lodge, then became a follower of the peyote religion. Lurie observed first-hand the major changes in Ho-Chunk life. She recorded the life story in the Winnebago language, then Mountain Wolf Woman repeated it in English. Lurie uses her research in the Ho-Chunk community to contextualize the incidents in the autobiography and to show how “characteristic and recurrent [Ho-Chunk] themes underlie her [Mountain Wolf Woman’s] opinions, decisions, and behavior.”
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ON THE MOUNDBUILDERS
A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff. “Native American Literature,” in The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia, eds. Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton, 2007. The author profiles Indian authors who grew up in and wrote about the Midwest from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Authors of life histories, autobiographies, and fiction include Black Hawk, Sam Blowsnake, Mountain Wolf Woman, George Copway, Andrew Blackbird, Simon Pokagon, Charles Eastman, Gerald Vizenor, Ray A. Young Bear, Susan Power, E. Donald Two-Rivers, and Roberta Hill.
Alice Berkson and Michael D. Wiant. “Discover Illinois Archaeology,” Illinois Association for Advancement of Archaeology, 2004. This brief overview of archaeology in Illinois includes essays by leading archaeologists on life during the eras that archaeologists have named Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Woodland (what the “Indians of the Midwest” website refers to as the era of Ceremonial Centers), Mississippian (what the “Indians of the Midwest” website refers to as the era of Political- Ceremonial Centers), Prehistoric, and American colonial.
Robert A. Birmingham and Leslie E. Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, 2000. An excellent discussion of Wisconsin archaeology, covering the Woodland stage mound complexes, including the effigy mounds, and the Mississippian Mound Tradition, including Aztalan. Also included is information on mound centers that the public can visit.
Robert A. Birmingham and Lynne G. Goldstein. Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town, 2005. A well illustrated discussion of life at Aztalan.
Robert L. Hall. An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual, 1997. This work helped pioneer attempts to show links between Native belief systems prior to and after contact with Europeans.
James R. Jones and Amy L. Johnson, “Early Peoples of Indiana,” Indiana Department of Natural Resources, 2008. This is a short description of the archaeology of Indiana, with information about important sites, the work of archaeologists, and the laws that protect historic sites. The authors include information on the Woodland (including Hopewell) sites and the Mississippian sites (including Angel Mounds).
Bradley T. Lepper. “Great Serpent” in Timeline (Sept.-Oct. 1998). This is an excellent discussion of how archaeologists determined the approximate date of the Serpent Mound.
Bradley T. Lepper. Ohio Archaeology, 2005. This is an excellent overview, beautifully illustrated and clearly written. It covers the Paleo-Indian to the contact periods.
George R. Milner. The Moundbuilders, 2004. A clearly written overview of the archaeology of the eastern United States, including the Midwest. It is well illustrated and covers the Woodlands and Mississippian eras.
Douglas R. Parks and Robert L. Rankin. “Siouan Languages,” in Handbook of North American Indians: Plains, ed. Raymond J. DeMallie, vol. 13, pt. 1, 2001. Linguists Parks and Rankin discuss the history of Siouan languages.
Timothy R. Pauketat. Cahokia, 2009. This well-written book describes Cahokia and its history.
Paul Radin. Winnebago Hero Cycles, 1948. This study of oral traditions was used by archaeologists, including Robert Hall, to interpret the art of the political-ceremonial centers (Mississippian sites).
Richard F. Townsend, ed. Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South, 2004. This is a beautifully illustrated and well-written book that supports the catalog of an exhibit of the same name. On the Indians of the Midwest website, the discussion of ceremonial centers draws from “Hopewell Art in Hopewell Places” by Mark F. Seeman and “The Newark Earthworks” by Bradley T. Lepper. The discussion of political-ceremonial centers draws heavily from “The Cahokia Site and Its People” by Robert L. Hall, “The Cahokian Expression” by James A. Brown, “People of Earth, People of Sky” by F. Kent Reilly III, “Art, Ritual, and Chiefly Warfare in the Mississippian World” by David H. Dye, and “World on a String” by George E. Lankford. Townsend provides an excellent overview in “American Landscape, Seen and Unseen.”
