Mapping Indigenous Bloomington: Digital Land Acknowledgement

Honoring and recognizing the Miami, Lenape, Potawatomi, and Shawnee peoples, on whose ancestral homelands Indiana University is built.

You are on Indigenous Land!

What does it mean to recognize that Indiana University Bloomington is built on Indigenous homelands and resources?

The Native American history of present-day Bloomington, Indiana is all around you if you know how and where to look. This digital history project makes visible multilayered Indigenous histories inscribed on the landscapes, waterways, and memory spaces of the Indiana University campus and the surrounding region. These interactive features visualize deep histories of Indigenous presence on the land, acknowledges legacies of dispossession and forced removals by non-Native settlers, maps continuities from the pre-colonial past through self-determined present, and raises awareness regarding the enduring relationship between Native American descendent communities and the lands on which Indiana University Bloomington now sits.

Contextualizing Indigenous Bloomington

Networks of Relationship and Reciprocity

Mapping Indigenous Diaspora

Indiana Indigenous Descendent Communities

Indiana University Bloomington maintains community partnerships and remains accountable to myaamiaki (Miami), Leni Lënape (Delaware), Bodwéwadmik (Potawatomi), and saawanwa (Shawnee) descendents of the land's original inhabitants. Today, some of these Native American descendent communities remain within the borders of the state of Indiana while others reside on lands at a great distance from their ancestral territories as a consequence of land sales and forced removals during the nineteenth century.

Learn about Indiana University Bloomington's connections to ancestral Indigenous communities by exploring the interactive map. Click on the map key on the map to navigate to specific Native American nations and zoom in on lands held by tribal governments.

Memory Spaces: A Walking Tour of Indigenous Bloomington

Begin Your Journey

This walking tour invites you to explore the Indigenous history of Bloomington and the Indiana University campus. Engaging seemingly familiar community spaces as narrative touchstones, the interactive map emphasizes Indigenous peoples’ continued presence on the land, acknowledges the peoples whose homelands upon which Bloomington was built, and honors historical and contemporary Native American communities with deep connections to present-day Bloomington.

Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Begin your virtual or in-person walking tour at the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Currently closed for renovations, the new space will open in the spring of 2022. The Museum is committed to participating and collaborating with Indigenous partners on the co-creation of knowledge, scholarship and education into the future.

Obligations and Community Partnerships

Angel Mounds State Historic Site

The Angel Mounds National Historic Landmark and State Historic Site in Evansville, Indiana.

In the spring of 2021, Indiana University Bloomington  returned the human remains  of more than 700 Indigenous ancestors to the Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Evansville, Indiana. These remains had been unearthed in archeological digs conducted during the mid twentieth century, and stored in the Glenn A. Black laboratory. The university honored its legal obligations to the Quapaw Nation, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Shawnee Tribe to return these ancestors in compliance with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

First Nations Educational & Cultural Center

First Nations Education and Cultural Center on the Indiana University Bloomington campus.

First Nations Educational & Cultural Center, Indiana University Bloomington

Indigenous students "make history" every day at Indiana University Bloomington. As of  Fall 2020 , approximately 320 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs identify themselves as Native American. Founded in 2007, the First Nations Educational & Cultural Center serves as a campus hub to preserve and promote an intertribal community connection among Native American students and to educate the IUB campus community.

Indigenize Indiana

Indigenize Indiana logo

This digital map tour was developed to answer the First Nations Educational & Cultural Center's call to action to  Indigenize Indiana :

"Indigenization is promoting an active Native presence and engaging with contemporary Indigenous leadership and communities. It is amplifying the voices of Indigenous people and social movements. Indigenize Indiana reminds everyone of the ways they can help to improve representation of and support for Native and Indigenous communities at IU Bloomington. Acknowledging the traditional Native inhabitants of the land is an important first step in helping to support Native Americans at Indiana University and in helping to correct the colonial narrative that has resulted in the erasure of Native peoples across this country."

Settlers and Social Justice

Historical marker at Bloomington's Courthouse Square.

Historical marker at Bloomington's Courthouse Square.

