U.S. History

The Tribal Treaties Database provides an easy-to-use portal to access treaties, agreements, and other historical documents that have shaped relationships between tribal nations and the United States. These treaties represent pivotal moments in history where rights were negotiated, promises made, and the course of lives and nations forever altered.

We encourage educators, students, scholars, and all visitors to delve into these documents, understand their profound significance, and acknowledge the historical and ongoing impacts on the sovereignty and rights of Native American tribes.

Explore over 18,000 Photographs from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Record Group 75). Can search by tribal nation, topic, or state.

The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) works with indigenous communities throughout North America and with scholars in many disciplines. The goal of CNAIR is to assist people in discovering and utilizing the American Philosophical Society Library’s extensive archival collections in innovative ways that honor indigenous knowledge, cultivate scholarship, and strengthen languages and cultural traditions.

Digital collections drawn from across the United States. Includes some curated material on topics such as "Spanish Missions in California;" "Reservations, Resistance, and the Indian Reorganization Act, 1900-1940;" and more.

eHRAF World Cultures contains ethnographic collections covering all aspects of cultural and social life. Under "Browse Cultures By Country" can look at all groups the project has documentation about associated with the United States. [Yale University]

199 drawings and watercolors by Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, Cheyenne, and Kiowa artists.

Citations to approximately 240,000 reports on archeological planning and investigation. Also includes a variety of maps.

Search and browse the NMAI online collections by culture, place, artist or object.

Search over 16 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than 5.1 million online images, audio & videos and blog posts.

Brings the works of Native poets and writers of fiction and other prose to readers world wide. Featuring ouat-of-print literary efforts of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and First Nations people of Canada.
Open access.

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. A selection of the 2,400 silver-gelatin, first generation photographic prints--some of which are sepia-toned--made from Curtis's original glass negatives. Most of the photographic prints are 5" x 7" although nearly one hundred are 11" x 14" and larger; many include the Curtis file or negative number within the image at the lower left-hand corner.

More than 8,000 digital facsimiles of records associated with groups located in and around where Denver, CO currently is.

As a collection of general Americana, the Newberry’s Edward E. Ayer Collection is one of the best in the country and one of the strongest collections on American Indians in the world. Newberry has digitized more than 3,300 items, spanning the 19th and into the 20th centuries. Includes photographs, books, letters, and more from diverse indigenous peoples as well as with European ancestry.

Edward Sheriff Curtis published The North American Indian between 1907 and 1930 with the intent to record traditional Indian cultures. The work comprises twenty volumes of narrative text and photogravure images. Each volume is accompanied by a portfolio of large photogravure plates.

Browse portraits and drawings of over fifty Native American tribes created by George Catlin between 1830 to 1838 from the University of Cincinnati Libraries Digital Collections.

The one hundred and eighty-eight photographs sent by John C.H. Grabill to the Library of Congress for copyright protection between 1887 and 1892 are thought to be the largest surviving collection of this gifted, early Western photographer's work. Grabill's remarkably well-crafted, sepia-toned images capture the forces of western settlement in South Dakota and Wyoming and document its effects on the area's indigenous communities.

The Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains Collection includes photographs, paintings, ledger drawings, documents, serigraphs, and stereographs from 1874 through the 1940's. In 1998, the images were digitized and drawn from the library collections of three of the Montana State University campuses (Billings, Bozeman and Havre), the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, and Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, Montana.

In the Midwest—defined here as Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio — there are 34 federally recognized tribes and others seeking recognition. Members of these communities generously contributed information about contemporary life. On “Indians of the Midwest,” you can explore seven important issues, learn how to do further research, and gain an introduction to the research methods that underlie scholars’ findings. Includes images, treaties, and more.

Interface and content predominately in English.
Provides online access to primary source documents related to tribes in the state of Montana.
Open Access.

Collection contains materials mainly relating to Throssel's photographic work of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indians from 1902-1933. The digital collection includes about one-fifth of the 2,481 glass plate negatives and lantern slides Throssel produced, which document Crow and Northern Cheyenne culture, what is now the Little Bighorn National Monument, daily life of Billings, Throssel and his family, ranching, and scenery of southern Montana and northern Wyoming.

Selection of primary source material on the 1890 and 1973 events in South Dakota.

