Located in Worcester, Massachusetts, the AAS is both a learned society and national research library of pre-twentieth century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in the United States and has built exceptionally strong collections of books and pamphlets relating to Indigenous peoples in what is now the United States and Canada from the 16th through the 19th centuries.
Some of the collection’s highlights include:
Indigenous Peoples Resources at the American Antiquarian Society
Photographs of North American Indians, 1850-1900: An AAS Illustrated Inventory -- highlights nineteenth-century photographs of Native Americans.
American Indian Resource Center
Housed in the Huntington Park Branch of the County of Los Angeles Public Library system, this is the largest public library collection in the US that focuses on American Indians. The materials include audiocassettes, books, compact discs, films, magazines, microfilm, newsletters, newspapers, and videocassettes. Subjects covered are federal Indian law, tribal sovereignty, Native Voices, American Indian genealogy, American Indians in Film, Urban Indians, adoption & identity, tribal studies (individual tribes) and geographic area studies.
The American Philosophical Society Library
The APS is a major national center for research in the history of the sciences, early American history, and Native American ethnography and linguistics. The collection contains material related to the languages, traditions, history, and continuity of over 650 different Indigenous cultures throughout the Americas, with a special emphasis on Native North American peoples. While manuscripts make up most of the material, the APS also holds over 130,000 photographs and other images, and over 3,500 hours of audio recordings, the latter of which are nearly all digitized and available through the APS Digital Library.
A few examples below give a flavor of the scope and nature of the materials held by the APS:
Boarding School Materials, Frank G. Speck Papers
There are a few items in the Frank G. Speck Papers currently identified as relating to Indian boarding schools, for instance, a letter from Ann Rolland (Haskell Institute), to Speck, April 6, 1941 (Subcollection 1, Series 1, in Section IV, "Southeast," see item IV(15H3)), lists of Native students and the Haskell Institute boarding school in 1939-1940, giving name, age, address, and tribe (Section XIII, "Miscellaneous," see item XIII(22H), “Haskell Institute Roster”), letters from Leona E. Giger and Ann Rolland, both students at Haskell in the early 1940’s (Subcollection I, Series II, Biographical Material), and a few other items. For a more detailed description of the papers, go here
Cherokee materials, Alfred Irving Hallowell Papers
The materials consist of 46 drawings made by Cherokee school children. They were obtained from a teacher at Lac du Flambeau who previously taught on a Cherokee reservation. A more detailed description of the papers is here
Haudenosaunee materials, Benjamin Franklin Papers
Various materials, including Franklin's account of a conference at Carlisle, his "Draught of the plan of Union Proposed at Albany," letters regarding the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, uneasiness of many Indians at British and American encroachment, and predisposition of many frontiers people to kill Indians; and John Wheelock's "Historical account of the rise and progress of Moor's Charity School and the Institution at Dartmouth." A more detailed description of the papers is here
Navajo materials, Field Recordings
The Navajo materials in William Fenton’s "Indian Language Field Recordings" collection consists of several dances and songs. These materials have been digitized and can be accessed online for free by users not physically at the APS Library. Please see Audio Access Page for information on how to request these materials.
Ojibwe materials, Samuel George Morton Papers
Materials consists of four letters discussing grave robbing of Indigenous ancestors' remains and observations of contemporary Native people. A more detailed description of the materials is available here
Haffenrefer Museum of Anthropology (Brown University)
The Museum’s permanent collection includes over 150,000 ethnographic and archaeological objects. The collection is strong in the indigenous arts of the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia, along with smaller collections from other parts of the world.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
The Huntington houses several research institutes. The Shapiro Center advances scholarship, knowledge, and understanding of American history and culture—especially of the early Republic. USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute supports advanced research and scholarship on human societies between 1450 and 1850 in and around the Atlantic and Pacific basins.
The Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives
This research center includes information about indigenous art and cultures from around the world and a resource file containing information about more than 19,000 Native American artists. The centerpiece of the archive is the Native American Artists Archives. Established in 2000, it documents the creative lives of Indian artists and includes personal papers, portfolios, sketchbooks, correspondence, journals, scrapbooks, photographs, tools, and other primary source material. The online art collection features selected images from the Heard Museum Art Collections in our Digital Library. baskets, beadwork; pottery, textile.
Some exhibitions include:
Larger Than Memory: Contemporary Art from Indigenous North America presents works by contemporary artists working across the United States and Canada in a variety of mediums and modalities.
Heard Museum Art Collections concentrates on the lives of Native peoples and consists of more than 40,000 objects. Key collections include Hopi katsina dolls; Navajo and Zuni jewelry, Navajo textiles, Southwestern ceramics from prehistory to the present and baskets from the Southwest, California, the Great Basin and the Northwest.
The JCB's collection of 50,000 rare books, maps and manuscripts encompasses more than two hundred languages and spans over three centuries of early American history. To search Indigenous Language Collection, go to https://archive.org/details/jcbindigenous
Autry Museum of the American West (Los Angeles, California)
Library and Archives hold unique, rare and significant primary and secondary resources focusing on the peoples and cultures of the American West. The collections contain rare books, serials, maps, photographs, artwork, manuscript collections, and sound recordings (e.g. wax cylinder recording of Navajo Speech Chief Martin).
Among the collection’s highlights:
Women’s Stories Found in the Native Voices Archives -- An archive of the Native Voices theatre company; reflects 26 years of Native storytelling in which women’s stories always played a prominent role.
The Alcatraz Logbook: Signs of Red Power -- A logbook of those who visited the island exists and is presented here to the public for the first time; provided greater insight into the diversity and numbers of people who visited and stayed on the island.
National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian)
The NMAI holds expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, images, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.
A few ongoing exhibitions at the museum include:
Why We Serve: Native Americans in the United States Armed Forces (November 11, 2020–February 28, 2021) -- This exhibition honors the generations of Native Americans who have served in the armed forces of the United States since the American Revolution.
Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations (September 21, 2014–2021) -- This exhibition tells the story of he relationship between Indian Nations and the United States, including the history and legacy of U.S.–American Indian diplomacy from the colonial period through the present.
Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World (September 21, 2004–Late 2021) -- The exhibition focuses on indigenous cosmologies—worldviews and philosophies related to the creation and order of the universe—and the spiritual relationship between humankind and the natural world.
Return to a Native Place: Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake -- This exhibition provides an overview of the history and events from the 1600s to the present that have impacted the lives of the Nanticoke, Powhatan, and Piscataway tribes.
National Anthropological Archives (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)
The Archives collect anthropological materials that document the world’s cultures and the history of anthropology. Among the highlights of the collection are Truman Michelson's Algonquian languages documentation (digitized materials available online); John Peabody Harrington's endangered language documentation (online sound clips of recordings are accessible online); James Owen Dorsey's documentation of Siouan languages; Seneca language manuscripts, and many more.
The Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley)
A primary special collections library at the University of California, Berkeley; one of the largest and most heavily used libraries of manuscripts, rare books, and unique materials in the United States.
Among the collections are:
Western Americana documents the history of human activity in North America—primarily west of the Rocky Mountains—from the earliest days to the present time, with greatest emphasis on California; also holds materials produced by Native peoples such as the personal papers of individuals the records organizations they have run.
The Pictorial Collection of paintings, drawings, photographs, and other documentary depictions from the earliest recorded images to the present day.
Oral History Center -- Established In 1954 to conduct interviews with leading citizens of the West, the Regional Oral History Office (now the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library) has conducted over 4,000 interviews on a wide range of topics.
The Newbery Library collection is a portal to more than six centuries of human history, from the Middle Ages to the present; holds some 1.6 million books, 600,000 maps, and 5 million manuscript pages.
The Newberry’s Edward E. Ayer Collection is one of the strongest collections on American Indian and Indigenous Studies in the world.
For the research guides to the Native American materials, scroll to the bottom of the page