Legacies of Conquest

Bloomington's Courthouse Square represents a site where stories of grave historical injustices, the violent process of settling Indiana, and Indigenous struggles for civil rights converge. The first two-story courthouse on this site was designed by  John Ketcham , one of Bloomington's first non-Native settlers and a veteran of the 1810-1813 wars against Indiana's Native American population. The conflict erupted after Native American coalition led by the Shawnee war chief Tecumseh rejected a forced land sale in the  1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne . This cession included the territory that would become incorporated into the city of Bloomington. Tecumseh's warriors resisted the dispossession of their land by the United States beginning in 1810 and continued through the Anglo-US War of 1812. John Ketcham enlisted in the militia as a ranger in 1813, and  boasted in his autobiography  that within his first month of service he "killed and scalped an Indian--was very proud it." Ketcham's brutality caught the attention of territorial governor William Henry Harrison, who rewarded Ketcham with a commission as an Associate Judge. Ketcham settled in Bloomington in 1818, became a trustee of the seminary that would become Indiana University, and won election to the Indiana State House of Representatives on a campaign platform celebrating his killing of Native Americans.

Ketcham's story and his rise to prominence reflected the values and prejudices of Bloomington's earliest settlers. His experiences show how Bloomington's founding depended on a treaty many Native Americans regarded as illegitimate and required the violent dispossession of Indigenous land. Ketcham built his professional reputation through the killing and mutilation of Indigenous bodies. Although the courthouse designed and built by Ketcham no longer stands on this site, this space nevertheless continues to testify to Bloomington's violent legacies of conquest and colonization.

Love Wins

Courthouse Square also represents a site where Indigenous Peoples overcame racially discriminatory laws during the early twentieth century. Jim Crow laws forbade interracial marriage throughout much of the United States, and these discriminatory laws applied to Native Americans who were regarded as "wards" of the Federal Government.

In 1911, twenty-two-year-old Lakota actor Thomas Littleboy came to Bloomington as part of a theater production of "Daniel Boone on the Trail." He met Lydia Nicholson, a non-Native employee at a boarding house that is now the site of the  Bloomington Public Library . According to newspaper accounts, the couple fell in love at first sight.

When Thomas and Lydia came to the Monroe County Courthouse to receive their marriage license from the county clerk's office, they were initially denied. Indiana state law prohibited interracial marriage between Black and White couples, but made no provisions for Native Americans. The county clerk rejected Thomas and Lydia's marriage license because he doubted that his office could validate a Native American marriage. During the early twentieth century, the US federal government's Indian Agents typically held jurisdiction over marriages on tribal reservation lands. The couple retained the services of local lawyer Squire Dickson, and Nichols claimed that her marriage to Littleboy would not violate Indiana's laws against interracial marriage because she purportedly had 1/4 Native American ancestry. While genealogical records do not support Nichols's claims of Indigeneity, her claims nevertheless helped convince the county clerk of the legitimacy of their marriage.

Thomas and Lydia solemnized their marriage vows in Bloomington on February 15, 1912. The couple eventually returned to Porcupine, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation, residing together until Lydia's death in 1948.

Land Grab University?

Painting of Indiana University during the 1840s or early 1850s.

Indiana Seminary c. 1850, IU Archives

Seminary Square Park in downtown Bloomington marks site of the first Indiana University campus. Indiana achieved statehood in 1816, when the non-Native population reached 60,000. The new state constitution set aside a township for a new institution of higher education, and local land speculators lobbied to locate the new university in Bloomington. Notably, these early trustees held extensive investment properties in town. Locating the college within the city limits promised an increase in property values and tidy profits from downtown land sales.

New gazetteer map of Monroe County, Indiana (1856), Indiana University Library Historical Maps

Land sales from a newly created University Township would finance the new college. Native Americans had been forcibly dispossessed of those same lands less than a decade earlier through the hotly contested  1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne . Acknowledging that Indiana University sits on Indigenous land also requires a reckoning with the ways those Native lands were transferred into the public domain and transformed into private property.

Built on Indigenous Homelands and Resources

Sample Gates, IU Archives

Of the many stories members of campus communities can tell about the iconic Sample Gates, these limestone sentinels stand as silent reminders that Indiana University is built from Indigenous Resources. Much of the Indiana University campus is constructed from limestone quarried in and around Monroe County. However long before Monroe County built its prosperity on exporting its high-quality limestone as a building material, this rich limestone belt played an integral role in Native American economies for millenia.

