Native American Heritage Month Map Exhibit at Ball State University Libraries

Indiana History:  Native American Heritage Month Map Exhibit

November commemorates Native American Heritage Month.  Ball State University Libraries’ GIS Research and Map Collection (GRMC) on the second floor of Bracken Library is celebrating the month with a special exhibit.

The Native American Heritage Month exhibit (above, click to enlarge) this year includes maps depicting the history of Native Americans in the area of modern-day Indiana.  Indiana’s Native American Tribes is a map showing the Native American groups that lived in area prior to statehood, including the Lenape (Delaware), the Miami, the Potawatomi, and the Shawnee.

A second map, Tecumseh’s War 1811, is from the Historical Atlas of Native Americans by Ian Barnes published in 2009 and available from the GRMC and the Atlas Collection.  The map shows the locations of Native American villages in the region, including Prophetstown.  This site on the Wabash River is where William Henry Harrison fought the Native Americans in the Battle of Tippecanoe.  The map also identifies the locations of American and British forts, Zane’s Trace, towns, and the probably birthplace of Tecumseh and the site of Tecumseh’s father’s death.

The map, Native American Resistance 1785-1842, identifies areas ceded by the Native Americans, Native American settlements, forts, and battle sites.  Northwest Territories 1800-1818 shows the borders of the original Indiana Territory and the subsequent Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan Territories.  Both of these maps and the photographs of Sitting Bull and other prominent figures are from the Historical Atlas of Native Americans.

Another map in the exhibit shows the location of Native American villages along the White River in Indiana.  Current county lines and towns are shown on the map as points of reference. 

A copy of the exhibit poster is available for use from the Libraries’ Cardinal Scholar repository.  Previous map exhibits are also available from the online repository for use in the classroom or research.

The GRMC has also created cartographic subject guides to assist researchers using geographic materials related to numerous academic fields, and a guide to Native American resources is available from the GRMC Web page.  The guide includes maps and other cartographic resources available from the GRMC and the Atlas Collection in Bracken Library.

For more information about these cartographic resources, please contact the GRMC at 765-285-1097.