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Homepage: news & updates

Web Site Revisions

February, 1999.

We have completed the Potawatomi treaties. All of the treaties between the Potawatomi and the United States are now on line.
Menominee's letters The treaty of August 5, 1836 ceded to the United States the reserve granted to Menominee, No-taw-kah, Muck-kah-tah-mo-way and Pee-pin-oh-waw and their bands by the treaty of October 26, 1832. The 1836 treaty does not carry Menominee's name. Menominee, Muck-kah-tah-mo-way, Pee-pin-oh-waw and the sons of No-taw-kah wrote at least three letters protesting that none of them had attended the council or signed the treaty and that the treaty was invalid. Transcripts of these protest letters are presented here thanks to Tom Ford who obtained copies from the National Archives.
All of the excerpts from the Gospel According to Matthew, as translated into Potawatomi by the Jesuit missionaries and compiled by Maurice Gailland, S.J., are now on line. This on-going work is funded by the Kansas Humanities Council grant we received earlier this year.

October, 1998.

We have added treaties that were signed between 1807 and 1816.
Peggy Kinder has given us permission to show you one of her traditional Potawatomi blouses ; Eric and Susan Campbell took the pictures.

September 11, 1998

The sixth annual Gathering was hosted by the Nottawaseppi Huron Band at their reservation in Athens, Michigan during the last weekend of August. The theme was "Welcome Home" and everyone who attended felt most welcome. Several of our group were present at this very special event.
We were contacted recently by Sean Markey of the National Geographic Society, requesting our help and yours. He wrote that "National Geographic Online is conducting an Internet survey on geography and migration this coming fall. It's crucial that the perspective of Native Americans be included for this study to be valid." He asked us to tell you the following:

"Your perspective as a member of the on line Native American community is needed. The National Geographic Society would like your help to answer an age-old question: How does where you live shape who you are? NGS invites you to take part in a confidential, 20-minute Internet survey to help scholars study the relationship between geography and one's sense of identity and community. To take part, please visit the following address http://survey2000.nationalgeographic.com anytime between September 17 and November 27."
Jim Thunder has a new book out, the third is his language series. It has three accompanying audio tapes. For more information, see our help page.
As a result of her recent travels, Susan Campbell has learned individuals to contact for genealogical information if your ancestors belonged to the Huron Band or lived on Walpole Island. See her Genealogy Sources page.
The fifth treaty which members of the Potawatomi signed is the treaty with the Delaware dated August 21, 1805.

August 6, 1998

The fourth treaty on which Potawatomi names appear is the treaty with the Wyandot dated July 4, 1805.

June 29, 1998

The Denver Museum of Natural History has a fine collection of Potawatomi beadwork and ribbon applique. Susan Campbell obtained permission for us to share photos of several pieces with you.
The third Potawatomi treaty in George S. Fay's book of Potawatomi treaties is dated June 7, 1803.
Our list of historical markers that commemorate the Trail of Death is complete, thanks to Shirley Willard of the Fulton County Historical Society. See our Trail of Death map page for information on the Trail of Death Commemorative Caravan, which will retrace this tragic journey in late September, 1998.

June 16, 1998

The Treaty of Greeneville is the second treaty that was signed by Potawatomi. It is available in our hypertext version of George S. Fay's Potawatomi Treaties.
A grammatical note: we have changed the name of our help and resources section from nizhokma (the verb) to nizhokmake'wen (the noun). It will take us a couple of updates to get the links changed on all of our pages.

May 29, 1998

We have received a grant from the Kansas Humanities Council to study the missionary translations of scriptures and prayers into Potawatomi. If you would like to know more about it, we have put extracts from our Grant proposal up in our Bwaka section.
We have begun to add the Potawatomi treaties, as assembled and edited by George E. Fay to the website. Our thanks to Dr. Fay for giving us permission to make his book available to you, and to Bwaka volunteer Tom Ford, for finding this work and obtaining permission for us to use it.
Here is a recent map of the Prairie Band reservation. It may also be accessed from "The People Today" in our nIshnabe'k The People section. This is a graphic file that is several hundred kilobytes, and may take a while to load. We thought the detail was worth it.
A map of the Trail of Death and a list of the markers that commemorate this tragic journey has been added to the nIshnabe'k The People section.
There is a new link on the genealogy sources page to an Kathy Welch Heidel's genealogy website. Kathy is a Prairie Band Potawatomi woman.

May 15, 1998

Check our nIshnabe'k The People section to see photographs from the 1996 Gathering, hosted by the Hannahville Indian Community, and the 1997 Gathering, hosted by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Susan and Eric Campbell contributed these pictures.
We have added Susan Campbell's family stories to our genealogy section.
We added the Ten Commandments to the prayers in Gailland's Potewatemi Neme'winin ipi Nemenigamowinin Potawatomi Prayers and Hymns that are on line in a more readable format, with the English version of each.

