LibGuides: Native American Studies: Primary Sources

About: Primary Sources

What is a Primary Source?

A primary source is a first-hand account of an event, time period, or philosophical era.

A primary source may include:

diaries, journals, speeches, letters, interviews, office memos and other papers if the author was present at the event being written about
memoirs and autobiographies which are describing events that the author was present for
government documents, such as census records
reports and minutes of organizations that reflect events, conditions and ideas of the time
books, journals and newspapers written at the time of the event in question
photographs, audio tapes, and film that document an event
research data documenting scientific data at the time
artifacts of all kinds, which may include buildings (architecture), household items, cave drawings, clothing, paintings, pottery

Primary sources do not include:

memoirs or autobiographies that reflect on an event that the author was not present for, unless it reflects the popular opinion of the time
a critical analysis of a work of literature that was written much later than the actual work
documentation of ideas or psychology of a time may be found in popular fiction, films, educational material etc produced during that time period
a critical analysis of an historical event that was written much later

Primary Sources in McDermott Library Databases

Indigenous Newspapers in North America
Explore nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. The database represents a huge variety in publisher, audience, and era, permitting users to discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.
Early American Imprints, Series I (Evans, 1639-1800) and Supplements
This full-text database is a collection of primary source material on history, literature, philosophy, religion, agriculture, and other aspects of American life in the 17th and 18th centuries. With thousands of primary documents, it also has supplements from the Library Company of Philadelphia and the American Antiquarian Society that provide hundreds of additional pamphlets, broadsides, and books.
Early American Imprints, Series II (Shaw-Shoemaker,1801-1819) and Supplements
This full-text database provides access to primary source material for the early decades of 19th-century America, including coverage of politics, war, economics, and social and cultural thought. Supplements from the Library Company of Philadelphia and the American Antiquarian Society provide an additional thousand books, pamphlets, and broadsides spanning the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson to the Adams-Onis Treaty.
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment
This collection of primary sources holds more than 100,000 books and pamphlets published in England and its colonies from 1473-1700. It is especially useful for research in the areas of English history, literature, philosophy, linguistics, and the fine arts.
Gale Primary Sources
Gale Primary Resources is a research tool that allows researchers to cross-search multiple primary source databases using a single search box. It includes the following databases: Archives Unbound, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, The Making of the Modern World, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, and Sabin Americana 1500-1926 as well as the historical archives of several major periodicals (The Economist, Punch, The Times and more). Each database can also be searched individually.
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust is a large digital library bringing together materials from sources including Google Books, the Internet Archive, and other commercial digitization projects. This resource is being expanded daily and provides information on more than 10 million volumes with more than a third of these available for full text access and download (primarily books and journals published before 1923 and U.S. Government publications).