- “Collection with a Mission: Frances Densmore’s Chippewa Artifacts,” in Travels with Frances Densmore: Her Life, Work, and Legacy in Native American Studies (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015)
- “Into Le Pays d’en Haut: An American Businessman in French Illinois,” in Le Journal (Center for French Colonial Studies), v. 31, no. 2 (Spring 2015)
- “George Rogers Clark: Jefferson’s First Emissary in the West,” in We Proceeded On, February 2014
- “Why Did George Rogers Clark Attack Illinois?” in Ohio Valley History, Winter 2012
- “Lewis and Clark Encounter a World of Women,” in We Proceeded On, August 2012
- “People of the Pen, People of the Sword: Pittsburgh in 1774,” in Frontier Cities (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)
- ″Lewis and Clark,″ in The Great Explorers (Thames and Hudson, 2010)
- ″Telling Reality: Why Narrative Fails Us,″ in Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles (Aqueduct Press, 2010)
- ″The Chouteau Map Reconsidered,″ in Gateway, v. 29 (2009)
- ″L’Année du Coup: The Battle of St. Louis, 1780,″ in Missouri Historical Review, April and July 2009
- ″The Mystery of the Indian Map,″ in Gateway Heritage, Fall 2008
- ″Lewis and Clark and the Fur Trade,″ in Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly, Fall/Winter 2007
- “Meriwether Lewis On the Divide,” in I Wish I’d Been There: Twenty Historians Bring to Life Dramatic Events That Changed America (Doubleday, 2006)
- ″How Benjamin Franklin Almost Bought East St. Louis,″ in Gateway Heritage, Spring 2006
- “A World of Women,” in Lewis & Clark: New Perspectives, a special issue of Gateway Heritage, Fall 2003-Winter 2004
- “Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara,” in Dictionary of American History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003)
- ″The Forensic Conservator and the Science of Lewis and Clark,″ in Gateway Heritage, Winter 1999-2000
- “A Day in the Life: The Gens Libres,” in Minnesota History, Winter 1998-99
- “The Culture That Was Supposed to Die,” in Hennepin County History, Summer, 1988
- “The Way to Independence: An Exhibition at the Minnesota Historical Society,” in American Indian Art Magazine, February, 1988
- “Coming Home,” in On the Reservation, an issue of Roots, Spring, 1986
- “Grand Portage Ojibway Indians Give British Medals to Historical Society,” in Minnesota History, Spring, 1980
- “Collection with a Mission: Frances Densmore’s Chippewa Artifacts,” in Minnesota Archaeologist, February, 1980.
- Reprinted in Joan M. Jensen and Michelle Wick Patterson, Travels with Frances Densmore: Her Life Work, and Legacy in Native American Studies (University of Nebraska Press, 2015)
- with Nicholas Westbrook, “Minnesota Patchwork,” in Minnesota History, Summer, 1979
- “John Goodricke and His Variable Stars,” in Sky and Telescope, November, 1978
- “Perceptions of the Prairie: Cultural Contrasts on the Red River Trails,” in Minnesota History, Fall, 1978
- “Jonathan Carver: The Story of an Unlikely Explorer,” in Roots, Spring, 1976
- “Journal of a Voyage, 1766-67, by James Stanley Goddard,” in The Journals of Jonathan Carver and Related Documents, 1766-1770, ed. John Parker (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1976)
author, historian, museum consultant