We have received a new grant from the Kansas Humanities Council that will enable us to expand our Potawatomi language offerings on the site. We're working hard on it now. We'll give you more information in our next update.
Tom Ford has obtained permission for us to add a new book, George Fay's compendium of all the treaties signed by the Potawatomi, to the website. We'll show you the first of the book in our next update!

April 30, 1998

At long last, we have added family trees pages to our Genealogy section. We begin with Susan Campbell's family tree. Susan is descended from Chesaugan, a headman of the St. Joseph Band of Potawatomi. Susan has traced her family tree back as far as seventeenth century France.
Check our genealogy sources page for a new link to the Quebec Family History Society site.
We added the Act of Contrition to the prayers in Gailland's Potewatemi Neme'winin ipi Nemenigamowinin Potawatomi Prayers and Hymns that are on line in a more readable format, with the English version of each

April 15, 1998

We added the Apostles Creed to the prayers in Gailland's Potewatemi Neme'winin ipi Nemenigamowinin Potawatomi Prayers and Hymns that are on line in a more readable format, with the English version of each.
A web site map or comprehensive table of contents is now available, in case you were wondering if you had missed anything.

March 27, 1998

Jack Wooldridge has graciously offered to let us display a copy of his painting, "Long Elk at Little Bighorn" on the website.
The first few prayers in Gailland's Potewatemi Neme'winin ipi Nemenigamowinin Potawatomi Prayers and Hymns are on line in a more readable format, with the English version of each.
The Trail of Death materials have been expanded to include excerpts from official reports of muster rolls before and after the journey. Thanks to Tom Ford and Susan Campbell for obtaining and transcribing these materials.
We have added a number of new entries to our list of Potawatomi references.

February 27, 1998

We revised the web site and moved it to the Kansas Heritage Server.

January 30, 1998

There's a Public Television show of special interest: Sunflower Journeys with Dave Kendall on KPTV February 12, 14 or 15, 1998. Its subject is Native Americans in Kansas, and it includes an interview with Jim McKinney and a discussion of several Potawatomi language projects currently going on, including our own BWAKA effort.

The first family story was been added to our genealogy section. It tells about Michikan Gishawata, an early 19th century Potawatomi chief, and his descendants. Our thanks to Cathy Couch for allowing us to share her family's story with you.

Susan Campbell has given us permission to show her family's beadwork in our new Arts section. Some of our new graphics, seen on the genealogy pages and between the letters of John Tipton (see below) are taken from the designs in these lovely pieces of Potawatomi art.

Added earlier in January: more Trail of Death materials, obtained for us from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. by Tom Ford, one of our volunteers:

Letters of John Tipton, who organized the Trail of Death, written during its early days.

Potawatomi land holdings in Marshall County, IN, 1838, a survey taken by some of Tipton's men as they gathered the Potawatomi in preparation for the journey west.

December, 1997 - on the Trail of Death

A wealth of historical information - an abbreviated diary of the removal, and a reference list of further materials, excerpted from a 1988 publication of the Fulton County Historical Society, together with materials collected by Ivan Nunemaker: a roll of the Potawatomi forcibly escorted to Kansas and a list of the Trail encampments.

"Cage NokmIsen," a poem by Susan Campbell, a woman of many talents and one of BWAKA's most energetic volunteers.

November 24, 1997

We have installed our Potawatomi Genealogy page, developed by Susan Campbell.

We have moved our culture section, now called "nIshnabe'k The People" to the Kansas Heritage Server.

September, 1997

We announced a workshop on Potawatomi language and culture to be held at Iowa State University, co-taught by Jim and Smokey McKinney.

July-September, 1997

We added William Elsey Connelley's essay "The Prairie Band of Pottawatomie Indians" to the website.
We stopped adding sound files to the dictionary in August. Sound files are provided for approximately a third of the dictionary entries; 391 sound files are linked to the Potawatomi-English version.

June 30, 1997

Johnston Lykins' translation of The Acts of the Apostles, the second half of his book published in 1844, is available in hypertext. We have converted Lykins' original orthography to something like our PBP orthography, in the same way that we converted the Gospel According to Matthew last month.

May 28, 1997

Lykins Transation of the Gospel According to Matthew into Potawatomi. We have added the original text of this translation (chapters 1 through 7 only) and a conversion of the entire text into something approximating PBP orthography to the web site. A brief biography of Lykins and some notes on the orthography and the conversion process are included.

Dictionary. We are continuing to add approximately 25 sound files per week to the dictionary. There are more than 300 sound files on line at this time.

Kansas Heritage Server. The move to our new home is moving forward on schedule. Gary Mitchell's book is now located on the new site, as are the Lykins materials.

April 30, 1997

New sound file format We have changed our dictionary sound files to the effective standard for the Web: 8000 Mz, Sun (.au) format. This format will be handled by more of your browsers and has an added advantage for everyone: it results in sound files that are about a third the size of our former files - so they will download and play in significantly less time. The downside is that the sound quality is not as good, but it is about the same quality as you hear during an ordinary telephone call. We felt that the benefits more than made up for this minimal loss and hope you agree.

More sound files We are up to 131 sound files and really do expect to add more words every week (or close to that schedule).