US Geological Survey Map of Indiana Limestone Belt

Map of Indiana Limestone Belt, US Geological Survey

Archaeological excavations in Bloomington show that Indigenous peoples fashioned tools and spear points from Indian Creek Chert, a distinctive local stone prized for its ability to maintain a razor-sharp edge. Projectile points made of Indian Creek Chert can be found at sites dating back 5,000 years through the 15th Century CE. Not only does Indian Creek Chert signal a historically deep Indigenous presence in this region, but it has been found at Native American sites along the Ohio and Wabash Rivers. By mapping the location of Indian Creek Chert in local as well as distant sites, archaeologists and historians can reconstruct how local limestone fit into extensive networks of Native American trade before the arrival of European colonizers.

Stone Scraper excavated in Bloomington made of Indian Creek Chert

Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3)--the "lime" in limestone--played an important role in Native American foodways. Indigenous women soaked corn in alkaline substances like lime to make the niacin (Vitamin B) in the corn digestible to the human body. Likewise, they also soaked root vegetables in lime to make the skins easier to peel.

Campus River

Campus River running across the Indiana University Bloomington Campus

Campus River flowing through the IUB campus

Water is life. Indigenous waterways connected diverse Native American groups throughout present-day Indiana. Rivers and creeks comprised the highways of Native American trade, travel, and communication. They also defined Indigenous patterns of settlement and subsistence. While early histories of the founding of the city of Bloomington assume that local Indigenous populations had dispersed before the first settlers established their homesteads, the history of the campus river reveals and landscape with non-Native settlers and Native Americans coexisted on the land. During the nineteenth century, this waterway was known as "Spanker's Branch." Although Bloomington's earliest settlers did not record the Native American name of this stream, they did remember a time when non-Native and Indigenous children played together along its banks. Writing in 1914, longtime Bloomington resident Martha Alexander Adams recalled that her father, Williamson Dunn Alexander (1815-1817), told stories about playing with Native American children along Spanker's Branch. As one of the earliest pioneer families in Bloomington, the Alexander family memories show a strong Native American presence in Bloomington even after the first wave of settlement. The presence of Indigenous children indicates that whole families remained present in the region, likely maintaining their traditional fishing and foraging activities along a familiar creek even as the town of Bloomington grew after 1816. While histories written by settlers often relegate Native American presence on the land to "prehistory," the memory of children playing together along the creek challenge these "frontier" narratives by demonstrating the ways Native American families remained on the land even after treaties ceded formal title to settlers. Settlers never truly replaced Native Americans on the land, as the peaceful interactions among their children demonstrate.

Jim Thorpe Coaches Hoosier Football

Bloomington Evening World, September 2, 1915

A century ago, the Indiana University football team played on athletic fields located on site of the present-day Indiana Memorial Union parking lot. During the 1915 football season, "the world's greatest athlete" and Olympic gold-medalist Jim Thorpe served as an assistant coach. Born as Wa-Tho-Huk ("the Bright Path") on the  Sak and Fox  Reservation in 1887, Thorpe won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. The multitalented Thorpe also distinguished himself as a professional football, baseball, and basketball player.

Coach Jim Thorpe at Indiana University (1915)

Students--"men and women alike"--welcomed Thorpe to campus with a parade across campus that culminated in a raucous rally on the athletic fields on October 24, 1915, on the eve of the big game against Miami University.

Thorpe left Indiana after one season to continue his professional baseball career with the New York Giants.

Preserving Indigenous Soundscapes

Wax cylinders preserve rare recordings of Indigenous music.

The  Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music  preserves 195 wax cylinder recordings at Fort Yates, North Dakota on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. In 2017, digital copies of these culturally significant recordings were added to the  Library of Congress's National Recording Registry . The recordings feature traditional and contemporary songs performed by Edward Afraid-of-Hawk (born c. 1874), Two Shields (born c. 1873), Joe No Heart (born c. 1846), Jerome Standing Soldier (born c. 1880), Has Tricks (born c. 1867), Fred Luis (born c. 1883), and Watċíbidiza (born c. 1853).

The preservation and digitization of these unique recordings through a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant ensures the continued conservation of the fragile wax cylinders while also making these cultural resources more accessible for Indigenous descendents at the Standing Rock Reservation.

