LibGuides: Native American Studies: Find Primary Sources

Primary Sources

What is a primary source?

Primary sources are materials that provide firsthand accounts of events by people who participated in or were present at the time the event occurred. Some examples of primary sources are letters, diaries, speeches, company records, government documents, films, photographs, Tweets, maps, audio recordings, posters, postcards, or other materials. According to the Library of Congress, "Primary sources provide a window into the past—unfiltered access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political thought and achievement during the specific period under study, produced by people who lived during that period."

Primary Source Databases:

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window Over 1,000 diaries, letters, and memoirs provide views on almost every aspect of the war. The writings of politicians, generals, slaves, landowners, farmers, seamen, wives and even spies are included. Terms of Use. Coverage: 1855-1959.

Archives, Repositories, and Other Primary Source Collections

A Song for the Horse Nation: Horses in Native American Cultures By the 1800s, American Indian horsemanship was legendary, and the survival of many Native peoples, especially on the Great Plains, depended on horses. Native peoples paid homage to horses by incorporating them into their cultural and spiritual lives, and by creating art that honored the bravery and grace of the horse.
California Indian Baskets, ca. 1800s-1900s The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History's collection includes baskets made by California American Indians in the 19th and early 20th century. The baskets represent works from the Panamint Shoshone (Timbisha Shoshone Tribe), a western division of the Shoshonean peoples, located east of the Sierra Divide in Central California; the Pomo Indians located on the Northern coast of California; the Shasta Indians located on the Oregon border of California; and the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk tribes in Northwestern California.
Everything I Say Here is Straight and True: The Autobiographical Drawings of Chief White Bull: Art as a Historical Source This exhibit is based on the collaboration of a Minniconjou Sioux chief, White Bull, and a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, Walter S. Campbell, better known by his pen name, Stanley Vestal. White Bull (1849-1954) compiled a distinguished record in the warfare among Indians and between them and the U.S. Army in the 1860s and 1870s. He was the son of a Minniconjou chief and a Hunkpapa Sioux mother, who was a sister of the famed Sitting Bull.
Gifts From Gluskabe: Maine Indian Art Forms "Featuring items from the collections of the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine, this exhibit demonstrates how the artistry used to create these objects was deeply connected to the natural world."
HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor The artists selected for HIDE draw upon this subject in multi-faceted ways, using both the material and concept of skin as a metaphor for widespread issues surrounding identity and personal, historical, and environmental trauma and perseverance.
Infinity of Nations The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) houses one of the world’s great cultural resources, with collections representing the Native peoples of the Americas from their earliest history to the present day. Infinity of Nations presents more than two hundred of these works chosen from nearly seven hundred objects of cultural, historical, and aesthetic importance on view at the museum’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York.
New Mexico Art Tells New Mexico History New Mexico Art Tells New Mexico History is a journey through the New Mexico Museum of Art’s rich collection of paintings, prints, sculptures and photographs.
Niitsitapi: Our Way of Life "We call ourselves Niitsitapi, although we are known as the Blackfoot. This is our way of life. It is about how we lived with our families, the environment, and our neighbours. It is also about how these relationships are still important to us. Please come with us and learn about our culture and our history."
Omaha Indian Music Presented here are selections from the American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions, including nearly 500 sound recordings, over a thousand photographs, and fieldnotes, handwritten tape recording logs, performance programs, and promotional materials.
The Pascua Yaqui Connection A cooperative project between the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, Pima Community College, and the University of Arizona.