N. H. Winchell, comp. The Aborigines of Minnesota, 1906-11. This volume includes survey maps of many of the mounds and earthworks in the state. This work is comparable to I. A. Lapham, Antiquities of Wisconsin, 1855 and Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848.
ON THE FUR TRADE ERA
Gary Clayton Anderson. Kinsmen of Another Kind, 1984. Anderson gives a good overview of Dakota history during the eras of the fur trade and American expansion and addresses Dakota perspectives on frontier history, 1650-1862. He provides an excellent discussion of the Sioux Conflict, highlighting the grievances that led to the violence. The author also explains how a new way of life emerged from the relations between the French and Indians.
Bert Anson. The Miami Indians, 1970. A history of the Miami from about 1700 to 1812.
David R. M. Beck. Siege and Survival, 2002. An excellent discussion of Menominees during the fur trade era.
Nancy Bonvillain. The Huron, 1989. A brief history of the Wyandot, written for the general reader. It includes the migrations of various groups of Wyandot.
Colin G. Calloway. The First Americans, 2nd ed., 2004. An excellent textbook that covers the fur trade era in the Midwest.
Colin G. Calloway. One Vast Winter Count: The North American West before Lewis and Clark, 2003. The author provides an excellent, clearly written synthesis of the research on the history of the Great Lakes region up to about 1800. The multiethnic society and culture that resulted from the fur trade is discussed, incorporating the pioneering research of Richard White (The Middle Ground, 1991), which was largely written for specialists.
James A. Clifton. The Pokagons, 1683-1983, 1984. A history of the Pokagon division of Potawatomi living in Michigan.
Raymond J. DeMallie, ed. Handbook of North American Indians, v. 13, 2001. The essay by Patricia Albers provides a good overview of Dakota history up to the present.
R. David Edmunds and Joseph L. Peyser. The Fox Wars, 1993. This is a narrative history of the conflict between the French and the Fox Indians. It also provides an excellent overview of Sauk and Fox history up to the mid-18th century.
R. David Edmunds, Frederick E. Hoxie, and Neal Salisbury. The People: A History of Native America, 2007. This is an excellent textbook that includes the Great Lakes region.
R. David Edmunds. The Potawatomis, 1978. A good history up to the time of removal in the 1830s.
Arrell Morgan Gibson. The Kickapoos, 1963. Historian Gibson’s work covers the fur trade to their residence in Oklahoma in the early 20th century.
Robert S. Grumet. The Lenapes, 1989. The author discusses the movement of some Delaware villages to Ohio in the 18th century, as well as their settlement in multiethnic communities. This work is written for a general audience.
James M. McClurken. Gah-Baeh-Jhagwah-Buk: The Way It Happened, 1991. This well illustrated book gives a brief overview of Ottawa history.
Lucy Eldersveld Murphy. A Gathering of Rivers, 2000. This is an excellent study of the Prairie du Chien, Green Bay, and other communities between 1737 and 1832. The book explains how Indians, Métis, and French communities adapted successfully to the frontier economy by cooperating and how the entry of American miners in the 19th century changed frontier society. Murphy also compares the economic adaptations of men and women, and Indians and Métis communities, and provides a good discussion of how historians try to incorporate Native perspectives.
Patricia K. Ourada. The Menominee, 1990. Written for the general public, this book gives an overview of Menominee history, including the fur trade era.
James Scott. The Illinois Nation, 1973. This is a sketch of the Illinois villages’ history from the 17th century up to the time they were terminated by the federal government in 1956. They signed a removal treaty in 1832 and settled in Kansas until they were forced to move to Indian Territory in 1867.
