Gateway to Exploration

The Library of Congress holdings that relate to Indigenous American histories and cultures are vast. Recently, the Library launched a new overview guide that ties together a range of resources connected to Indigenous American communities.

Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: A Guide to Resources at the Library of Congress serves as a gateway to further exploration of the Library’s historical collections — maps, sound recordings, personal papers, organizational records, legal resources and more — through links to format-specific research guides.

Collectively, those materials chronicle centuries of Native Americans’ history and culture and their encounters with European and American explorers and settlers.

In the Geography and Map Division, a 1777 map shows land ceded by the Cherokee to South Carolina and Georgia by treaty. Some 120 years later, a Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map depicts the Cherokee community of Tahlequah, Oklahoma — houses, seminaries, drug stores, hotels, churches, an opera house and the Cherokee Nation capitol building.

In the Manuscript Division, a colorfully clad “Indian cowboy” mounted on a black steed trots across a page — an example of drawings by Native children depicting life at the Fort Spokane Boarding School in the early 20th century, part of the Solon Borglum papers.

The Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds a particularly strong collection of Bibles representing 150 different languages from around the globe, including Native languages such as Mohawk, Cherokee, Mi’kmaq and Choctaw.

Format-specific guides found at the Indigenous Peoples of America site connect users to resources in the American Folklife Center; the Law Library of Congress; the History and Genealogy Section; and the Prints and Photographs, Manuscript, and Geography and Map divisions. Specialty guides focus on Indigenous artists, military veterans, National American Indian Heritage Month and the work of former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation.

The guide also provides links to select digital collections, StoryMaps and video recordings of events for those interested in a broader sense of the resources the Library offers.