North Carolina
Samuel Finley Patterson Papers, 1792-1939.
Patterson was the Commissioner for the Cherokee Indians in 1839. This collection has material on the sale of Cherokee lands.
William Holland Thomas Papers, 1814-1898
William Holland Thomas, white chief of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, legislator, and Confederate officer. As a young man Thomas worked at a trading store in Cherokee Territory in what is now Western North Carolina. William Thomas Holland won the favor and confidence of the Cherokee Indians. The Cherokee chief, Yonaguska. Thomas became an Indian agent in 1825, and by 1835 he had five trading stores. Thomas became head of the tribe when Yonaguska died in 1836. From 1836-1848 Thomas spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. attending to Native American affairs. There was a large amount of litigation between the Indians and the federal government arising from land claims. Thomas entered the state senate in 1848. In 1861 he raised a regiment for the Confederate Army including four companies of Cherokee Indians. These papers contain a large amount of material on the Cherokee, but Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians are mentioned as well (for example in letters dated February 4, 1843 and February 23, 1851).
Washington Sandford Chaffin Papers, 1841-1916
This collection may contain direct or circumstantial references to Lumbee Indians in Robeson County. Reverend Chaffin was a minister of the Robeson Circuit and Lumberton Circuit in 1865-1866 and 1884. In his journal of 1865-1866 he mentions the names of the many people with whom he stayed, some of whom may have been Native Americans.
McDonald Furman Papers, 1883-1903
Family and business correspondence of McDonald Furman, including from Mrs. D. Eli Dunlap, a teacher in the Presbyterian Mission School established for the Catawba Indians in York County, South Carolina. Approximately twelve letters she wrote between 1897-1902 describe aspects of the school and the Indians.
Southeast
Anna Burnham Papers, 1824-1841
This collection includes nineteen letters from Reverend Cyrus B. Byington to Sister Anna Burnham, both of whom were missionaries to the Choctaw Indians in Mississippi.
William W. Pew Papers, 1837-1839
Pew described his travels while on military assignment to Florida during the Second Seminole War. Three maps are included in his diary.
Alexander Beaufort Meek Papers, 1836-1865
A journal of the Florida Expedition of 1836 describes warfare against the Seminole Indians. A diary from 1851-1855 recounts travels from Tuscaloosa to the Choctaw Agency in Okyibbeha County, Mississippi. A diary of 1834 includes a biographical sketch of John M. Robinson (d. 1829), author of The Savage, by Piomingo, a Headman and Warrior of the Muscogulgee Nation.
Charles B. Johnson Papers, 1861-1865
Johnson was a Confederate quartermaster's agent and contractor for supplying food and other materials to the Confederate Army and to Indians. The letters, reports and accounts in this collection concern supplies to the Wichita Indians in 1861-1862, to the Osages in 1864, and to the Seminoles in 1865.
Collection contains Pike's letters concerning his literary and legal work, including comment on his annotation of the La. Civil Code, his vocabularies of the Creek and Comanche languages, financial arrangements, a lawsuit, and an agreement between the U.S. government and the Choctaws, 1874.
Plains
John Francis Hamtramck, Jr. Papers, 1757-1862.
Hamtramck was the Indian agent for the Osage Indians between 1826-1831. This collection contains a lot of material relating to the Osage Indians.
Eugene Marshall Papers, 1839-1962.
Marshall served as a volunteer in the Union Army during the Civil War and Sioux Wars (1862-1865) while with units known successively as Curtis' Horse, the 5th Iowa Cavalry, and Brackett's Battalion. His correspondence and his diary, 1851-1905, describe Indian tribes living near army forts and former trading posts, including Sioux, Mandan, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Crow, Winnebago, and Arikara Indians. Marshall observes their agricultural methods and notes that dogs were used as beasts of burden. Many of the diary entries about Native Americans occur in 1864-5.
Gallaher Family Papers, 1800-1924.
Augusta Virginia Wilson ("Aunt Gus") was a Methodist missionary-schoolteacher who wrote many letters to her family in Charles Town, W. Va., describing her activities on a Creek reservation in Indian Territory, Oklahoma, 1887-1890.
Southwest
Alfred Cumming Papers, 1792-1889
Public official, Indian agent, and Territorial Governor of Utah (1857-1861). Included in the volumes are a journal of an expedition to the Blackfoot Indians with notes and instructions (1855) and two letter books and official proceedings of a commission to hold council with Blackfoot and other Indian tribes (1855).
Lafayette McLaws Papers, 1862-1895.
In a letter dated December 6, 1894, McLaws describes his service in the U.S. Army among Native American tribes west of Arkansas. He describes an Indian mail raid in New Mexico and a winter campaign against the Navahos.
John K. Hillers Photographs, 1871-1889
John K. Hillers was an important early American photographer and one of the first to photograph the Grand Canyon and the high plateaus of central and southern Utah. This collection mostly features his landscape photography, but the Indian series contains seven photographs of Zuñi and San Juan pueblos from what is now New Mexico.
William Henry Jackson photographs, 1869-1878
William Henry Jackson was the official photographer, 1869 to 1878, for the U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories conducted by Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden. In the Indian Series there are eleven photographs of Indians, portraits of either individuals or groups of two or more persons.
Map of the United States. 1820s.
Shows locations of western Indian tribes.
Ezra Strong. Map of the United States. New York. 1837.
Includes locations of Indian tribes.
Notes location of Indian Tribes.
Shows Indian tribal locations, military posts, and routes and dates of expeditions and surveys.
