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Primary Sources

Adam Mathew – American Indian Histories and Cultures: Sources from the Edward E. Ayer Collection at the Newberry Library, Chicago

https://www.amdigital.co.uk/primary-sources/american-indian-histories-and-cultures
This by subscription only collection includes manuscripts, artworks, American Indian Newspapers from 1960s to 1990s, rare printed books, photographs, and maps covering the period from the seventeenth to mid-twentieth centuries.

Alaska’s Digital Archives – Pathways for Alaska Native Materials

https://vilda.alaska.edu/digital/
The collection contains over 10,000 items in multiple formats such as historical images, oral histories, maps, documents, film clips and three dimensional objects to support the instructional and research needs of Alaskans and those interested in Alaska history and culture.

Kamehameha Schools Archive – The Polynesian Voyaging Society Archives

https://www.ksbe.edu/archives/polynesian-voyaging-society-archives
This digital archive contains the records, manuscripts, photographs, albums, slides, audio and film documentation of the activities of the Polynesian Voyaging Society since 1973.

Library of Congress: American Memory

  • American Indians of the Pacific Northwest

    http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/
    This digital collection integrates over 2,300 photographs and 7,700 pages of text relating to the American Indians in two cultural areas of the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest Coast and Plateau. These resources illustrate many aspects of life and work, including housing, clothing, crafts, transportation, education, and employment.

  • Edward S. Curtis’s North American Indian: Photographic Images

    http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/
    This digital collection features all of the published photogravure images including over 1500 illustrations bound in the text volumes and over 700 portfolio plates. Curtis portrayed the traditional customs and lifeways of eighty Indian tribes in a twenty volume publication, organized by tribes and culture areas encompassing the Great Plains, Great Basin, Plateau Region, Southwest, California, Pacific Northwest, and Alaska.

  • History of the American West: 1860-1920

    http://loc.gov/item/2002556033
    This collection contains over 30,000 photographs taken between 1860 and 1920 from the Denver Public Library. They illustrate Colorado towns and landscape, document the place of mining in the history of Colorado and the West, and show the lives of Native Americans from more than forty tribes living west of the Mississippi River.

  • Map Collections

    http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/maps/maps.cfm
    This web portal contains many digitized maps and atlases, and is organized according to major categories and topics. Many maps relating to Native Americans can be found by topic under Native American Nations.

  • Photographs from the Chicago Daily News

    https://explore.chicagocollections.org/records/?f1-institutions=Chicago%20History%20Museum&f2-types=Digital%20Images
    This collection comprises over 55,000 images of urban life captured on glass plate negatives between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Chicago Daily News. The photographs illustrate the enormous variety of topics and events covered in the newspaper. A keyword search for “native american” results in over 80 images.

  • Omaha Indian Music

    https://www.loc.gov/collections/omaha-indian-music/about-this-collection/
    This collection features traditional Omaha music from the 1890s and 1980s.It contains 44 wax cylinder recordings collected between 1895 and 1897, 323 songs and speeches from the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow, and 25 songs and speeches from the 1985 Hethu’shka Society concert. Supplementing the collection are black-and-white and color photographs taken during the 1983 pow-wow and the 1985 concert, field notes and tape logs pertaining to the pow-wow.