HIST 316:
Authority & Authenticity in Native American History
Spring 2008 · Professor Nathaniel Sheidley

Contents:

Find background information
Find books
Find scholarly journal articles
Primary sources
Evaluating what you find

• $300 award for a paper or project of any length from a 100 or 200 level Wellesley College course (2 awards)
• $750 award for a paper or project of any length from a 300 level Wellesley College course, excluding 360s, and 370s (1 award)
• Deadline: April 1, 2008

Bibliographies - just a few of many (very specialized)

• American Indian Studies: A Bibliographic Guide - Clapp Reference Z1209 .W52 1995
• Annotated Bibliography of American Indian and Eskimo Autobiographies - Clapp Reference Z1209 .B78

Encyclopedias & Handbooks

• Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary - E98.W8 B38 2001
• Handbook of the American Frontier: Four Centuries of Indian-White Relationships - Clapp Reference E76.2 .H43 1987
• Handbook of North American Indians - Clapp Reference q E77 .H25 (Smithsonian Institution)
• see especially v. 4, History of Indian-White Relations; v. 14, Southeast; and v. 15, Northeast
  
• Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Northeast - E78 .E2 B72 2001
• Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast - E78 .S65 P45 2001
• Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes, Vol. 1 (Northeast, Southeast, Caribbean) - Clapp Reference E77 .G15 1998
• Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies - Clapp Reference E45 .E53 1993

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

a few tips:

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: keyword search "indian removal" leads to subject terms like:
  • Indians of North America - Relocation"
  • Trail of Tears, 1838-1839
  • [name of tribe] - Relocation
    
    
• use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (indians or native americans or pequot or nipmuck)
• use truncation to save time (captiv* for captive, captives, captivity)
• use parentheses to enclose each concept string

for the sample topic:  "women's role in native american cultures"
you could do an Advanced Search:  (women or female or gender)       [using synonyms]
                            AND (native american or indian* or wampanoag)        [using * for variants of indian]

leading to subject terms such as the following, linking to more books on your topic:

> Indian women -- North America -- Social conditions
> Sex role -- North America -- History
> Indian women -- North America -- Social life and customs

Some useful subject headings for this course might be:

• Indians of North America -- First Contact With Europeans
• Indians of North America -- History -- Colonial Period ca. 1600-1775
• [name of specific tribe] Indians e.g., Penobscot Indians or Massachuset Indians
• Indians of North America -- [name of state or region] e.g. Indians of North America -- New England

• if our copy of a book is checked out, click on or to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

the most useful databases

• America: History and Life
        - index to articles on U.S. & Canadian history from prehistory to present, written from 1964 to present
  
• Project Muse
        - full text academic journals in the humanities & social sciences, from the past five years - see JSTOR for prior years
  
• JSTOR
        - full text of scholarly articles in all fields, up to 3 to 5 years ago (not recent articles)
  
• Academic Search Premier
        - broad, multidisciplinary database of both popular and scholarly articles, mostly fulltext
        - tip: limit to peer-reviewed articles or select the "Academic Journals" icon above your search results
  
• Periodicals Index Online
        - Index to articles published in over 4500 journals in the humanities & social sciences in 40 languages, 1665 to 1995

• Early American Imprints: Series I, 1639-1800 · Series II, 1801-1819
       - books, pamphlets, broadsides, etc. covering many aspects of early American life
  
• American Memory - Library of Congress
        - enormous digital library of all kinds of documents and photographs
  
• America's Historical Newspapers
        - searchable full-text of more than 1000 historical U.S. newspapers, 1690-1922
• American State Papers
        - legislative and executive documents of Congress, 1789-1838. See Class II on Indian Affairs - in print: Clapp Documents J33 .W3
• American Indian and the United States; a documentary history (Washburn) - Clapp Reference E93 .W27
• Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607-1789 - qKF8202 1979 (shelved in separate "q" section for oversized books)
• Documents of American Indian diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775-1979 - Clapp Reference KF8202 1999
• Constitutions and Laws of the American Indian Tribes - KF 8220 (long series, listed by tribe)
• The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents; Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791(73 volume set) - Clapp Library F1030.7.C96
• Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Relations Between the United States and Native Americans
        - treaties, speeches, presidential messages, cases, & constitutions.
  
  tip: You may want to check out some of the original books and manuscripts in Special Collections (4th floor of the library): early missionary tracts, grammars and dictionaries, etc. the Fenton Collection and the "Alcove of North American Languages" are of particular relevance to this course
  

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Is s/he credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias - political, religious, commercial or otherwise?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?
• How to Read a Primary Source - Patrick Rael, Bowdoin College

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Laura Reiner • last modified: February 22, 2008