Early Encounters
- European Views of the Americas, 1493-1750This bibliographic database covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of native American peoples. A wide range of subject areas are covered; from natural disasters to disease outbreaks and slavery. The original bibliography was co-developed by John Alden and Dennis Landis, Curator of European Books at The John Carter Brown Library.
- EENA: Early Encounters in North America - Peoples, Cultures, and the EnvironmentThis database, assembled from hundreds of primary sources, documents the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women. It includes works by American Indians as well as a wide range of Europeans. It captures first impressions, records hundreds of years of observations of flora and fauna, describes encounters with native peoples presents a new literature with words and metaphors created in response to new places, and much more. The database includes prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, letters, photographs, and original facsimile pages all searchable by standardized vocabulary.
- The Jesuit relations and allied documentstravels and explorations of the Jesuit missionaries in New France, 1610-1791 ; the original French, Latin, and Italian texts, with English translations and notes / edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites.
Video
- Ethnographic Video Online Vol. 1 and 2
Online streaming video. Contains classic and contemporary documentaries; previously unpublished footage from working anthropologists and ethnographers in the field; and select feature films. Includes footage from every continent and hundreds of unique cultures. - Kanopy Video
Streaming Video collection - American Indian Film GalleryThe American Indian Film Gallery (AIFG) is an online collection of more than 450 historic films by and about Native peoples of the Americas, compiled and digitized by historian J. Fred MacDonald over many years. These films range in date from 1925-2010. Most date to the so-called Golden Age of educational filmmaking, from 1945 to the rise of consumer-grade video equipment in the 1970s. Many of the films from that period were sponsored by industry or governmental agencies. Others were made by independent educational filmmakers.
With the change in technology from film to video, films in the collection shift from being about Native people to by Native peoples. Much of the work made in the last third of the 20th century comes from Indian communities themselves.
Useful Tips
Browse footnotes and bibliographies of books, encyclopedias, and articles for information about primary sources.
Search the Library Catalog for primary sources--both unpublished manuscripts
and modern editions in print and online, sometimes in translation, of
original primary medieval sources. Use the guided keyword search with terms like:
sources
diaries
personal narrative
interview
letters