Susan Sleeper-Smith. Indian Women and French Men, 2001. This is a detailed account of social and cultural exchange between Native people and French traders, with special attention to the role of Indian and Métis women married to French traders. Many of these women were Catholic converts who used their kinship network and the church institution of godparenthood to support their families’ role in shaping the fur trade in the 17th into the early 19th centuries.
Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed. Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 1987. The maps provide information on the history of the region from the time of European contact to the 19th century.
Helen Hornbeck Tanner. “The Glaize in 1792,” Ethnohistory 25, 1 (1978). This is an excellent description of a multiethnic community in Ohio. There was a French and English trading town and seven Indian villages. The residents included Anglo- and African-American captives.
Helen Hornbeck Tanner. The Ojibwa, 1992. A good summary of Ojibwa history, including the fur trade era. The book is written for the general reader.
Bruce Trigger, ed. Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast, v. 15, 1978. Though dated, this is a major anthropological source on the history, language, and way of life of Native people in the northeast woodlands area. This work defines what this website refers to as “the Midwest” (and historians call the Old Northwest) as the Great Lakes-Riverine region, a woodlands area in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois where the indigenous peoples adapted to the environment in very similar ways. In addition to providing descriptions of the Algonkian-speaking groups living here at the time the Europeans arrived, the book sketches Iroquois-speaking Huron and Oneida, who entered the Great Lakes region from the east, and the “coastal” Delaware and Mahican who moved into the area.
Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country, 2010. This is a well written and detailed history of interaction between Native people (Dakota and Ojibwa) and Europeans in the upper Mississippi and Lake Superior region.
ON THE AMERICAN EXPANSION ERA
David Adams. Education for Extinction, 1995. The author gives a comprehensive account of assimilation policy as it was implemented in Indian boarding schools, 1875-1928.
Gary Clayton Anderson. Little Crow, 1986. This is a biography of the Dakota chief who was a leader during the Dakota War of 1862 (also known as the Sioux Conflict).
Bert Anson. The Miami Indians, 1970. This history includes the Indiana and Oklahoma divisions of the Miami during the 19th century and beyond.
David R. M. Beck, Siege and Survival, 2002. This work tells the story of the Menominee’s successful struggle to remain in their homeland and hold on to their legal rights there.
David R. M. Beck, The Struggle for Self-Determination, 2005. This history covers the Menominee from 1854 to the end of the 20th century.
Nancy Bonvillain. The Huron, 1989. The author discusses Wyandot history during the removal and resettlement in Oklahoma.
Thomas A. Britten, American Indians in World War I, 1997. This is a study of the soldiers and the Indian home front during the war. The author references experiences of Ojibwa, Winnebago, Menominee, and Oneida soldiers.
Colin G. Calloway. The First Americans, 2nd ed., 2004. This is an excellent textbook that includes a good discussion of American expansion.
James A. Clifton. The Pokagons, 1683-1983, 1984. This book is the only history of the Michigan Potawatomi during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Sarah E. Cooke and Rachel B. Ramadhyani, comp. Indians and a Changing Frontier: The Art of George Winter, 1993. This volume contains a good essay by R. David Edmunds on the Miami and Potawatomi in the 1830s, as well as commentary on the art of Winter.
Gregory Dowd. A Spirited Resistance, 1992. In this study of Indian revitalization movements, including the ones led by Pontiac and Tecumseh, the author focuses on the integration of religious and political ideas in the efforts to form a wider ethnic identity, that of “Indian” that would serve the goals of independence.
R. David Edmunds. Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership, 1984. This is a biography of Tecumseh and a description of the society in which he lived.
R. David Edmunds, Frederick E. Hoxie, and Neal Salisbury. The People: A History of Native America, 2007. This is an excellent textbook that includes discussion of the Great Lakes region.
Arrell Morgan Gibson. The Kickapoos, 1963. Historian Gibson covers the American expansion through the Kickapoo’s residence in Oklahoma in the early 20th century.
