LibGuides: Native American and Indigenous History at Duke: Cherokee Industrial School

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Duke University Archives

at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library

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Secondary Sources

Clicking on the titles to these secondary sources will take you to each source's catalog record. They are the products of research using Duke University Archives collections, so you may want to use their footnotes to identify University Archives collections that may be helpful to your own research.

Chaffin, Nora. Trinity College, 1839-1892: The Beginnings of Duke University. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1950.
- Use the index to locate passages about the Cherokee students.
Ingram, Jill Elizabeth. Man in the Middle: The Boarding School Education of Will West Long. 2008. Western Carolina University, M.A. Thesis.
- You can request this thesis through Duke's Interlibrary Loan service. Read more about that service here.
- For a brief biography of Will West Long, one of the Cherokee students, see this WCU website.
Ortega, Bishop, Scarlett Guy, and Danny Bell, narrators. "Artist Bishop Ortega with Scarlett Guy (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) and Danny Bell (Lumbee/Coharie)." Nasher Museum Podcast, episode 8. July 10, 2022. Available online.

Annual Trinity College Bulletins

Each year, Trinity College published annual bulletins for prospective and current students, which included the college policies, curriculum, and application information. Lists of trustees, faculty, and students--including their hometowns--were also included. The Cherokee students first appear in the 1880-81 bulletin, at the end of the "Special & Preparatory Students" section. The class rolls can often be found toward the end of each bulletin.

Manuscript Collections at the Duke University Archives

Julian Shakespeare Carr papers, 1880-1982
The "Correspondence, 1885 Nov.-1887, 1891 May" folder in box 1 contains a November 7, 1885 letter from Burrell & Walker to Carr about settling account for clothing for twenty Cherokee students during the 1884-1885 academic year.
Frank C. Churchill papers, 1906-1909
Letters and papers relating to a census of the eastern band of Cherokees in 1907-1908. Several of the students who previously attended Trinity College's Cherokee Industrial School are listed in this census.
Braxton Craven records and papers, 1839-1882
Trinity College president Braxton Craven worked with the US Bureau of Indian Affairs to bring the Cherokee students to the school. The original July 1880 agreement between Craven and the US government is located in Box 2 in the “Legal Papers: Contracts/Agreements, 1846-1881” folder. Although there isn't an index card to further documents in his records that discuss the students, browsing through any documentation from the 1880s may be helpful.
John Franklin Heitman papers, 1863-1911
Following the resignation of Marquis L. Wood in December 1884, Heitman served as the chief administrator of Trinity College until John F. Crowell's appointment as president in 1887. He corresponded regularly with the Bureau of Indian Affairs about the progress of and financial matters relating to the Cherokee students. The index card below, from the University Archives' card catalog, lists the dates of documents in Heitman's papers about the Cherokee students.

Trinity College (Randolph County, N.C.) collection, 1836-1990
See both the "Cherokee Indians" folder and the "Student Lists and Grades, 1858-1880s" folder, which contains two lists pertaining to the Cherokee students. The "Annual Reports, 1858-1882" folder contains a report from Braxton Craven to the Board of Trustees about the Cherokee students' first year at Trinity.
Marquis Lafayette Wood records and papers, 1852-1984
Wood became Trinity College's president following Braxton Craven's death in 1882, inheriting some of the responsibility for the Cherokee students. The index card below, from the University Archives' card catalog, lists the dates of documents in Wood's papers about the Cherokee students.

Related Websites & Other Online Resources

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
Museum of the Cherokee Indian
Based in Cherokee, NC, the museum "preserve[s] and perpetuate[s] the history, culture, and stories of the Cherokee people.”