LibGuides: HIST 2210: North American Indigenous Peoples: Primary Sources

What is a Primary Source?

Primary sources are items that are directly associated with their producer or user and the period in which they are created. They reflect the authority and perspective of someone who directly experiences what they are detailing.

Primary sources can be found in:

Collections housed in libraries or archives
Digital format through online databases
Freely available collections on the Internet
Published in books and microforms

Primary Source Databases

American Antiquarian Society Periodicals
Full-text collections of thousands of historical American periodicals, provided by the American Antiquarian Society and published between 1691 and 1912. The collection is fully searchable via a number of filters, and offers multiple navigation options.
Native American Indians, 1645-1819
Native American Indians, 1645-1819, is a collection of over 1,600 publications that reveal the history and culture of Native America in the colonial era. The collection includes treaties, letters, tribal histories, missionary reports, captivity narratives, accounts of battles, trading records, maps, books on languages and grammar, and more. These documents are essential sources for researchers and students of Native American studies, early American history, and other disciplines. The collection also features text analysis tools, author biographies, and suggested search paths for browsing and discovery. With these tools, users can explore the rich and diverse heritage of Native America in new and innovative ways.
Native American Tribal Histories, 1813-1880
This digital collection contains comprehensive records of the interactions between Indigenous people and American Territorial officials, as well as descriptions of Native American cultures during a period of great change. Native American Tribal Histories, 1813-1880, is an essential resource for anyone studying Native American history, culture, and law. This collection is based on the Bureau of Indian Affairs Field Office and Central Office Records at the American National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). It covers many Native tribes from different regions of the United States, such as Apache, Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cherokee, Chippewa, Choctaw, Creek, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Klamath, Lummi, Mandan, Mojave, Navajo, Nez Perce, Osage, Potawatomi, Pueblo, Seminole, Sioux, Ute and more. Users can search, browse and filter documents by territory, date, tribe, topic, document type and more using a customized user interface.