Collaboration and Co-Production of Knowledge(s)

Statue of Professor Elinor Ostrom dedicated on IU campus in November 2020.

Indiana University Bloomington innovated collaborative research with Indigenous communities, making them partners in the production of new knowledge rather than objects of study and scrutiny. Nobel Prize winning  Professor Elinor Ostrom  developed her groundbreaking scholarship on how societies should manage finite common pool resources like shared fisheries, pastureland, and water by working with Indigenous communities throughout the world. Ostrom's engagement with traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and her partnerships with Indigenous peoples showed her that local communities can steward complex common pool resources without top-down regulatory regimes imposed by state or national governments.

Birch bark box in Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Collection, IUMAAli

Elinor Ostrom donated her collection of Indigenous art and material culture to the Indiana University Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. You can  view this extraordinary collection  through digital exhibit hosted by the museum.

In 2020, the university dedicated a statue to Ostrom--the first statue of a woman erected on campus--as part of the university's Bicentennial Bridging the Visibility Gap project.

Poohkhšikwalia 

Yellow American lotus grows in IU arboretum pond

IU Arboretum Pond

Lifegiving plants help us recognize Indigenous Bloomington all around us. While the picturesque pond of yellow American lotus flowers comprises the visual centerpiece of the IU Arboretum, they also tell stories about the Native American societies that cared for this land. The Miami people call this plant Poohkhšikwalia, and they prize its nutritious roots as much as they appreciate the beauty of its golden flowers.

American lotus root

Miami women gathered these roots and soaked them in an alkaline solution to loosen their skins before peeling them. Cooks either boiled the starchy roots into a hearty soup or preserved them by drying them in the sun or over a smoky fire.

Indigenous plants abound on the Indiana University Bloomington campus, ranging from wiinhsihsia  (wild garlic) to stands of mihsiimišaahkwi (pawpaw) trees. Recognizing these plants and their importance to diverse Native American communities reminds us that every acre of the campus is sacred Indigenous land.

Student Activism and the Founding of the First Nations Educational & Cultural Center

Indigenous student activism, organization, and mobilization are the reasons why Indiana University Bloomington has a dedicated  First Nations Educational & Cultural Center . The Indiana University American Indian Student Association (AISA) began pressing the university administration for a dedicated space in 1998. In contrast to dedicated campus cultural spaces like  La Casa  and the  Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center , AISA had been relegated to a borrowed basement office in the TheGradHouse. In 2006, the basement flooded and destroyed the organization's space and historical archives. In the  aftermath of the flood , Indigenous student leaders like Rebecca Riall undertook the work of building alliances with campus organizations and developing detailed proposals to persuading university leadership to dedicate a more appropriate space for Native American students. Those efforts culminated with the opening of the First Nations Educational & Cultural Center on sixth floor of Eigenmann Hall in 2007. The space was smaller than expected--only two rooms--and the building was locked after 5:00. In 2009, the center relocated to Weatherly Hall and featured a study room, a computer lab and a small library that with a collection of publications and videos related to American Indian culture. When the center finally moved to its current and more spacious location on E. 8th Street, it fulfilled the long-term goals of securing a dedicated campus building for Native American students.

Reclaiming the IU Powwow

Scene from 2018 IU Powwow, FNECC

In 2002, Indigenous faculty and students reclaimed an old campus tradition by organizing the first annual  Powwow  as a celebration of Native American culture and solidarity. Earlier generations of Hoosiers held Native American themed pep rallies that entailed non-Native students and faculty  dressing in "redface"  ahead of the homecoming football games. The overtly racist spectacles began in 1919, but faded from the campus by the end of the 1950s.

IU President Herman Wells at the 1941 "Powwow Dinner," IU Archives.

New Traditions

The first IU powwow in 2002 marked radical break from the old campus tradition. Organized by Professor  Wesley Thomas  (Dinè), the event was an intertribal celebration that featured two-days of singing, drumming, and dancing. While the event also featured more than forty artists, the Field House precluded the sale of favorite powwow foods like bannock, tacos, bison burgers, and strawberry drink.

