Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History was edited by Helen Hornbeck Tanner and Adele Hast, written by Jacqueline Peterson (no relation to the reviewer) and Robert J. Surtees with cartography by Miklos Pinther. This book is part of The Civilization of the American Indian series published by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, in 1987.

Editors, Authors, and Cartographer

Helen Hornbeck Tanner has written numerous books and her expert and detailed knowledge has been used in court. Helen was inducted into The Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame in 2006.

Helen Hornbeck Tanner is the country's foremost researcher and disseminator of Native American history of the Great Lakes region. Born in 1916 in Minnesota, Helen is known as an expert on Native American history and Native rights. Among her many books and articles, Helen's most far-reaching wor is the Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, which has been called the only accurate mapping of Native American tribes.
(http://hall.michiganwomenshalloffame.org/honoree.php?C=0&A=225)

Helen has authored, coauthored, and edited many books including:

• Zespedes in East Florida, 1748-1790 (1963),/li>
• The Territory of the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma (1974)
• The Ojibwa, A Critical Bibliography (1976)
• The Ojibwa (1992)
• The Settling of North America
• The Settling of North America: The Visual Atlas of the Great Migrations Into North America
• A Compendium of the Early History of Chicago: To the Year 1835, When the Indians Left
• Indians of Ohio and Indiana Prior to 1795: The Greenville Treaty, 1795.
• Beyond Red Power: American Indian Politics and Activism since 1900 (2007)
• Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians (1996)
• General Green's Visit to St. Augustine in 1785 (1964)

Miklos Pinther is the Chief Cartographer for the United Nations. He has drawn maps for these books:

• Canada Before Confederation: A Study of Historical Geography
• Colonial New England: A Historical Geography
• Ethnographic Atlas of Ifugao: A Study of Environment, Culture and Society in Northern Luzon
• Images of the Ohio Valley: A Historical Geography of Travel, 1740 to 1860
• Water Atlas of the United States

Adele Hast has edited, authored and coauthored many historical books including American Jewish History, Women Building Chicago 1790-1990,, and a huge, multivolume set International Directory of Company Histories.

The Jacqueline Peterson who coauthored this book is a Professor of History at Washington State University Vancouver and is a prolific writer, having written or cowritten many books and articles. A couple of her books are Sacred Encounters: Father De Smet and the Indians of the Rocky Mountain West, and The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America.

Robert J. Surtees has written several books about Native Americans in Canada including The Original People, Indian Land Surrenders in Ontario, 1763-1867, and The Northern Connection: Ontario Northland since 1902.

This Book

Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History is a handsome book about 9 inches x 12 inches and one inch thick. The cover is forest green with red and white lettering. The text of the book is brown on off-white paper. The book has 224 pages plus 16 pages of front matter. Thirty-one chapters start with general maps of the areas discussed.

The chapter entitled Distribution of Late Prehistoric Cultures c. 1400-1600, Map 5 has fine drawings of pottery of three groups of peoples.

In the Great Lakes, it is possible to identify three broad cultural (ceramic) traditions. Each is distinguishable by at least A.D. 1000 and may be traced clearly in time until the era of European contact. These traditions are the Woodland, of the Atlantic seaboard and the northern Midwest; the Upper Mississipian, of the upper Ohio and upper Mississippi River valleys; and the Mississippian of southern parts of Indiana and Illinois.(page 25)

Chapters progress through topics of natural vegetation and subsistence patterns to treaty information and land cessions. The War of 1812 is discussed in good detail. Reservations and epidemics among indians also have chapters. The chapter Epidemics Among Indians c. 1630-1880, Map 32 details year by year episodes of illness.

1636-37. A disease that caused a "purple" rash and high fever, probably scarlet feter or perhaps typhus, affected adult Europeans as well as causing significant Indian mortality. It was transmitted from the Susquehannock to the Mohawk; and spread among the Huron, Tionontati, Neutral, and Erie tribes, and probably marked the demise of the Wenro. All communities affected are not located.(page169)

A finely detailed map accompanies the chapter about epidemics, showing villages and areas of illness in red with dates color-coded for the type of illness.

The text is accompanied by 80 fine drawings and reproductions of paintings contemporary with the subject of text. All of these drawings and paintings have been printed in brown ink.

Abundant finely detailed maps and generous tabular information fill the book. The mapping colors are soft greens, pinks, browns, and blues with the brown ink, making them easy to look at for long periods of time. Map 13, Indian Villages and Tribal Distribution c. 1768 is a particularly beautiful two-page map with pleasant color, fine detail, and useful legend boxes.

The index is comprehensive and fills almost 15 pages. The selected bibliography fills 21 pages.

For anyone interested in American and Canadian Native American history, this is a comprehensive book that is well researched and documented. It is clearly written and beautifully produced. I would recommend this book.