Preserving Fort Ouiatenon
My projects in the spring and summer of 2026 at IUMAA have mainly focused on scanning archaeological documentation from the Fort Ouiatenon excavations first started by James Kellar of what was then the Glenn Black Laboratory of Archaeology (GBL) in the 1960s. Fort Ouiatenon was a crucial location for trade routes in the empire of New France, as it was nearly the farthest north a ship of the time could travel from the Mississippi River. Much of the territory north of it was better served by transport along the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes, making Fort Ouiatenon critical for accessing the interior of the land they aimed to control in their countering of the British Empire. From Fort Ouiatenon, New France was able to have interactions with Native groups in the area, mostly in the pursuit of trade or to dissuade the Native peoples of the area from becoming friendly with the British. French efforts to sway native tribes away from the British resulted in several groups moving closer to Fort Ouiatenon, making it a trade hub and a neighbor of several villages.
The role of Fort Ouiatenon as a trading post between European/American interests and Native tribes has resulted in it functioning as an archaeological record of the evolution of trade interactions between colonizing forces and Native tribes from French colonial times to its destruction in 1791. In the final semester of my bachelor’s degree, spring 2026, I was given the opportunity to work on scanning the catalog cards related to the Fort Ouiatenon collections. Then, this summer I was able to finish scanning the catalog cards before moving on to scanning the documentation of the collection proper – I finished one box of the inventory documentation, and a box of correspondence mainly between the GBL/IUMAA, Michigan State University, and the Tippecanoe County Historical Association (TCHA). These institutions all contributed to the excavation of Fort Ouiatenon, from Kellar’s first excavations in 1968 to the MSU excavations in 1979. Finally, I was able to draft a finding aid for use when searching through the various collection materials.
An Opportunity to Make an Impact
It has been super satisfying to work on this project, as it will help in the preservation of the Fort Ouiatenon collection, which I am both ethically and personally invested in. Not only am I passionate about ensuring the preservation of archaeological research, but I have seen the way that this site, in particular, has been a source of community and inspiration to the TCHA and those who attend the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon event. It’s important to me that I’ve been able to help in not only creating an additional way to search through the documentation of the archeological excavations but also make it more easily accessible to others not physically present at the IUMAA.
It also, of course, doesn’t hurt that the work at IUMAA has given me the opportunity to gain experience in museum curation and archiving prior to pursuing a degree for it. My time at IUMAA also allowed me to talk with those already working in similar fields, so I feel like I am fairly certain and prepared to continue down my current path.