Although the IU powwow experienced a seven-year hiatus after 2004, the First Nations Educational & Cultural Center has hosted this new campus tradition every year since 2011. The annual powwow typically takes place on Dunn Meadow rather than the Field House, a historically fitting location given the deep Indigenous history of the nearby Campus River.

In 2021, the 10th annual IU powwow  went virtual  in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

References

Barce, Ellmore. “Governor Harrison and the Treaty of Fort Wayne, 1809.” Indiana Magazine of History 11, no. 4 (1915): 352–67.

Bottiger, Patrick. The Borderland of Fear: Vincennes, Prophetstown, and the Invasion of the Miami Homeland. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016.

Cayton, Andrew R. L. Frontier Indiana. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1996.

Chamberlain, E., ed. The Indiana Gazetteer: Or Topographical Dictionary of the State of Indiana. 3d ed. Indianapolis: E. Chamberlain, 1849.

Clapacs, J. Terry. Indiana University Bloomington: America’s Legacy Campus. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.

Collins, Dorothy C., and Cecil K. Byrd. Indiana University: A Pictorial History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Grimes, Richard S. The Western Delaware Indian Nation, 1730-1795: Warriors and Diplomats. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2017.

Hall, Forest M. Historic Treasures; True Tales of Deeds with Interesting Data in the Life of Bloomington, Indiana University and Monroe County--Written in Simple Language and About Real People. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1922.

Hopkins, Thomas M. Reminiscences of Col. John Ketcham of Monroe County, Indiana. Bloomington: Whitaker & Walker, Printers, 1866.

Kellams, Dina. “Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete.” Blogging Hoosier History.”< https://blogs.libraries.indiana.edu/iubarchives/2011/04/11/jim-thorpe-worlds-greatest-athlete/ .> 11 April 2011. 

Larson, John Lauritz, and David G. Vanderstel. “Agent of Empire: William Conner on the Indiana Frontier, 1800-1855.” Indiana Magazine of History 80, no. 4 (1984): 301–28.

Lewis, G. Malcolm. “4 · Maps, Mapmaking, and Map Use by Native North Americans,” in History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

McCafferty, Michael. Native American Place-Names of Indiana. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008.

Nichols, David Andrew. Peoples of the Inland Sea: Native Americans and Newcomers in the Great Lakes Region, 1600-1870. New Approaches to Midwestern Studies. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2018.

Olson, A. Andrew. The 1818 St. Marys Treaties. Indianapolis. Indiana Historical Society, 2020.

Scott, John. The Indiana Gazetteer: Or, Topographical Dictionary. Indiana Historical Society. Publications, v. 18, no. 1. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1954.

Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

Tomak, Curtis H., “Scherschel: A Late Archaic Occupation in Southern Indiana with Appended Chert Descriptions.” Central States Archeological Journal, 3, (1980): 104-11

Trowbridge, C. C., Meearmeear Traditions. Edited by Kinietz Vernon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1938.

Warhus, Mark. Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

Woodburn, James Albert, D. D Banta, and Burton Dorr Myers. History of Indiana University. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1940.

Wylie, Theophilus A. Indiana University: Its History from 1820, When Founded, to 1890 : With Biographical Sketches of Its Presidents, Professors and Graduates: And a List of Its Students from 1820 to 1887. Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, 1890.

    Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

    The Angel Mounds National Historic Landmark and State Historic Site in Evansville, Indiana.

    First Nations Educational & Cultural Center, Indiana University Bloomington

    Historical marker at Bloomington's Courthouse Square.

    Indiana Seminary c. 1850, IU Archives

    New gazetteer map of Monroe County, Indiana (1856), Indiana University Library Historical Maps

    Sample Gates, IU Archives

    Map of Indiana Limestone Belt, US Geological Survey

    Stone Scraper excavated in Bloomington made of Indian Creek Chert

    Campus River flowing through the IUB campus

    Bloomington Evening World, September 2, 1915

    Coach Jim Thorpe at Indiana University (1915)

    Wax cylinders preserve rare recordings of Indigenous music.

    Statue of Professor Elinor Ostrom dedicated on IU campus in November 2020.

    Birch bark box in Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Collection, IUMAAli

    IU Arboretum Pond

    American lotus root

    Scene from 2018 IU Powwow, FNECC

    IU President Herman Wells at the 1941 "Powwow Dinner," IU Archives.