Fwd: Helen Hornbeck Tanner (1916-2011)

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From: Jade Cabagnot <Subject: Helen Hornbeck Tanner (1916-2011)


Dear Friends,

Some have may already have heard the sad news of Helen Tanner's passing at the end of last week.  As many generations of scholars who knew her will agree, we are all in her debt for the rigor, expertise, and generosity of spirit she brought to her scholarship and her support of others dedicated to the study of American Indian history and culture.  For Helen scholarship was not limited to academia but was also in service of the communities with whom she worked.  Her service on behalf of various tribes in over 16 Claim Commissions cases is ample illustration of that commitment. Helen will also be remembered by generations of Native women scholars to whom she was especially supportive throughout her long career.  Her landmark Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History remains a standard in the field.

In my two and a half years as director of the McNickle Center I came to know Helen's voice in her calls to me: she checked up on me, advised me, and she encouraged me.  Over the last year those calls became less and less frequent.  She left her beloved home in Beulah, Michigan for a period when her health deteriorated and was cared for by her daughter, Molly Tewson, in Iowa City.  Even in this time she remained interested in the McNickle Center and kept planning for days ahead.  She was able to return to Michigan last month and it was there she spent her final days.  It was with great sadness I heard the news of her passing and now relate it to all of you.  Helen's influence on those who knew her is almost impossible to calculate or overstate.

Yours sincerely,

Scott Stevens

Scott Manning Stevens, PhD
irector, McNickle Center
ewberry Library
0 W Walton St
hicago IL 60610
Please see message from President of the Newberry Library


Colleagues, 
            I write with sadness to report the death last Saturday of Helen Hornbeck Tanner, at the age of 94 in Beulah, Michigan.
            Helen Tanner was a distinguished scholar of American Indian history and literature, publishing books on the Caddo and the Ojibwa as well as on early eighteenth-century Spanish Florida.  Her crowning scholarly achievement in print was the Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (1986), a Newberry Library project, funded generously by the NEH, that began in 1976 and involved many Newberry people.  Of course, she was intimately involved with the Newberry Library for decades as a researcher and an active member of the Fellows Seminar and the Chicago Map Society.  She remained a Senior Research Fellow here for many years.  But Helen also served the Newberry in an administrative capacity, as Interim Director of the McNickle Center in 1984-85.  We could count on visits from Helen until about two years ago.  Indeed, up to that point she drove herself to Chicago from her home in Beulah, Michigan.  Her daughter Molly Tewson told me this morning that on their drive from Iowa City to Beulah in early May, Helen really wanted to stop at the Newberry for a couple of hours, but just wasn’t up to it after her long recovery from surgeries this winter.
In addition to her scholarly involvement with the Newberry, Helen ardently promoted our cause through fundraising.  She arranged for an important gift from her mother’s estate, which established the Allen Fellowships for American Indian women.  This fund has supported the careers of a number of Native American women who have gone on to distinguished academic careers, among them Kate Shanley, current President of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. She gave from her own resources for book purchases across many years.  Her commitment to the development of scholarship by American Indians is symbolized by the Susan Kelly Power and Helen Hornbeck Tanner Fund,  co-named for her, which supports work here by Ph.D. candidates and post-doctoral scholars of American Indian heritage.  She also gave us her papers, an important resource for those who wish to explore the development of American Indian studies during the last half century.
Helen remained active until recently as a speaker on American Indian topics and a frequent expert witness in litigation involving tribes in several parts of the United States.  Across the years, she mentored lawyers, historians, anthropologists, and other scholars near and far.  She was always eager to offer her support, ideas, and sage advice, and to support the development of her academic colleagues.  Her commitment to help younger scholars, and to support the institutions she cared about, was profoundly constructive.  I recall with pleasure and satisfaction my own conversations with Helen, over lunch or in my office, when she reiterated what she quite properly saw as the big themes of the Newberry and the McNickle Center, made suggestions about new approaches to our work, and urged us on toward the ever fuller realization of our institutional ambitions.
Helen graduated with distinction from Swarthmore College in 1937 and went on to complete a Master’s degree at the University of Florida (1948) and a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan (1961).  She taught at Michigan for several years but she was always proudest of her academic affiliation with the Newberry Library. 
Molly and I have begun talking about a memorial service to take place later this summer.  I will be in touch again to provide details.  
David

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