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The world of cartography and map history lost a skillful practitioner and devoted student with the passing last week of Helen Tanner, at the age of 94.Trained as an American historian and with a PhD (1961) from the University of Michigan, Helen's early work on colonial Florida already showed her interest in using maps as historical sources.Helen developed a great fondness for the landform maps of Erwin Raisz, which she felt showed so well the pristine environments and riverine routes of Native Americans. As she became more and more involved with American Indian history, working with the Indian Clams Commission after 1963, her knowledge of, and reliance on, maps became a signature interest. She told a radio interviewer in 2007, "There were too many Indian Tribes involved and it was too complex a picture. That's the time I decided I would try to make maps." And make them she did.Each of the more than 16 Claims Commission cases she worked on was buttressed by maps informed by intensive archival work.When the Atlas of Early American History Project commenced work at the Newberry Library in 1971, Helen was the obvious person to author their maps showing the Native American presence.Helen became a dedicated Newberrian, and her commitment to the Library deepened with the establishment of the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies in 1972, which she served as interim director for a year.Her most enduring cartographic monument remains the /Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History/, first published in 1987 and still very much in print, but she continued and broadened her cartographic range with /The settling of North America : the atlas of the great migrations into North America from the Ice Age to present /(1995).Helen was a founding member of the Chicago Map Society (1976), addressed the group on several occasions, and attended meetings whenever she was able.Her cheerful and energetic manner, and fiercely independent thought stayed with her to the end, and she will be greatly missed.
-- Robert W. Karrow, Jr. Curator of Special Collections and Curator of Maps The Newberry Library 60 West Walton Street Chicago, Illinois 60610-7324 [email protected] Phone: 312-255-3554 Fax: 312-255-3646 Search our map catalog at www.biblioserver.com/newberry
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