- Dates
- 1887 – 1897
- Eras
- Irish era
- Concepts
- anishinaabe-odawahistoriographytreaty-rights
Summary
Andrew J. Blackbird’s 1887 and revised 1897 histories provide Indigenous-authored regional context for Ottawa and Chippewa history, language, traditions, and critique of outside accounts. Blackbird identifies himself as recording history and language according to his community’s knowledge, while disputing erroneous non-Indigenous treatments of traditions and place-name meanings. The 1897 volume’s p. 70 reference to Strang’s death at Beaver Island is retained as a single retrospective mention, not expanded into an island narrative.
The books are important historiographical context for Beaver Island research, but the held editions do not supply a Beaver Island toponym or a direct account of the archipelago. Their silence is retained as a negative search finding, not converted into a claim about Anishinaabe presence, absence, sovereignty, or community memory on the islands.
Evidence and limits
The editions carry Blackbird’s own late-nineteenth-century voice and editorial frame; they should neither be displaced by settler compilations nor treated as a universal authority for every Ottawa, Chippewa, or Anishinaabe community. Their content requires edition-specific reading, and the archive’s current full-text review cannot substitute for consultation with relevant communities, language authorities, treaty texts, or place-specific sources.
See also
Read the document
112 pages, rendered from the held scan.
Sources
- Held public-domain text. Blackbird presents an Ottawa/Chippewa history, language material, traditions, personal and family history, and an authorial challenge to inaccurate non-Indigenous accounts. Project review found no Beaver Island mention in this edition; that absence is a search result, not evidence that the archipelago lacked Anishinaabe history or that the book is exhaustive.
- Project Gutenberg provenance sidecar for Blackbird’s 1887 history.Records the Project Gutenberg source URL, retrieval metadata, checksum, and the edition-specific negative search finding. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Held public-domain revised edition. Visually checked printed p. 70: the book mentions that King Strang was murdered at Beaver Island in 1856, but this is a retrospective reference rather than a direct island account. In its preface Blackbird describes recording Ottawa traditions, leaders, language, and personal/family history, and states that non-Indigenous writers had misstated traditions and place-name meanings. Project review found no Beaver Island toponym; it is not a source for an island name or a full island history.
- Searchable OCR locates the preface and the printed p. 70 Strang reference; the page wording is checked against the held PDF rather than assumed correct from OCR.
- Internet Archive PDF provenance sidecar for Blackbird’s revised 1897 history.Records the Internet Archive source URL, retrieval metadata, checksum, public-domain status, and edition-specific negative name finding. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Internet Archive DjVu provenance sidecar for Blackbird’s revised 1897 history.Records the OCR derivative URL, retrieval metadata, checksum, and the edition-specific negative name finding. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Andrew J. Blackbird’s histories of Ottawa and Chippewa people, 1887, 1897”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/documents/andrew-j-blackbird-ottawa-chippewa-history-1887-1897/, accessed [date], citing Andrew J. Blackbird, *History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan*, 1887, Project Gutenberg eBook 6988. (and 5 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-02. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Andrew J. Blackbird’s histories of Ottawa and Chippewa people, 1887, 1897”RIS for “Andrew J. Blackbird’s histories of Ottawa and Chippewa people, 1887, 1897”