Native Americans in the American Experience (1500 to the present)

Prominent is documentation related to his complex two-term presidency, during which the nation debated issues of nullification, tariff rates, banking procedures, Indian policy, public improvements, and the relative power and sovereignty of the individual states in the Union in relation to the federal government. The collection also contains information on military orders and court martial proceedings, diplomatic and Indian treaty negotiations, and the experiences and/or opinions of those Jackson led in battle, collaborated with or opposed in politics, or trusted as cabinet members, allies and friends.

Sections 2, 5 & 6 include George Washington's letterbooks, finances and military papers dating from the beginning of the French and Indian War until his death.

Printed materials in the collection include broadsides and pamphlets about Harrison’s life or featuring his speeches, items related to Indian policy, western settlement, and political-party networking, campaign materials and political song sheets. The collection also includes news clippings, typescripts, a will, genealogical information, eulogies, military pay balance sheets, and other records.

The collection is made up primarily of general correspondence and family papers of Taylor (1784-1850), with some autobiographical material, business and military records, printed documents, engraved printed portraits, and other miscellany relating chiefly to his presidency (1849-1850); his service as a U.S. Army officer, especially in the 2nd Seminole Indian War; management of his plantations; and settlement of his estate.

The papers of army officer Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888) span the years 1853-1896, with the bulk of the material originating between 1862 and 1887. They consist of approximately 18,000 items digitally reproduced from 104 microfilm reels. Relating chiefly to the Civil War, Reconstruction, Mexican border disputes, Indian wars, and military administration, the collection includes correspondence, reports, orders, memorabilia, scrapbooks, commissions, financial records, and speeches.

The General Correspondence series, which forms the bulk of the collection, is arranged chronologically. Much of the series deals with the period of Sherman's post-Civil War army career, and the papers are particularly numerous for the years when he was commanding general of the army, 1869-1883. The correspondence during this time relates mainly to military expeditions against American Indians in the western United States, problems of maintaining Indian reservations, and military policies in the territories.

Paradise Valley is the name of both a cattle-ranching valley and a crossroads community in northern Nevada's Humboldt County. It is home to persons of Anglo American, Italian, German, Basque, Swiss, Northern Paiute Indian, and Chinese heritage. The valley is a cul-de-sac formed by the Santa Rosa Mountains and watered by their melting snows. Miners and agriculturists arrived at about the time of the Civil War, but the mines played out by the end of the century and the valley was devoted to ranching through the 1980s. Ranching has continued even as improved technology has again made the extraction of gold profitable and mining has been revived.

The beginner might start with the edition entitled The Destruction of California Indians: A Collection of Documents from the Period 1847 to 1865 in Which are Described Some of the Things that Happened to Some of the Indians of California (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). While this anthology is based on the writings of white observers--missionaries, army officers, settlers--it presents a valuable contemporary picture of the process by which California's rich indigenous cultures were lost. More advanced students of Native American history will profit from a book compiled by Heizer in collaboration with M. A. Whipple: The California Indians: A Source Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951). This volume contains nineteenth- and twentieth-century discussions by scholarly observers, historians, anthropologists, and archeologists.

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 large number are individual or group portraits, and many subjects are identified by name. Other subjects include traditional and ceremonial dress, dwellings and other structures, agriculture, arts and crafts, rites and ceremonies, dances, games, food preparation, transportation, and scenery.

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.

In 1859 photographic publishers Lawrence & Houseworth began selling stereographs from their San Francisco optical shop. They worked with local photographers to acquire a diverse collection of images documenting California's major settlements, boom towns, placer and hydraulic mining operations, shipping and transportation routes, and such points of scenic interest throughout northern California and western Nevada as the Yosemite Valley and Calaveras Redwoods. Their views also included an extensive pictorial survey of mid-nineteenth-century San Francisco. Subdivision 64 contains documentation about Indians.

Presented here are selections from the American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions. The sound recordings include 44 wax cylinder recordings made in the 1890s, 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, and 61 spoken word segments from an interview conducted with an Omaha musician in 1999.