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Ethnohistory Projects
Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project
 The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project was initiated in 1998 to identify, investigate, and interpret the physical remains of Fort St. Joseph, one of the most important eighteenth-century Colonial outposts in the western Great Lakes. Its location near the strategically important St. Joseph-Kankakee river portage allowed the French (1691-1761) and later the British (1761-1781) to control the southern Lake Michigan region. This mission-garrison-trading post complex served as a hub of commercial, military, and religious activity for local Native populations and European powers for nearly a century during a critical period in the colonization of North America.
Since 2002 Western Michigan University has conducted its annual archaeological field school, now in its 32nd year, at the site of Fort St. Joseph in Niles, Michigan. Each year students learn proper archaeological field techniques in a multidisciplinary program of community service learning under the direction of Dr. Michael Nassaney. The goals of the project are to understand the social, economic, and political relations of the region's populations who participated in the eighteenth century fur trade and to disseminate that information to the varied constituencies that comprise the community.
The project is a partnership between WMU, the City of Niles, the Fort St. Joseph  Museum, and Support the Fort. Since the initial survey a team of University archaeologists together with local high school students, teachers, and continuing education adults have recovered over 100,000 artifacts and animal bones associated with the French and English occupations of the fort. Excavations have also uncovered unequivocal evidence of structures,refuse pits, and other undisturbed archaeological materials that can be identified with colonial life on the frontier. Preliminary studies indicate that Fort St. Joseph was a multi-ethnic community of French and Indians who depended on each other for their survival. Continuing investigations will be oriented to identifying the location, size, and contents of site structures to ascertain the identities of their occupants to better understand their lives on the frontier in the North American interior.
The French Michilimackinac Research and Translation Project
 Dr. José António Brandão directs The French Michilimackinac Research and Translation Project (FMRTP). The FMRTP aims to collect and translate French language materials related to the history of the Straits of Mackinac region. The FMRTP is funded by the Mackinac State Historic Parks Board and various private and federal agencies. To date the FMRTP has amassed an almost unparalleled collection of microfilm and photocopied materials related to the French presence. The bulk of the collection covers the history and ethnohistory of Northeastern North America to about 1783 and includes over 470 reels of microfilm and dozens more volumes of material in microfiche. The collection is housed at WMU: Regional Archives
The purpose of the translation work is to provide staff at Mackinac State Historic Parks with the sources needed for their ongoing archaeological and interpretative work. Mackinac State Historic Parks operates two historic sites in upper Michigan -- each of which is on the National Register of Historic Sites. The State Parks Board also publishes a selection of the more important documents, as well as those of more general interest. To date, Michigan State University Press has published two volumes of translations prepared by Dr. Joseph L. Peyser. A third volume, edited and translated by Drs. Brandão and Peyser is to be published in 2007.
Dr. Brandão’s role in the project is to search through the sources and identify the materials to be translated. In addition, he provides the historical context for the documents, identifies the people, places, etc., mentioned in the documents, and assists in translating them. That research then forms the basis of the published volumes.
For more information about the project, CLICK HERE.
Cabeza de Vaca Translation Project
 Drs. Catherine Julien and Pablo Pastrana-Pérez, faculty members in History and Spanish at Western, have been awarded a Scholarly Editions grant from the National Endowment for a project on Spanish exploration in the Americas. They will prepare an edition of documents related to the expedition up the Paraguay river to the Pantanal, the largest wetlands in the Americas, by Spanish explorer Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1543-45.
Cabeza de Vaca is famous for his account of his epic trip from Florida to the Pacific Coast and then down to Mexico from 1527-35. He was one of four survivors of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, and his account is known as the Castaways in English—the most published acount of 16th-century exploration in the Americas. He also wrote an account about the South American expedition, called the Commentaries, and Julien and Pastrana will publish it along with a collection of documents related to the expedition, all written between 1543 and 1555. The edition will be published in a two-volume hardcover edition by the University of Nebraska Press. A paperback edition of the Commentaries, suitable for the general reader, will follow.
The grant of $100,000 will support work on the edition by both Julien and Pastrana-Pérez. A number of activities related to the project are also programmed, including special sessions at next year’s Medieval Congress as well as graduate and undergraduate courses around the theme of the project. A doctoral student in the Spanish Department, Pilar López-Castilla, has been named Project Assistant. Recently, a microfilm reader was donated to the project by Barbara Amos. The project has received office space in Friedmann Hall and the
work is well under way.
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