Robert S. Grumet. The Lenapes, 1989. This work provides a history of the Delaware in Ohio, their exodus into Indiana, and their removal from Indiana to Missouri.
William T. Hagan. The Sac and Fox Indians, 1958. This history covers the treaty era and reservation life.
Laurence Hauptman. Between Two Fires, 1995. This is a general study of Indian participation in the Civil War. Company K of the First Michigan Sharpshooters was an Indian unit of Ottawa, Ojibwa, Delaware, Huron, Potawatomi, and Oneida that fought for the Union.
Laurence M. Hauptman and L. Gordon McLester III, eds. Oneida Indian Journey, 1999. This collection of essays examines the Oneida’s efforts to leave New York and settle in Wisconsin and Ontario from 1784 to 1860. The authors include both Oneida and non-Oneida writers.
Joseph B. Herring. Kenekuk: the Kickapoo Prophet, 1988. This is a history of the Vermillion Band of Kickapoo, from along the Wabash and Vermillion Rivers in Indiana and Illinois, and their leader Kenekuk. Kenekuk (1790-1852) was the leader of a new religion embraced by the Kickapoos and others in the 1820s. This religion buttressed the band’s effort to remain in their homeland. Kenekuk’s strategy was to help the Kickapoo retain their lands and identity without resort to warfare. Frontier Americans viewed Kenekuk’s people as cooperative, and they were accepting of them as neighbors. This group of Kickapoo were removed to Kansas in 1832, and there Kenekuk continued his strategy. Today this group of Kickapoo still have a reservation in Kansas.
Frederick E. Hoxie. A Final Promise, 1984. Historian Hoxie discusses the federal government’s assimilation policy from the 1880s to the 1920s. He argues that this policy reflected ideas and events in American society at large.
Rebecca Kugel, To Be the Main Leaders of Our People, 1998. This is a history of Minnesota Ojibwa politics from 1825 to 1898. The author makes extensive use of documents that contain the Ojibwa’s viewpoints on the events of the time.
Melissa L. Meyer, The White Earth Tragedy, 1994. This is a detailed history of the reservation economy, 1889-1920, and the role that Ojibwa and Métis members of the reservation community played subsequent to allotment. The author gives an excellent analysis of the impact of allotment, as well as the federal government’s competency policy and “racial” approach to Ojibwa identity. Meyer documents the fraud that accompanied the loss of land and resources, sometimes with the complicity of the federal government, ostensibly the trustee for these resources.
Roy W. Meyer. History of the Santee Sioux, rev. ed., 1993. This is a detailed history of the various Minnesota Santee villages up until the late 1980s.
Roger Nichols, Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path, 1992. A brief biography of Black Hawk that provides context for his actions and the reactions of others to him.
James W.Oberly. A Nation of Statesmen, 2005. The author focuses on the political strategies that enabled the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans to relocate to Wisconsin, resist termination, and achieve various political goals from 1815 to 1972.
Stewart Rafert. The Miami Indians of Indiana, 1996. A good history of the Indiana Miami and their struggles in Indiana.
James Scott. The Illinois Nation, 1973. This historical sketch covers the treaty era and the Illinois people’s removal to Kansas, then Oklahoma, where they organized a tribal government, successfully pursued claims against the United States, and were terminated under protest in 1956. They were federally recognized as a tribe again in 1997.
Bruce Trigger, ed. Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast, v. 15, 1978. This source briefly discusses the history of the tribes in the Midwest up to the early 1970s.
Stephen Warren. The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795-1870, 2005. An excellent history of the Shawnee in Ohio and after removal.
Mary Lethert Wingerd. North Country, 2010. This is a detailed and well written history of the Ojibwa and Dakota and their interactions with Americans in Minnesota up to the 1860s.
