Helen Hornbeck Tanner, passed away on Saturday at the age of 94 in Beulah, Michigan. Helen 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 Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History was the published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
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 at The Newberry Library by Ph.D. candidates and post-doctoral scholars of American Indian heritage.
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.
