American Indian Histories and Cultures

In the same week that California celebrates Native American Day (Friday 27th September), Adam Matthew will launch our latest resource American Indian Histories and Cultures, containing material digitized from the Edward E. Ayer collection at the Newberry Library, Chicago – one of the strongest archival collections on American Indian history in the world.

Native American Day is a state holiday that reflects California’s rich indigenous traditions and will see hundreds of people engaged with events and programmes to learn more about local American Indian history and culture, and California (as a modern state and previously as part of New Spain) is just one of the regions covered by the impressive Ayer collection.

This includes photographs of native communities in Yosemite National Park, material on Spanish missions, maps and fort plans, as well as journals charting expeditions to the west coast. But this is just a small part of the material featured in American Indian Histories and Culture, which encompasses South America, Mesoamerica and regions all the way through North America to the Arctic.

Working with the Newberry Library again after the success of The American West, American Indian Histories and Cultures digitizes a wide range of documents from manuscripts, rare printed books, newspapers, photographs and artwork, enabling a fascinating exploration of American Indian contact with Europeans from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The complementary themes of these two resources will be particularly coherent as they will be cross-searchable, enabling users to see documents from both collections through one simple search.

With charts and maps dating from the early 1500s (including Cortés’s famous map of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan), and material such as the accounts and correspondence of the first Jesuit missionaries to arrive on the eastern coast of Canada, it is possible to gain a unique understanding of the circumstances surrounding ‘first contact’ with indigenous peoples. From some of the earliest to some of the more contemporary material, printed treaties, American Indian newspapers and manuscripts such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs Indian relocation records enable a socio-political reading of topics such as the Red Power movement and pivotal moments like the occupation of Alcatraz from multiple perspectives.

In this vast and rich resource, a few personal highlights include the artwork of Elbridge Burbank, featuring two stunning portraits of Geronimo and one of Chief Pokagon (pictured above) in his series of oil studies of northern tribes from the 1890s. The fascinating Mexican pictorial manuscripts from the late sixteenth century are further favourites, recording inheritance, genealogy and land claims, such as those in the Codex Cempoallan. Written in the native Nahuatl language, the Cempoallan conveys the extent of the claim by depicting the buildings and plant life within its boundaries (pictured above) in one of the earliest examples of Mesoamerican native record keeping. We have also digitized the renowned Seeing Indian in Chicago exhibition which was held – to great acclaim – at the Newberry Library in 1985. Part of a project that documented the American Indian community in Chicago through photographs taken by its community members, the images portray contemporary ceremonies, leisure activities and the families that came to rely on the American Indian Center, in a rare and beautiful way.

The launch of American Indian Histories and Cultures will make the dynamic and invaluable material of the Edward E. Ayer collection widely available for students and scholars of North and Meso-American indigenous peoples and indeed, the socio-political history of the wider Americas.

Contact us for pricing information and to request a free trial.