ON THE SOVEREIGNTY ERA
Grant Arndt. The Making and Muting of an Indigenous Media Activist — American Ethnologist 37, 3, 2010. Anthropologist Arndt provides biographical information and discusses Charles Round Low Cloud’s “Indian News” column (1930-49) as a vehicle for activism. Low Cloud challenged racial oppression in the 1930s. Arndt also shows how non-Indians muted indigenous media activism.
David R. M. Beck, The Struggle for Self-Determination, 2005. This history of the Menominee covers the 20th century.
Alison Bernstein. American Indians and World War II, 1990. The author discusses the soldiers, the homefront, and the post-war activities of veterans. Also mentioned is the work of Michigan Ojibwa and Wisconsin Oneida in using their languages to develop code for the armed services.
Paul Boyer. Native American Colleges. 1997. A good review of the establishment and accomplishments of tribal colleges.
Colin G. Calloway. The First Peoples, 2nd ed., 2004. An excellent textbook that includes a discussion of contemporary issues.
George Pierre Castile. To Show Heart: Native American Self-Determination and Federal Indian Policy, 1960-1975, 1978. Anthropologist Castile provides a clear discussion of the War on Poverty programs and the development of self-determination in Indian communities.
Brenda J. Child. Boarding School Seasons, 1998. Based largely on letters written between the Indian students and their relatives, this book gives a good picture of the boarding school experience.
Brenda J. Child. “Wilma’s Jingle Dress: Ojibwe Women and Healing in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Albert L. Hurtado, Reflections of American Indian History, 2008. Historian Child discusses the origin of the jingle dress society.
Charles E. Cleland, The Place of the Pike, 2001. Written with the cooperation of the Bay Mills Indian Community, this well-illustrated book includes a history of the struggle for hunting and fishing rights.
James A. Clifton. The Pokagons, 1683-1983, 1984. A brief but scholarly treatment of the history of the Potawatomi Indians of southwest Michigan and northern Indiana to the early 1980s.
James A. Clifton, George L. Cornell, and James M. McClurken, People of the Three Fires, 1992. Written for a general audience and appropriate for the classroom, the authors provide an overview of the history of the Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwa of Michigan up to the present.
Daniel M. Cobb. Native Activism in Cold War America, 2008. Historian Cobb presents a detailed history of American Indian efforts to support tribal sovereignty.
Stephen Cornell. The Return of the Native, 1988. Sociologist Cornell’s work is a history of Indian activism from the fur trade era to the 1970s.
Bill Dunlop and Marcia Fountain-Blacklidge, The Indians of Hungry Hollow, 2004. These Ottawa and Chippewa authors tell about growing up in an Ottawa community in Michigan.
R. David Edmunds, Frederick E. Hoxie, and Neal Salisbury. The People: A History of Native America, 2007. This textbook includes the Great Lakes region and encompasses the beginning of the 21st century.
Donald L. Fixico. Termination and Relocation, 1986. The author gives an overview of the history and effect of these federal policies on Indian communities.
Donald L. Fixico. The Urban Indian Experience, 2000. Historian Fixico provides a general overview of the relocation program and of Indian life in cities.
Michael J. Goc. Reflections of Lac du Flambeau, 1995. This is a well illustrated account from 1745-1995.
Maude Mitchell Kegg. Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood, 1993. This account, in both Ojibwa and English, is by an elder from the Mille Lacs community.
James La Grand. Indian Metropolis, 2002. An excellent study of Indian migration to Chicago and the Indian community there from 1945-1975.
Susan Lobo and Kurt Peters, eds. American Indians and the Urban Experience, 2001. This collection of essays includes papers on Indians in Chicago by Terry Straus and Debra Valentino and by David R. M. Beck.
Patty Loew. Indian Nations of Wisconsin, 2001. The author provides a cultural and historical sketch of each of the tribes in Wisconsin.
Nancy Oestreich Lurie, Wisconsin Indians, 2002. A brief account of the history of the Native peoples in Wisconsin. It includes discussion of termination, relocation, the struggle for hunting and fishing rights, environmental issues, and the efforts of tribal governments to exert sovereignty.
