Customer Reviews

Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Civilization of the American Indian)

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Nothing short of a dream come true for a great lakes history or indian history students. I stumbled across this book at a local college library and was hooked. This book is put together in a clear and easy to understand format and would be a jewel in anyone's collection of great lakes or indian history. The illustrations are beautiful and the maps detailing the tribal centers and distribution are numerous, clear and very detailed. Much more than a mere atlas, this work actually seems to TEACH the reader because of the friendly and easy to comprehend writing style. Why various tribes lived where they did, where the came from and where they moved to (forcibly or otherwise), relations between tribes, how they got the names they are commonly known by today, how they lived.....As you read more and more you can actually see why the large groups of Native Americans(because of old animosities, heritage, etc.) did not band together and change history how the Americans and Europens were able to dictate terms over and over as the years went on. Never before have I come across something so complete and accurate on this subject.

I am glad to see this volume is now available at a lower price. (I see my hardcover copy was purchased August 25, 1993, for the price of $76.50.) Recently doing some research work with Great Lakes Indian history gave thought to also offering a review on this volume I have had in my home library for 17 years.

Up until retirement a few years ago I had been a life long resident of Ohio, and had taken some courses in Ohio and Great Lakes history at The Ohio State University. With an interest in anthropology as a course of study at OSU had also traveled quite a bit following the local Indian tribes and trails. Had also been a member of the Ohio Historical Society. However, in spite of all this, still needed something more to give me better insight and grasp of Great Lakes and Ohio Valley Indian history.

Had purchased books from the University of Oklahoma since 1966, with hundreds resting on my shelves before coming upon this great volume. For the serious reader of Indian history focused on Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and the Ohio valley this is THE atlas book. From the part of Ohio (northwest) in which I lived our local tribes had been among others the Ottawa, Wyandot, Shawnee, Miami, and further northeast the Delaware. Ohio had seen much Indian activity up through the war of 1812, with our local cemetery at Fort Amanda, outside Lima, Ohio, having gravestones listing both military and settlers killed in those attacks. Wapakoneta, Ohio, only a few minutes drive from Lima, had once been the main council grounds for the Shawnee Indians, with Lima itself seeing much activity from both the Shawnee and Ottawa Indian tribes, with the Ottawa River running through the city of Lima itself. One area of Lima was named Shawnee with a local Shawnee high school. My father had always mentioned as fact that my great grandfather had been a friend of the Ottawa tribe with members sleeping in his house on cold nights, before proceeding in canoes on the Ottawa River the following day. He went on to say that Jake had numerous head dresses and arrow heads given him by the local Ottawa tribe.

So, after this long winded discussion I will come to the point of saying that I have seldom seen a better overall Atlas of the old Northwest Territory than this one from U of Ok.

The volume includes 33 maps from the years 1600 through 1870. Beyond the maps there are many color and colorful illustrations of people, places, and things. The book is pretty much organized date wise around the maps, with a half dozen pages starting at page 99 listing a chronology of the War of 1812 which was of great aid and interest to me when visiting areas between Lima, Kenton, and Fort Meigs at Maumee (banks of the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio). The volume ends with a full bibliography and a dozen page Index.

Once living most of my life in a major area covered in this Atlas, I can recommend the volume to anyone having practical interest therein. Farmers in that area of northwest Ohio during plowing to this day still turn over artifacts, especially arrowheads, from this period with the flood plains still washing up valuable artifacts as well.

The only lament I have in this volume is its starting date of 1600, thereby it cannot offer any information on the glacial kame Indian activity of 10,000 years ago around Lima, or the later Hopewell and Adena Indians around Chillicothe, Ohio. Also missing is information on the mound builders of the The Great Serpent Mound near Athens, Ohio.

There are many, many sites from the early Indian period in Ohio and this volume helps in understanding them as well as locating them. For all sites of the Great Lakes area, this book has to be one of the best.

Semper Fi.


Another volume: ATLAS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN by Carl Waldman is also an excellent volume for thousands of Indian cultures.

The most comprehensive, interesting book on the subject I have read. If you need THE one book on the subject of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region, this is it!

this product was in excellent condition. this product looked exactly as it did on the screen. the only complaint i have is that i thought there would be more specific information on the indians of the great lakes area.

Misleading dust-jacket descriptors ("absolute triumph," "awesome," "wondrous and majestic," and "a joy to read") notwithstanding, this is a valuable rather than an invaluable work. Beautifully illustrated, it is a very useful compilation of geographic and historical data on Great Lakes area Indians and by virtue of its scope and the absence of comparable works belongs in every university and public library. That said, though grand in concept the Atlas remains less than brilliant in execution and to judge from the Ohio data must be used with caution.

