Fall 2020 Update: Introducing the Source Archive

By Leo

When I started Chequamegon History in March 2013, I had the ambitious goal of adding one new post every week. It wasn’t long before one a month was more realistic, and lately the pace has been closer to one per year. I could blame life for getting in the way, but life always gets in the way.

The truth is, my interest in primary research and sharing underutilized documents is stronger than ever, but the analysis and writing required in finishing a blog post has become tedious. Therefore, to reinvigorate my contributions to the site, I’ve decided to take some new directions:

Chequamegon History Source Archive

The first new project is the Chequamegon History Source Archive (CHSA). The purpose of this page is simply to archive transcriptions of primary sources and index them in a way that they can be easily searched. The CHSA can be accessed through the main Chequamegon History website here:

At this point, the CHSA is hosted on Google Sites, rather than WordPress, so it will take you to an external site.

I encourage readers to play around with the filter and search functions to see what’s on there. As of October 1, 2020, there were seventy-one documents in the archive, but this number should increase dramatically in the coming month as I will be adding transcriptions, some of which have never appeared on Chequamegon History.

I expect the Source Archive to be of interest to academics and readers who want original source material without the analysis. For more casual readers, who like more context and narrative, these changes and adding a second website might seem unnecessary and cumbersome. Fret not! One goal of the CHSA is to eventually support increased public presentation of Chequamegon History material.

Chequamegon History Collections

For those who like extended reading, we are excited to announce the launch of Chequamegon History Collections. These free documents, ranging from pamphlet to book length, bring together primary document transcriptions around a single topic.

Look out in the coming weeks for preview posts of the two such collections already available on the CHSA: 1849 Ojibwe Delegation to President Polk (56 documents) and 1847 Treaty (62 documents).

The goal is to eventually issue more of these free collections, and if the coronavirus ever lets us, to do an associated lecture series.

Occasional Blog Posts

With all the changes, however, I won’t lose sight of the usefulness of the blog format for certain topics. These will probably be less archival in nature, and tend more toward posts relating to current events (e.g. 19th-Century Deer in the Headlights or Black Lives, White Supremacy, and Confederate Tributes: Chequamegon Connections) or highlight documents that already have a complete narrative and only need a few pictures and annotations to be accessible to most readers (e.g. Ishkigamizigedaa! Bad River Sugar Camps 1844 or Reisen in Nordamerika). Hopefully, they will come more frequently, but I’m not promising anything.

Stay healthy and send feedback,

Leo