Digital Repositories for Primary Sources

After Columbus: Four Hundred Years of Native American Portraiture
New York Public LIbrary Digital Collection
American Indian and Alaskan Native Documents in the Congressional Serial Set: 1817-1899
University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Collection - Mostly legal and government documents.
American Indian Histories and Culture
The Newberry Digital Collection
American Indian Records in the National Archives
National Archives Digital Repository
American Journeys: Eyewitness accounts of Early American exploration and settlement
Wisconsin Historical Society
Autobiography of Mary C. Collins in Her Handwriting
Autobiography of a missionary to the Sioux Indians in South Dakota
Ayer Art Digital Collection
Images of Native Americans
Ayer Ojibwa Collection
Minnesota Historical Society
Carlisle Indian School (photos)
Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center
This website represents an effort to aid the research process by bringing together, in digital format, a variety of resources that are physically preserved in various locations around the country.
Cherokee Nation Cultural Site
Dakota Conflict Trials 1862
University of Missouri - Kansas City
Doris Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History
University of Oklahoma Digital Collections - includes transcripts.
Early Americas Digital Archive
University of Maryland
French and Indian Wars Manuscript Collection (New England Historic Genealogical Society)
This collection contains selected manuscripts from the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections related to the French and Indian Wars: King William's War (1689-1697), Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), King George's War (1744-1748), and the French and Indian War (1754-1763). These collections include diaries, letters, military records, and other materials that provide details about the experiences of men from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, England, and other locations who fought in the French and Indian Wars in North America. Most of these collections focus on the Crown Point Expedition, the Québec Campaign, and the Battle of Ticonderoga.
G. E. E. Lindquist Native American Photographs
Columbia University Digital Archive
Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection (University of Oklahoma)
Oral interviews about events from 1861-1930s.
Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains Digital Collection
Maintained by Montana State University
Indian Removal Act (Library of Congress)
Indians in the War (1945)
Published by the U.S. Department of the Interior, 1945
Indigenous Law Resources (Library of Congress)
The Law Library of Congress collection contains a variety of Indigenous legal materials from the United States and jurisdictions from around the world, including historical constitutions and charters.
Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian
Digital exhibit of items in the National Museum of the American Indian - represents Indigenous peoples throughout North, Central, and South America
Intermountain Indian School
Documents, yearbooks, and photographs from the Intermountain Indian School (Intermountain Inter-Tribal School).
Kansas City Hopewell Collection
The University of Kansas Anthropological Research and Cultural Collections curates approximately 2000 cubic feet of artifacts recovered from investigations of 23 Kansas City Hopewell Archaeological sites, which represents the largest holdings of materials from this culture in the United States. These images in the collection are comprised of artifacts and scanned photographs from five Hopewell sites in the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Makah Cultural Center and Research Center Online Museum
National Museum of the American Indian: Online Collections Search
Links to images from the online collections of the Museum
Native American Documents Project
Includes:
Indexed Published Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1871)
Ten tables of quantitative data (Allotment Data)
Rogue River War and Siletz Reservation collection, most from the 19th century
Information about California tribes
Native American Manuscript Collections (University of Oklahoma)
Digitized manuscripts of Native Americans.
Native American newspapers (Chronicling America)
Native American newspapers available full text from Chronicling America.
Native Northeast Portal
"The Portal represents a scholarly critical edition of New England Native American primary source materials gathered presently from the partner institutions into one robust virtual collection, where the items are digitized, transcribed, annotated, and edited to the highest academic standards and then made freely available over the Internet, using open-source software."
Native Voices (Digital History)
Excerpts from contemporary writings about a variety of events in Native American history.
McKenney and Hall Indian Tribes of North America
The information for the McKenney-Hall Indian Tribes of North America Collection was researched and prepared by the UW Libraries Special Collections Division staff in 2003. All of the lithographs and text from this three volume set were included in this database
Ojibwe People's Dictionary (University of Minnesota)
The Ojibwe People's Dictionary is a searchable, talking Ojibwe-English dictionary that features the voices of Ojibwe speakers.
Omaha Indian Music
From the Library of congress American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions. The sound recordings include 44 wax cylinder recordings made in the 1890s (first published on a 1985 LP entitled Omaha Indian Music: Historical Recordings from the Fletcher/La Flesche Collection), 323 songs and spoken-word segments from the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow, 24 spoken-word segments from an interview with an Omaha elder in 1983, 25 songs and speeches from a performance by members of the Hethu'shka Society (recorded at the Library of Congress in 1985), and 61 spoken word segments from an interview conducted with an Omaha musician in 1999.
Osage Indian Murders (FBI File)
The Osage Indian murders were a series of murders of Osage in Osage County, Oklahoma, during the 1910s–1930s. These documents are fro the FBI investigation.
Primary Documents in American History: Indian Removal Act (Library of Congress)
From the Library of Congress Digital Collections: the Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy.
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
National Parks Service
Sitka Tribe of Alaska and Sitka Historical Society
Alaska's Digital Archives
Southeastern Native American Documents 1730-1842
Digital Library of Georgia
Tribal Writers Digital Library
Sequoyah National Research Center
Walter McClintock Glass Lantern Slides (Blackfoot Tribe)
Thousands of photographs of the Blackfoot and their homelands in northwestern Montana.
Western History Collections - Native American Manuscripts
University of Oklahoma Western History Collections - Native American Manuscripts
White Mountain Apache Collection
Simon Fraser University Digital Archive
Willie Ottogary Collection
Newspaper columns written by a Shoshone Chief in Utah in the early 20th century
Wounded Knee Reminiscence: Alice War Bonnet Collection
South Dakota State Historical Society Digital Archive

HIST 2210: North American Indigenous Peoples

Evaluating a Primary Source

Evaluating Websites

History Sourcebooks

Search Strategies for Primary Sources

What is a Primary Source?

Primary Source Databases

Digital Repositories for Primary Sources