Native American Indians

By the late 17th century, Britain had established colonies along the New England coast and Chesapeake Bay, alongside small groups of Dutch and Swedish settlers. Many of the region’s Indigenous inhabitants were pushed West, where they joined hundreds of other tribes whose lives were irrevocably changed by the arrival of Europeans. Likewise, the presence of Native Americans influenced almost every element of early American settler life, and an enormous number of books were printed about this relationship over the next century and a half. Every major book about Native Peoples from this period is included in Native American Indians, 1645-1819. This product also offers text analysis tools, author biographies, and suggested search paths for easy browsing and discovery.

A comprehensive record of Native America
The documents in Native American Indians, 1645-1819, include treaties, transcribed letters from Native American leaders, the minutes of tribal meetings, histories of numerous tribes, missionary reports, captivity narratives, firsthand accounts of battles, trading records, military rosters, expedition logs and maps, trial records, legislative bills, books on Native American languages and grammar, military rosters, governors’ and legislators’ reports, ballads, songs, plays and more. While such documents are invaluable for scholars and students of Native American studies and early American history, they also offer insight into numerous other fields, including natural history, border studies, military history, political science and linguistics. Additionally, a suite of tools aimed specifically at the Digital Humanities provides word frequencies, keywords in context and other functions that bring this unique content to life in ways never before possible.

Foundational works for understanding Native history
The documents in Native American Indians, 1645-1819, are derived from the holdings of the American Antiquarian Society, Library Company of Philadelphia and many other institutions. Among the seminal works included in this collection are “The Conference with the Eastern Indians, at the ratification of the peace…in July and August 1726,” “A Bill to Authorize the President of the United States to select such tribes of Indians as he may think best prepared for the change, and to adopt such means as he may judge expedient in order to civilize the same,” “Travels and adventures in Canada and the Indian territories between the years 1760 and 1776…” “A Treaty with the Shawanese and Delaware Indians…,” “A history of the voyages and adventures of John Van Delure. Giving an account of his being left on the N.W. coast of America…where he lived almost seven years and married the daughter of an Indian chief,” and more than 1,500 others.