California Ethnographic Field Photographs, 1900-1960 2500 photographic negatives.
California Indian Baskets, ca. 1800s-1900s The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History's collection includes baskets made by California American Indians in the 19th and early 20th century. The baskets represent works from the Panamint Shoshone (Timbisha Shoshone Tribe), a western division of the Shoshonean peoples, located east of the Sierra Divide in Central California; the Pomo Indians located on the Northern coast of California; the Shasta Indians located on the Oregon border of California; and the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk tribes in Northwestern California.
California Native Daughters Club Collection The California Native Daughters Club Collection consists of correspondence, records, printed materials, founding documents, and artifacts related to club activities and member activities. It also contains documents specific to individual members.
Drawings of Indians and California Scenery Includes images of mining camps, mining activities and local Native American peoples chiefly from areas around Sacramento, Marysville, Nevada City, Shasta City and Coloma.
Historical Photographs of Four Ethnicities on California's Central Coast Black Gold Cooperative Library System Advisory Board's Photo Essay collection includes black and white photographic images of historical interest spanning from the late 1800s up to the 1970s. The images strive to recognize people of four heritages who without recognition helped to build the social and economic prosperity of California Central Coast. The collection consists of selected images from four Photo Essays: 1) African Americans on the Central Coast, 2) Asian Pacific Americans on the Central Coast, 3) Hispanics on the Central Coast: 300 Years of History, 4) Native Americans on the Central Coast.
Indians of California and views of Mt. Whitney and the Alabama Range circa 1902-1903 Portraits of California Indians, many identified as Piute [sic], and views of mountains from the Lone Pine area.
Modoc Indian War Lantern Slides This collection contains lantern slides with both photographs and illustrations of the 1873-1873 Modoc War, a conflict fought in the lava beds at Tule Lake on the California-Oregon border between a small band of Modoc Indians and the United States Army. The lantern slides include images of Indian scouts for the U.S. Army; U.S. Army soldiers and camps, Modoc leaders and prisoners of war, and the lava beds that served as the Modocs' stronghold. Notable images include portraits of Modoc leaders Captain Jack and Winema (Toby) Riddle, shaman Curly-headed Doctor, and Indian scout Donald McKy.
Stereographs of the Modoc War, 1873 Stereographs of the Modoc War and surrounding Siskiyou County landscape taken by Eadweard Muybridge.

The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire explores the parallels between two great empires—the Aztec and the Roman. Celebrating the 2010 bicentennial of Mexican independence, the exhibition illuminates a dialogue between the New and Old Worlds that has shaped the modern contours of Mexico.
The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico This virtual exhibition is based on The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico, a display of original manuscripts, books, and other materials at the Newberry Library from September 28, 2006 through January 13, 2007. Ellen T. Baird and Cristián Roa-de-la-Carrera, both of the University of Illinois at Chicago, curated the exhibit. The virtual exhibit includes the complete text from the original gallery exhibit and digitized images of many of the manuscripts and books that were displayed.
Baja California (Paipai) Indian Archaeological and Ethnographic Collections, 1955-1959 The Paipai Indians continue in present day to live in Baja California, Mexico in an area south-east of Ensenada. Materials in the Paipai collection were field collected from 1955 to 1959 and consist of ethnographic as well as archaeological pieces.
The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire The Inka Empire rose rapidly and burned bright. In little more than 100 years, it grew from a small kingdom in the highlands of Peru to become the largest empire in the Americas. The Qhapaq Ñan, or Road of the Inka, made this triumph possible. A vast complex of roads, bridges, and other structures, the Qhapaq Ñan was the largest construction in the Western Hemisphere when Inka power was at its height. The Inka state used the road system strategically to oversee diverse populations within an empire of 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles).
The Kuna Collection This collection of images is the result of two Museum-funded expeditions to the Kuna Yala archipelago off the coast of Panama to document the Kuna peoples and the full range of Kuna expressive culture, with a particular focus on molas as a distinctive genre of art.
Obsidian Mirror-Travels: Refracting Ancient Mexican Art and Archaeology This exhibition explores representations of Mexican archaeological objects and sites made from the Colonial era to the present.
Peveril Meigs Baja California Research Materials Photographs, journals, maps and related research materials on Baja California, Mexico, created by geographer Peveril Meigs III. Meigs conducted field research in northern Baja between 1925 and 1936 observing geology, climate, indigenous populations, mission sites, and local culture in preparation for his 1932 doctoral dissertation entitled "The Dominican Missions of Lower California" and his ethnographic monograph entitled The Kiliwa Indians of Lower California (1939).
Yaqui Photograph Albums circa 1908 - circa 1909 Photographs documenting conflicts in Northern Mexico, particularly of Yaqui people. Includes studio portraits as well as views of villages, Yaqui dancers, soldiers and prisoners of war, deportations to Yucatan, hangings and other executions, groups of children and adults, peace talks at Hermosillo, etc.

