Thomas Library Blog

Native Americans/ First Nations/ Indigenous Peoples

November is Native American Heritage Month. This month we learn more about the history and culture of the people indigenous to North America.

There is a long record of First Nation occupation of the North American continent, although information about them is limited. In Ohio, the Adena culture built many of the mounds that you may recognize today, which may include the Serpent Mound. There are limited artifacts that exist, mainly because the materials that the Native Americans used rapidly deteriorated over time.

In Clark County, Ohio, the Shawnee became the dominate tribe, although tribal boundaries were not as clearly defined as European national boundaries. They were an Algonquian speaking people that would hunt in the winter and farm in the summer. In the late 18th and early 19th century, white settlers began to inhabit the Ohio Valley, coming into conflict with the indigenous people that already lived there. Wampum belts, pipe tomahawks and other artifacts demonstrated an uneasy peace between the two people. Overtime, native land was seceded to the settlers through treaties like the Treaty of Greenville.

Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief at the time, fought with the British against the newly established United States of America to protect his people and way of life. Eventually he and the British lost. Tecumseh was killed in battle in 1813.

During the 19th century, the Shawnee were pushed out of the Ohio Valley into the west. In the 1980s, they were eventually recognized by Congress as a sovereign Indian nation. They form three tribes: the Shawnee Tribe, the Absentee Shawnee, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe.

Do you want to learn more? Here are some additional resources:

Hyperlinked Resources

Algonquian Dictionaries and Language Resources Project (n.d.). Algonquian Linguistics Atlas. Retrieved from https://www.algonquianlanguages.ca/

History of the people. (n.d.). Shawnee Tribe. Retrieved from https://www.shawnee-nsn.gov/history

Native American Heritage Month (n.d.). The Library of Congress. Retrieved from https://www.nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/

Omnibus Indian Advance Act, 25 U.S.C. 4101 (2000).

Redmond, B. (n.d.). The first peoples of Ohio: What we know and what we're still learning. Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Retrieved from https://www.cmnh.org/science-news/blog/september-2019/the-first-peoples-of-ohio

Serpent Mound (n.d.). Ohio History Connection. Retrieved from https://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/browse-historical-sites/serpent-mound/

Tecumseh (2022, October 1st). Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tecumseh-Shawnee-chief

Welcome. We are glad you are here. (n.d.). Native Land Digital. Retrieved from https://native-land.ca/

Library of Congress Guide

Library of Congress Call Numbers: E 51-99, PS and PZ

Library of Congress Subject Headings: Indians of North America; Algonquian Indians; Athapascan Indians; Caddoan Indians; Canada--Civilization--Indian influences; Classification--Books--Indians of North America; Eskimos; Libraries--Special collections--Indians of North America; Mound-builders; Off-reservation Indians; Ojibwa Indians; Piegan Indians; Reservation Indians; Russia (Federation)--Civilization--Indian influences; Sewee Indians; Shoshoni Indians; Tinne Indians; Two-spirit people; United States--Civilization--Indian influences; Urban Indians--North America

Suggested key terms: American Indian, Indians of North America, Indigenous Peoples, First Nations

Books

All are available in the catalog.

Amirkhani, J., Bryan-Wilson, J., Franco, J. T., Johnson, A. K., Long Soldier, L., Midge, T., & Red Star, W. (2022). Wendy Red Star_: delegation. Aperture.

Madsen, D. L. (2016).ÊThe Routledge companion to Native American literature. Routledge.

Mark Lynott. (2015).ÊHopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio_: More Than Mounds and Geometric Earthworks. Oxbow Books.

Mithlo, N. M., & Martin, R. (2020).ÊMaking history_: the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts_: Institute of American Indian Arts. University of New Mexico Press.

Shally-Jensen, M. (2017).ÊNative Americans (1451-2017). Salem Press, a division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc.

Susan Sleeper-Smith. (2018).ÊIndigenous Prosperity and American Conquest_: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792. Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press.

Tully, J. (2016).ÊCrooked Deals and Broken Treaties_: How American Indians Were Displaced by White Settlers in the Cuyahoga Valley. Monthly Review Press.

Rare Books

These are listed as rare and are in the archives. They will require submitting an Archive Request Form.

Catlin, G. (1842).ÊLetters and notes on the manners, customs, and condition of the North American IndiansÊ(2d ed.). Published by the author, at the Egyptian Hall.

Copway, G. (1847).ÊThe life, history and travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Copway)_: a young Indian chief of the Ojebwa nation, a convert to the Christian faith, and a missionary to his people for twelve years_; with a sketch of the present state of the Ojebwa nation, in regard to Christianity and their future prospects. Also an appeal_; with all the names of the chiefs now living, who have been Christianized, and the missionaries now laboring among them. Printed by Weed and Parsons.

