Chief Topinabee: Using Tribal Memories to Better Understand American (Indian) History-Nwi Yathmomen-We Will Tell Our Story

Chief Topinabee was born around 1758 in his father's village on the Saint Joseph River, in what is now southwest Michigan. He probably died on 29 July 1826 near present-day Niles, Michigan. A complicated leader of his village, he may have fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, certainly was a signatory to the Treaty of Greenville the next year, appears to have become an ally of Tecumseh and his intertribal confederacy at Prophetstown, may have been a participant in the Battle of Fort Dearborn in 1812, and served as a leader of strategic resistance to settler domination. The usual narrative is that Topinabee was a great warrior and leader of his people who in the last years of his life degenerated into a hapless drunkard and accommodationist. But is that a fair depiction of him? This essay is a celebration of ethnohistory and the paths it has cleared for the use of nontraditional sources of information. The article is based largely on access to a family archive that provides a counternarrative to the usual biography of Topinabee and allows for a fuller understanding of him as a leader and a person.