Maps of subsistence patterns and Late Prehistoric cultures are so generalized and inaccurate as to be of little use. Surprising factual mistakes and embarrassing typographical errors (Galliopolis, Muskingham. Freemont, Young[e]) are common enough to make it necessary for the reader to double-check any piece of information before accepting it. If the compilers/editors are purists enough to spell Alliquippa as "Allaquippa," after all these years, it is not too much to spell the names of Ray A. Billington, Albert T. Volwiler, Glenn A. Black, and Richard Yarnell correctly. Or is "Allaquippa" a mistake, too? Any map such as Charles Cleland's "Distribution of Late Prehistoric Cultures c. 1400 to 1600," inevitably reflects our collective ignorance as much as the state of our collective knowledge, a fact underscored by his predilection for drawing cultural boundaries along river courses. Still, on the basis of current knowledge, many archaeologists would move Cleland's "Whittlesey" boundary 60 km. or so to the south, to include Riker and Wellsburg sites, and his "Monongahela" boundary 30 or more km. west, to include various sites in the Allegheny Plateau of southeastern Ohio. Boundaries indicated for the Madisonville Phase and for Fort Ancient are also debatable. Unquestionably the most remarkable map in this atlas is that titled "Subsistence Patterns," in which giant cornstalks and miniature bison and deer symbolically and erroneously suggest that 1) maize was not grown in West Virginia, 2) significant utilization of bison did not occur east of central Indiana (even along the Ohio River), and 3) intensive fishing did not occur in the western Great Lakes. This map demarcates present-day areas of more than 140 frost-free days, an isotherm to which some archaeologists ascribe almost mystical importance, theorizing that it reflects a similar temperature distribution in prehistoric times that in turn reflects a prehistoric difficulty in growing prehistoric maize beyond that boundary. Whatever real significance such an isothermic line may have is drastically obscured by the vagaries (thousands of square km.) between its delineation in Map 4 and that shown in the inset in the same map.

Historians and archaeologists familiar with early Ohio will question the absence of any reference to Tarhe's Town and Toby Town, both in Fairfield Co.; Three Legs Town (Tuscarawas Co.); Raccoon Town (Licking Co.); the Delaware Hurricane Tom's Town (Ross Co.); Fort Industry; and other sites of at least moderate historical interest. Also, the Shawnee Kiskimenetas town is generally located on the west bank of the Ohio River, in Ohio rather than in West Virginia; the Mahoning Salt Lick lay above the mouth of Mosquito Creek, not below it, and on the south bank rather than the north bank. Kuskuski Town was below the confluence of the Mahoning and Shenango Rivers, on the west bank-- not between the two rivers-- as shown on at least one map. (Others locate it correctly.)

The bibliography, arranged by author or key word, should be an embarrassment to any library but particularly to one of the stature of the Newberry. There is not the faintest glimmering of the concept of corporate author: if a personal author could not be determined, the first word with a capital letter sufficed. Thus we have one-word entries under "British," "Canada," "Cooperative" (for a state cooperative extension agency), "Gratiot Co." (i.e., a book about Gratiot County [Michigan], not a book compiled or published by the Gratiot Company), "Isabella" (i.e., a book about Isabella County [state undeterminable from the bibliographic entry but presumably Michigan], not a work by Queen Isabella or Ingrid Berman's daughter), "MPHC" (the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society Collections to us incognescenti), "National Archives (presumably ours), and "Sault" (for a manuscript map of Sault Ste. Marie. As for word processing, somebody seems to have had particular trouble with underlining commands and orphan lines.

More substantive errors include mapping the route of Col. Henry Bouquet's 1764 march against the Ohio Indians as if his army crossed the West Virginia panhandle (Map 11). Likewise, the route ascribed to Lord Dunmore's 1774 foray against the Shawnee bears only a remote resemblance to reality, with no indication that half of his trek followed the Hocking River. The cities of Covington and Newport both remain in Kentucky, not Ohio. Such errors in a major reference work are not only embarrassing but also cast doubt on its general reliability and require independent verification of each fact before accepting it. Nonetheless, the text is clearly written and well-balanced, ably summarizing the mass of data presented, and the Atlas will remain of considerable value for some time to come (if not for the next century, as prophesied on the dust jacket).

For the researcher, student or history buff I can't recommend this highly enough. It covers EVERYTHING happening in the time span that it covers. And the price! OMG! What a deal in this day of penny pinching.

If you enjoy reading pre-Revolutionary history, this book will help you get your bearings. Marvelously crafted.