Independent Voices: Native American The late 1960s and early 1970s saw an increase of Native American activism and the rise of "Red Power" as an activist movement demanding greater educational and economic opportunities and tribal rights. At the same time, U.S. policy toward Native American tribes provided greater opportunities for indigenous people to manage local government and local issues. This led to the establishment of an active Native American press, with publications like NARP Newsletter, Many Smokes, and Native Movement, that championed such key issues as Native American rights, religious freedom, equal education, and preserving community, language and tribal sovereignty.
In Their Own Words: Native Americans in World War I These words and pictures are part of the Wanamaker Collection, a unique collection of images and documents dating from the early 20th century. After a very brief summary of United States involvement in the war, we will explore how the documents and photographs in the Wanamaker Collection provide perspectives on Native American participation.
Living Nations, Living Worlds This collection—part of Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s “Living Nations, Living Words” signature project—contains audio recordings of 47 contemporary Native American poets reading and discussing an original poem.
Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness explores the interconnectedness of wellness, illness, and cultural life for Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. Visitors will discover how Native concepts of health and illness are closely tied to the concepts of community, spirit, and the land.
Seeing Red Audio Archive In this LibGuide, you will find fifty-five (55) archival recordings of Seeing Red, a radio program hosted by Suzan Shown (Harjo) and Frank Harjo from 1971-1974 on WBAI Radio in New York City. It was the first nationally syndicated radio program focused on contemporary Native American issues. Each of the recordings will feature a mixture of music by Native American artists, interviews with Native leaders, press conferences, news reports, and pieces with historical background of various tribal and advocacy groups.
We are Still Here: Contemporary Issues in Native America The purpose of this exhibit is to highlight some contemporary issues facing Native Americans and analyze common stereotypes of American Indians with the hope that this will increase understanding between cultures.
“If you knew the conditions…”: Health Care to Native Americans The exhibit focuses on the administration of health care to Native American recipients by the United States Government. It examines the evolution of government responsibility and its transfer through the Departments of War, the Interior, and Health, Education, and Welfare, now the Department of Health and Human Services.

Bureau of Indian Affairs: Photographs Finding Aid The National Archives launched a new web-based finding aid featuring digitized historical photographs from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) records in Record Group 75. For the first time, you can explore digital copies of over 18,000 photographs through an engaging and easy to use interactive experience.
C. Hart Merriam Collection of Native American Photographs, ca. 1890-1938 The photographs in this collection accompanied a collection of material described by Robert Heizer in his "Catalogue of the C. Hart Merriam Collection of Data Concerning California Tribes and Other American Indians."
Carl Moon Photographs of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma This collection of photographs by photographer Carl Moon documents Native Americans living in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma between 1904 and 1917. The primary tribes represented are Hopi, Navajo and Taos Pueblo Indians, but there are also Osage, Apache and several other Southwestern tribes. There are many portraits, as well as posed, romantic scenes depicting storytelling, hunting, weaving, or playing instruments. Additional candid views show people in their daily activities, pueblos, and dance ceremonies.
Curtis (Edward S.) Collection The Curtis collection consists of more than 2,400 silver-gelatin, first generation photographic prints--some of which are sepia-toned--made from Curtis's original glass negatives... Images from each of the geo-cultural regions documented in The North American Indian are represented in the collection: the Pacific Northwest, New Southwest, Great Basin, Great Plains, Plateau Region, California, and Alaska. Included are both studio and field photographs.
Early Images of Virginia Indians: The William W. Cole Collection The William W. Cole Collection contains many of the engravings of Virginia, produced from 1590 to the 1800s, that influenced European opinions of, and thus policies toward, the natives.
The Frederick Monsen Ethnographic Indian Photographs This set of photographs, titled “The Frederick Monsen Ethnographic Indian Photographs” by the photographer Monsen, focuses on Native Americans of the Southwest in mostly candid photographs taken in Pueblo communities, approx. 1886-1911. Views include portraits, ceremonies, dances, pueblos, livestock and scenes of daily activities. A smaller portion of the collection consists of landscapes, cliff-dwellings, ruins, gold miners, wagons and scenes of pioneer life in the West.
A Gathering of Nations: Images from McKenney & Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America This exhibit presents a selection of twenty-four images from The History of the Indian Tribes of North America, each representing a different Native American Nation. Each image is accompanied by a brief description drawn from sources included in the bibliography which accompanies the exhibit.
Philip Reade Collection of Native American Photographs by William S. Soule: Finding Aid This is a collection chiefly of studio portraits of Native Americans from the Midwestern and Southwestern United States taken by photographer William S. Soule during the American Indian Wars in the late 1860s. There are also views of their homes and camps on reservations.
Stereoviews of Indians and the Colorado River from the J.W. Powell Survey, circa 1869-1874 The Stereoviews of Indians and the Colorado River from the J.W. Powell Survey consists of 107 stereographic prints taken from circa 1869 to circa 1874.

