Clements Library seeks to document the history of white interactions with Native Americans. The manuscript, cartographic, and printed collections at the Library offer insight into the complexities of Indian-white relations, and the history of cultural exchange and white imperial domination that have shaped the American nation. Among the earliest manuscript collections to arrive at the Clements were those of the great British colonial and military administrators Thomas Gage, Jeffery Amherst, Lord Shelburne, George Clinton, and Henry Clinton, which together offered a remarkable range of materials for the study of Indian policy as theorized and practiced in North America. Since that time, the Clements has specialized in the documentation of Indian affairs, and its manuscript collections have expanded to become among the richest in the nation for documenting Anglo-American Indian policy during the last half of the 18th century.

The Clements places greatest weight upon materials relating to the Indians of the eastern seaboard and the pays d'en haut, with much less extensive holdings for the Great Plains, the southwest and far west.

Scope and contents:

Consisting of approximately 200 miscellaneous letters, documents, and manuscripts, the Native American History Collection provides primary resources for study of the history of Native Americans from the 18th through the early 20th centuries. Over half of the collection consists of items relating to Sir William Johnson and Guy Johnson, powerbrokers in British Indian affairs during the late 18th century.

Among many interesting items in the collection are a letterbook of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs of Albany (1753-1755), three letters of the ubiquitous Conrad Weiser, and a number of miscellaneous items relating to the Six Nations.

Related collections:

The Manuscripts Division is particularly rich in holdings relating to Native Americans in British North America during the 18th century. Although many of these collections contain a focus on military and commercial relations between the British and Native American nations, they are highly diverse in content, including material of interest to linguists, ethnologists, cultural historians, as well as students of colonial and military history.

Among the larger and more important manuscript collections at the Clements for the study of Native Americans during the 18th century are the papers of Jeffery Amherst, George Clinton, Henry Clinton, Thomas Duggan, Thomas Gage, John Gorham, Josiah Harmar, Jehu Hay, William Knox, William Henry Lyttelton, James Patten, Robert Rogers, Lord Shelburne, James Sterling, Anthony Wayne, and the Quaker Collection.

The Clements' holdings relating to Native Americans during the 19th century are less extensive, but include the collections of Edwin Allison, William Allinson, Isaac Bonsall, Lewis Cass, Thomas Downs, Thomas Flournoy, the Fort Wayne Indian Agency, Henry C. Gilbert, Lucius Lyon, George S. Riley, Sophia Sawyer, the Southwest Territory, George C. Thompson, and Jacob Varnum.

The Book Division is similarly rich, with a particularly good collection of 16th and 17th printed works, English and French religious missions to the Indians, early translations of the Bible and other works into Indian languages, Indian captivity narratives, and respectable runs of two major newspapers, the Cherokee Phoenix and the Dakota Tawaxitku Kin.

Provenance:

Acquired by purchase and donation, 1930-1998.

cat. 7/98 rsc

Subject index to the Native American History Collection

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