at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Clicking on the first two titles 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.
For a brief biography of Will West Long, one of the Cherokee students, see this WCU website.
Additional Secondary Resources
For more information about the forced assimilation of Native Americans through residential boarding schools, see: Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2020.
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. Note that they are listed as coming from "Qualla Town" which represents the Qualla Boundary where the Eastern Band of the Cherokee reside in western North Carolina. The class rolls can often be found toward the end of each bulletin.
List of Native American students from "Qualla Town" in the 1890-1891 Trinity College Bulletin
Please note that most manuscript materials on early Native American students in the University Archives are from the white administrators' perspective.