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. [Associated with the Yale Indian Papers Project]

The portraits in this web presentation were collected by four Bostonians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Charles W. Jenks and Francis Parkman collected carte de visite and tintype portraits of American Indians during the 1860s as historical records of tribal groups and their role in contemporary American politics. After a visit to southern California, Boston collector Kingsmill Marrs brought home platinotypes of southwestern Indians taken by Adam Clark Vroman in the late 1890s.

Text and hand colored lithographs from: The history of the Indian tribes of North America, with biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs. Embellished with one hundred and twenty portraits, from the Indian gallery in the Department of war, at Washington. By Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall. Philadelphia, E. C. Biddle, 1836-1844.

University of Washington's extensive digital collection of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures, complemented by essays written by anthropologists, historians, and teachers about both particular tribes and cross-cultural topics.

University of Washington's extensive digital collection of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures, complemented by essays written by anthropologists, historians, and teachers about both particular tribes and cross-cultural topics.

Photographs, ephemera, and some transcripts.
Open Access.

Native American history initiatives at SPOHP have focused on tribal history in the Southeast, archiving hundreds of interviews with the Catawba, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Lumbee, Seminole, and Pamunkey since 1967. Grouped among the Native Peoples of the Americas Oral History Collections are interviews representing the lives and history of native Americans.

Over 200 digital facsimiles of photographs and documents from the Native American collection at University of South Carolina, Lancaster.

The Bonneville Collection is a collection of fifty-four late 19th century albumen card photographs, chiefly boudoir cards and with some in a larger format pertaining to the American Plains Indians. Includes images of Wounded Knee, S.D. from 1891.

The exhibit records turning points when Native people began moving away from the seclusion of reservation life and venturing out as participants into the wider world beyond. The images reveal a people incrementally moving from one world to another over the span of several decades.

Provides free access to over 690,000 resources from universities, colleges, public libraries, museums, historical societies, and government agencies, counties, and municipalities in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, and other parts of the U.S. West.

New Mexico Digital Collections is the central search portal for digital collections about New Mexico. A service of the University of New Mexico Libraries, we provide access to digitized photographs, manuscripts, posters, oral histories, videos, maps, and books from libraries, museums, and cultural centers across the state.

The Ojibwe website is an overview of cultural objects that can be found in the Minnesota Historical Society’s artifact collection, totaling over 2,000 artifacts. A selection are provided in digital facsimile by the Minnesota Historical Society.

The Plateau Peoples' Web Portal is a collaboration between the Spokane Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes Of The Colville Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation and Native Programs at Washington State University.

Printed materials and manuscripts focused on overland narratives, the cattle trade, and the Rocky Mountain West collected by Philip Ashton Rollins, Class of 1889. Over the course of six decades, the collection expanded to include indigenous languages and the history of the American Indian, the Spanish Southwest, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), territorial imprints, and photography of the American West.

The phrase "Indian rolling" -- assault or murder of Native Americans by non-natives -- came into use in the spring of 1974 when three Navajos were beaten and killed by white teenagers in the town of Farmington, New Mexico. The perpetrators were sent to reform school for the crime. Organized and led by American Indian Movement (AIM) members, protests by tribal members were intense but nonviolent.

Compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler, this historically significant, seven volume compilation contains U.S. treaties, laws and executive orders pertaining to Native American Indian tribes. The volumes cover U.S. Government treaties with Native Americans from 1778-1883 (Volume II) and U.S. laws and executive orders concerning Native Americans from 1871-1970 (Volumes I, III-VII). This digitization project was made possible by significant gifts from the AMIGOS Bibliographic Council, the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Foundation and the Angie Debo estate.

The Law Library of Congress provides a listing of valuable Indian Treaties, judicial decisions, U.S. Codes, and lawmaking agendas relating to Native American history. [Library of Congress]

Laws enacted by Congress affecting Native Americans compiled by the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School.

From the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, this site contains treaties relating to Native Americans.

The Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Open to the public for research and teaching purposes, EADA is published and supported by the University of Maryland Libraries’ e-Publishing Initiative.

Created by Library of Congress curatorial, exhibition, and technology staff.

Hundreds of full text facsimiles of books in Latin, English, French, Spanish, and other languages discussing Indigenous Peoples.

Elizabeth Camp's two journals detail her time spent with the Stockbridge Indians as a schoolteacher and unofficial Congregationalist missionary.

The Fort Wayne Indian Agency collection consists of a letterbook kept by Indian agents John Johnston and Benjamin Franklin Stickney; an English-to-Ottawa dictionary, likely written by Stickney; and a memorandum book kept by Johnston during his time at Fort Wayne, Indiana Territory.