Americans Americans, a major exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, highlights the ways in which American Indians have been part of the nation’s identity since before the country began. It delves into the three stories, surrounds visitors with images, and invites them to begin a conversation about why this phenomenon exists. Pervasive, powerful, at times demeaning, the images, names, and stories reveal the deep connection between Americans and American Indians as well as how Indians have been embedded in unexpected ways in the history, pop culture, and identity of the United States.
Breaking the Silence: Nineteenth-Century Indian Delegations in Washington, D.C. Breaking the Silence examines a selection of photographs taken by the McClees Gallery and the Addis Studio in Washington, D.C., 1858–1867 of Native American delegates to the U.S. government. The exhibit explores the context for these visits, the identities of the individuals portrayed, and the use of this type of photography in fashioning an iconic image of the Native American, an image that persisted well into the twentieth-century and, in some ways, still survives.
From English to Algonquin: Early New England Translations This exhibition explores the contributions of those who labored in translating and printing works in the Algonquian family of native languages. The people, organizations, and publications presented here offer an opportunity to reexamine the historical narrative surrounding the creation of the few surviving seventeenth-century documents that capture the language of an entire cultural group. Current language reclamation projects illuminate the importance of these translations and of the English and Algonquian people who worked together to produce them.
From Nation to Nation: Examining Lewis and Clark’s Indian Collection The Native American objects that Lewis and Clark brought back—some of which survive in the Peabody collections—are a unique record of those initial encounters. The objects brought back by Lewis and Clark fall into four categories: diplomatic gifts, chiefly gifts, trade goods, and curiosities.
Grabill Collection The collection includes a visual record of railroad development, coaches and wagons, mining, smeltering, and milling, freighting, emerging cities and towns, parades, cattle roundups and branding, sheepherding, prospecting, hunting, and Chinese immigrants, as well as landscapes. A number of the images portray the Lakota Sioux living on or near the Cheyenne River and the Pine Ridge reservations and their contact with U.S. military and government agents, and with William "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Some of the photographs were taken only days after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee near Pine Ridge.
Indigenous Law Web Archive A collection of constitutions, codes, executive orders, and court forms and information of sovereign Indigenous governments and courts of 578 federally recognized nations, communities, and tribes in the United States, as well as some Indigenous legal information from Canada.
Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country: 200 Years of American History Based on an exhibition originally mounted at the Newberry Library, this website explores how these two histories, that of the United States and that of Indian peoples along the expedition route, came together two hundred years ago and how they remain intertwined today.
Native American History at the Clements Library Native American History at the Clements Library highlights the great range and depth of the Clements Library’s collections related to Native American history. The exhibit features items drawn from many areas of the collection, including books, maps, manuscripts, prints, and photographs, which document over four centuries of history. These artifacts illustrate different types of cultural encounters over the course of American history and feature some of the library’s greatest strengths. Included are printed accounts of early encounters between indigenous peoples and European explorers, manuscripts and maps that record a long history of warfare and diplomacy, wampum and trade silver, peace medals, portraits of native leaders, and photographs of Indian schools.
Native American Treaty Signers in the Great Lakes Region This web version of the exhibit includes two highlights of Native American Treaty Signers. The first are the images of 22 Native American leaders drawn in the 1820s by J. O. Lewis and published by Lewis in full color between 1835 and 1836. Also included on this web page is the essay about these leaders which was originally published in the catalog that accompanied the exhibit.

The Labrador Inuit through Moravian Eyes This site provides information on the 250-year relationship between Moravian missionaries and the Inuit of Labrador. This interaction led to the establishment of settlements for a formerly nomadic people, their conversion to Christianity and exposure to aspects of North American culture. The information has been gathered from a variety of sources that shed light upon this unique adventure.
Yuungnaqpiallerput: The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yupik Science and Survival The exhibition Yuungnaqpiallerput/The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yup'ik Science and Survival presents remarkable 19th and 20th century tools, containers, weapons, watercraft, and clothing in an exploration of the scientific principles and processes that have allowed the Yup'ik people to survive in the sub-arctic tundra of the Bering Sea coast. Not just a science exhibit, Yuungnaqpiallerput is compelling in its presentation of the unique marriage between art, science and ethnography. At the exhibition's core is the recognition that the Yup'ik way of life--both past and present--is grounded in deep spiritual values and scientific principles.