Drake, B. (1841).ÊLife of Tecumseh, and of his brother the Prophet; with a historical sketch of the Shawanoe Indians. E. Morgan & Co.

Journals

The American Indian Quarterly (ISSN  0095-182X, 04/01/1974-present)

American Indian Culture and Research Journal (ISSN 0161-6463, 03/01/1998 - 09/01/2011)

Wicazo Sa Review (ISSN 0749-6427, 04/01/1985-present)

In the mid-twentieth century, Helen Basler gathered the mementos that reminded her of her college days. She selected pressed corsages, registration cards, newspaper clippings, and convocation programs and pasted them in empty scrapbook. Through her scrapbook, we can chart the major developments of Helen's college years, from her first days at Wittenberg College in 1934 to her graduation in 1940. Her scrapbook, like many other individually curated books, reveal a great deal about the creator but also served to help the creator organize and personal information in a time before Google Drive and OneDrive existed.

Scrapbooks took hold in the nineteenth century with improved printing and papermaking technology. Early scrapbooks were often the family bible, where participants wrote down important dates and placed important papers between its pages (CSUN University Library, 2019). Yet during the nineteenth century, technology made print media widely available. Photography was invented in 1822, and over the years it became increasingly cheaper and easier to produce so that it became available to everyday people. Meanwhile, paper became cheaper as they shifted from used linens to plant matter and adapted paper-making machines (Ott, 2012). With innovations in printing, periodicals became widely available and more specialized (Garvey, 2013, 3). Prayer cards, post cards, and other material similarly rapidly increased in availability (Garvey, 2013, 3). People were confronted with an overwhelming amount of information and needed a means to conserve that information for later (Garvey, 2013, 3). Everyone--men, women, and children--would collect material that interested them and paste them into blank art books. You can see this the scrapbook with two letters from Isaac K. Funk, a Wittenberg University Alumni and co-founder of Funk and Wagnalls Publishing House. Much of the scrapbook consists of stories clipped from newspapers and magazines and then pasted into the book. Many were humorous or moralizing in tone.

Scrapbooks served this practical function well into the twentieth century. As the name suggests, Wittenberg Newspaper Clippings, volumes I, II, and III, contain newspaper clippings on Wittenberg University. These clippings date from around the early twentieth century to the sixties. The contributor to this set numbered the pages and created a brief list at the beginning of each volume. During this period there what are called clipping bureaus, companies that would mail to interested organizations newspaper clippings relevant to them. This allowed the organizations to track their public profile before the days of social media. Even for individuals, scrapbooks allowed them to keep information on their own lives. Helen Basler's (who would later be called Helen Rankine) scrapbook is an example of this of this function, just as Marshall Bailey's scrapbook. Marshall Bailey was a student and later a music professor here at Wittenberg University. Through newspaper clippings and programs, we can see the development of Bailey's music career.

These scrapbooks provided a curated view of the maker's identity. We see that in Helen Rankine's scrapbook. Through the inclusion of the material, we see Helen as the college student, and through programs and newspaper clippings, we can see Marshall as the professor. However, these glimpses may not be totally faithful to the subject they referred to. Scrapbooks were often shared with others, so they represented a curated image of the individual, rather than a complete view (Garvey, 2013, 16).

Toward the end of the twentieth scrapbooks lost popularity. Around the late mid-2000s, scrapbooking experienced a resurgence as a hobby (Garvey, 2013, 19). They used stickers, paper, and other material bought from hobby stores or departments to personalize their books, often for the purpose to document their family lineage (Garvey, 2013, 20; Levenson, 2005). The creator of the Education Department scrapbook used such materials. They included photocopies of important documents and stickers. Importantly, creators of scrapbooks used software to edit photos and documents.

Today scrapbooks may not have the same place they did in the nineteenth century, but they have provided an important steppingstone. Consider how the scrapbooks of the past relate to social media today. Although we are long way from saving newspaper clippings in a blank book, we are still saving personal photos on sites like Facebook or Instagram.

References

CSUN University Library (2019, October 22). The history of scrapbooks. Retrieved from The History of Scrapbooks | CSUN University LibraryÊÊ

Garvey, E. (2013). Writing with scissors: American scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance. Oxford University Press.Ê

Levenson, E. (2005). Your message to posterity. New Statesman, 134 (4748), 25.Ê Ê

Ott, E. (2012). Turning the page: Technology & innovation in 19th-century books. Retrieved from Turning the Page: Technology & Innovation in 19th-Century Books | Rare Book School
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