James M. McClurken. Gah-Baeh-Jhagwah-Buk: The Way It Happened, 1991. The book is a well illustrated history of the Odawa to the 1980s.
Roy W. Meyer. History of the Santee Sioux, rev. ed., 1993. The author discusses life in the Minnesota Santee communities in the 1930s to the 1980s.
Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Against the Tide of American History: The Story of the Mille Lacs Anishinabe, 1985. This history includes the self-determination era.
Larry Nesper. The Walleye War, 2002. Anthropologist Nesper’s work is an excellent study of the sovereignty movement among Ojibwa.
James W. Oberly. A Nation of Statesmen, 2005. Oberly’s history of the Stockbridge-Munsee reservation community continues into the 1970s.
Patricia K. Ourada. The Menominee, 1990. A clearly written history of the Menominee from prior to contact to the present. It is written for a general audience.
Thomas D. Peacock, ed. A Forever Story: The People and Community of the Fond du Lac Reservation, 1998. This well illustrated book was written by members of the community.
Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. Diba Jimooyung: Telling Our Story, 2005. This is a history of the Saginaw Chippewa written by members of the community.
Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior. Like a Hurricane, 1999. A narrative history of the political movement that advocated for Indians in the late 1960s and 1970s. It includes information on the history of the American Indian Movement.
George Spindler and Louise Spindler. Dreamers Without Power, 1971. This study of the Menominee in 1951-61 was a misguided attempt by anthropologists to describe the extent to which Menominee life had changed. The Spindlers tried to describe continuity and change in terms of degrees of assimilation. They categorized individuals in terms of how much they differed from a “traditional” baseline culture. Menominees were described as “native-oriented” (similar to Indians in the past), transitional (on the way to being like non-Indians), and “acculturated” (similar to non-Indians). This approach was subsequently discredited in anthropology. A few years after the Spindlers’ study, Menominees they described as transitional and acculturated were at the forefront of the struggle to restore Menominee tribalism and were supporters of Menominee cultural renaissance. They had essentially replaced their elders, in point of fact Spindlers’ native-oriented Menominee. The Spindlers had ignored the Menominee’s own definition of identity, instead relying on arbitrarily selected “traditional” traits that they believed native-oriented Menominees possessed.
Wayne J. Stein. “Tribal Colleges and Universities,” in Handbook of North American Indians: Contemporary, v. 2, 2008. This article discusses the philosophy of the founders of native-controlled colleges and the goals and achievements of the tribal college movement. In 2007 there were 36 tribal colleges in the United States, 8 in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Terry Straus and Grant P. Arndt, eds. Native Chicago, 1998. This volume contains a group of interesting and comprehensive essays on the early history of Indians in Chicago, the history of the Chicago Indian community in the 20th century, and contemporary issues of relevance to the Chicago Indian community.
Helen Hornbeck Tanner. The Ojibwa, 1992. A clearly written history of the Ojibwa from prior to contact to the present. It is written for a general audience.
Veronica E. Velarde Tiller. Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country, 2005. This reference work provides statistics about population, land ownership, employment and education, as well as a historical sketch for all the American Indian tribes.
Jack Utter. American Indians: Answers to Today’s Questions, 2nd ed., 2001. The author answers frequently asked questions about American Indians.
Linda Sue Warner and Gerald E. Gipp, eds. Tradition and Culture in the Millennium: Tribal Colleges and Universities. 2009. A good overview of the tribal college movement and its repercussions.
David E. Wilkins. American Indian Politics and the American Political System, 2002. A good overview of relations between the United States and tribal nations.
Angela Cavender Wilson, “Grandmother to Granddaughter: Generations of Oral History in a Dakota Family,” in Major Problems in American Indian History, eds. Albert L. Hurtado and Peter Iverson, 2nd ed., 2001. This essay, by a Wahpatonwan Dakota woman, discusses the importance of oral tradition to Native identity.
