What are Primary Sources?
Primary Sources are original sources: they were created by someone who participated in or observed an event. They include diaries, letters, newspapers, government documents, photographs, and other manuscripts.
Primary Source Collections
- Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America This link opens in a new windowEveryone should try this rich resource. It presents material from the Newberry Library’s Edward E. Ayer Collection, one of the strongest available archival collections on American Indian history. Early contacts between Europeans and American Indians and the subsequent political, social and cultural effects of those encounters on American Indian life is told against the backdrop of the expanding western frontier right through to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.
- Early Encounters in North America This link opens in a new window
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment explores relationships between Native American, African, and European peoples from 1534-1850, using primary sources and personal accounts.
- American JourneysEyewitness accounts of early American exploration and settlement. Contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later. Read the words of explorers, Indians, missionaries, traders and settlers as they lived through the founding moments of American history.
- Southeastern Native American DocumentsDocuments about Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws and Choctaws.
- Yale Indian Papers ProjectDigitized primary sources on Native Americans of New England!
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a digitized library representing most of the significant English- and foreign-language texts published in Great Britain and the colonies during the eighteenth century. Subject access to this collection is provided by the British Library’s online English Short Title Catalogue.
- Evans, 1639-1800 (Early American Imprints, Series I) This link opens in a new window
This collection of books, pamphlets, and broadsides published in America in the 17th and 18th centuries includes items listed in Charles Evans’s American Bibliography and Roger Bristol’s supplement. The database is cross-searchable with Shaw-Shoemaker (Early American Imprints, Series II), American Pamphlets, Series I: 1820-1922, and American Broadsides & Ephemera.
- Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new windowDiaries, books, pamphlets, magazines and other documents about Early American life (includes United States and Latin America).
- Documenting the American SouthA collection of primary sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century.
- Bartram's TravelsAwesome source for Southeastern tribes in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
- Edward S. Curtis's The North American IndianEdward Sheriff Curtis published The North American Indian between 1907 and 1930 with the intent to record traditional Indian cultures. The work comprises twenty volumes of narrative text and photogravure images. Each volume is accompanied by a portfolio of large photogravure plates.
Government Documents
- ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new windowBrings together a vast amount of information published by and about the United States Congress.
- The American Presidency ProjectA searchable database containing a large collection of presidential papers/documents.
- Bureau of EthnologyObservations of Native American societies in the 1800s.
Newspapers
- Early American Newspapers, 1690-1876 This link opens in a new window
Digitized versions of early American Newspapers from The American Antiquarian Society, private collections and The Library of Congress, Brown, Harvard, et al. Based on the microfilm collection of the same name.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowThis database offers full-text and full-image articles for newspapers dating back to the 19th century. Included are major titles like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.
- American Periodicals Series (Collection I) This link opens in a new window
This collection includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines, journals, and newspapers published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines.
- Newspapers.com – World Collection This link opens in a new window
Newspapers.com Library Edition offers full page newspaper images with searchable full-text of newspapers. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to both full runs and portions of runs of newspapers.
- Chronicling America: Historic American NewspapersA range of newspapers published in late 1800s and early 1900s.
- Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
This collections features publications of all kinds, from political party newspapers to dailies and includes major newspapers as well as those published by African Americans, Native Americans, labor groups and other groups and interests. Also included in the collection are illustrated papers from a variety of artists.
- Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowEthnic NewsWatch is a full-text database of newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic, minority, and native press. . Includes many current papers and magazines published by Native American tribes!
- Alt-PressWatch This link opens in a new window
Provides news source coverage, viewpoints and perspectives to complement and challenge the mainstream media.
Literature
- North American Indian Drama, 2nd Edition This link opens in a new windowThis edition of North American Indian Drama contains many previously unpublished works and represents groups such as Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Lenape, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, Hawaiian/Samoan, and others.
Other Web Resources
These are all freely accessible websites. Many include a variety of types of primary sources (documents, images, video, etc.)
- Digital Public Library of America"The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world."
- National ArchivesDigitized collections from the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
- Smithsonian Digital CollectionsA collection of sources from the Smithsonian.
Images
- ARTstor This link opens in a new windowARTstor is a digital library of images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences, with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. Great for Native American images.
- American Philosophical Society Library: Image CollectionA collection of Native American images.
- Smithsonian Research ImagesA collection of images from the Smithsonian.