New location The dictionary is the first part of the web page that we have moved to the Kansas Heritage Server, located at the University of Kansas. We will be relocating the entire Potawatomi Language Project website to the Kansas Heritage Server over the next few months.

April, 1997

Gary Mitchell's new book, Stories of the Potawatomi People has been added to the website. Gary is the Prairie Band historian.

Revision note for December 5, 1996

Maillist approach changed. If you have an inquiry, we are happy to help if we can. Please write to us, but don't mail inquiries to the list, which we use for communication between those working on the project. Thanks.

November 10, 1996

New Additions. The dictionary has gone from 200 questionable items to 1268 well-checked ones (this count run on the Potawatomi entries). I am quite happy with the list, and confident that it represents my dad's knowledge of the language he grew up with.

Other updates. I also brought several pages up to date, in particular: homepage; page_people; pbp_dictionary (the non-frames document); the frames dictionary, of course; and now, this revisions page :-{). A table formatting error in pbc_mckinney_pics (my family pictures) was corrected earlier this fall.

Maillist. A maillist has been established for the growing group of regular corresponders and workers on the project. If you wish to be on it (that is, if you wish either to help with the project OR to receive constant info re. what's happening with it), send us a request.

I am very thankful you are out there reading and responding to the pages, but writing letters takes me quite a long time and seems to keep me from getting other necessary work done. The many inquiries for information of all kinds, name requests, geneology info, etc. (most of which I cannot really answer without spending time researching myself), have mostly been put into an archive. Sorry if I didn't respond to your letter.

June 20, 1996

A couple of important matters for any of you interested:

Overall. We're all excited to be in the process of a major revision of these pages. But we also can't wait to add the new features in as they go. By the end of the summer, there should be a whole new look, which we're sure you will like. Below are listed the most recent additions to the pages.

New Additions. As you've already noticed, the opening pages are changing. That preface was far too long (did anybody ever read the whole thing?), and we've broken it up into truly hypertextual parts.
The dictionary has a new look. We hope you have Netscape 2 or better, or a browser than can handle frames. Mostly I think frames are an annoyance, but the dictionary seemed to be the perfect environment for a framed page.
In the literature or old books section, we have the first pages of Maurice Gailland's missal, titled Potewatemi Neme'winin ipi Nemenigamowinin, or Potawatomi Prayers and Hymns, published in 1866. Don't know if anybody can or will get through the whole thing, but if you do, let us know!

Times and dates. Oh, yeah! I passed the exam. It's on to another one this fall, and then the dissertation...

February 16, 1996

New Additions. The only thing new in the Potawatomi pages since last December is the dictionary. But the more sound files I process, the more excited I get about this project. Thanks for your good feedback already. I've had several conversations with folks working on teaching Indian languages with interactive multimedia/world wide web pages. I'm greatly encouraged, but also concerned that we're all inventing the same wheel. As soon as there's time (see #3 below), I'd like to initiate conversation among the folks working on similar projects. Let me know if you'd be interested to be involved in that conversation.

Backgrounds and Readability. I've received enough e-mail about black backgrounds and unreadable text that I'm taking some emergency (if temporary) measures: for now, I've done away with all fancy backgrounds in order to make the pages accessible and useful to everyone. When I have time (see #3 next), I will revisit the issue of backgrounds and do some real work on simultaneously having cool graphics and readable text. I'm not going to mess with the tables for now. Sorry if they look weird on your browser. I notice the new Netscape has a significant (negative) impact on my homepage.

Times and Schedules. I'm scheduled to take the preliminary exam for my doctorate on March 15-18 (less than a month! aaargh!). Having caught myself writing HTML and mixing sound files for this project, and realizing that it was part of a serious avoidance of studying, I have made some promises (to myself, but more importantly, to my wife) to do nothing else until after the exam. I have received quite a bit of mail, and if you sent some of it, I really did intend to respond. Still do. But it will be after March 18. If I make it over this hurdle this semester, be ready to see a lot of work on this project and changes over the next year.

New People on the Project. In the last two months, I have talked with several people who have expressed interest in the project and want to help with the work. (Yea!)

I'd like to welcome my sister, Darlene Young, who will be helping my dad, Jim McKinney, and me incorporate later this spring and who will be taking over most of the administrative duties of the project. What that means is that some administrative duties will actually be getting done. It also means we'll be getting around to writing that big grant we've been talking about, and trying to surface some funds for taking this project to the next level.
I've also had discussions with two young men who are interested in using their new skills in HTML to evaluate and perhaps revise the Potawatomi web pages. If you've visited here before, you know how much that's been needed. Watch for the future input of my nephew, Joel Young, and a very talented neighbor kid, Omar Tesdell.

This website was established in September, 1995.

MIgwe'c mine' pama mine' - Smokey

BWAKA - about us
bode'wadmimo speak Potawatomi
nIshnabe'k The People

mzenegenek books
nizhokmake'wen resources/help
Homepage: news & updates

We welcome your questions and comments.

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