Guide to the Indigenous Materials at the American Philosophical Society

Description: Artist Antonio Zeno Shindler worked at the Smithsonian Institution from after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century, specializing in ethnographic subjects. He was responsible for printing or taking a large number of photographs of American Indians exhibited there in 1869. The 95 studio portraits in the Shindler Collection were part of a suite of 301 images that comprised the first photographic exhibition at the Smithsonian, and that are documented in the catalogue Photographic Portraits of North American Indians in the Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution (1867). The individuals depicted were members of delegations sent to Washington during the years 1852, 1857-1858, and 1867-1869 from the following nations: Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chippewa (Ojibwe), Choctaw, Dakota Sioux (Brule, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Santee, Sisseton, Two-Kettle, Yankton), Osage, Pawnee, Ponca, Potawatomi, Sac and Fox, Seminole, and Ute. Shindler printed the earlier photographs (mostly taken by the McClees Gallery) and was photographer for the later delegations. See the finding aid for more information. All of the photographs in this collection have been digitized and are in the APS Digital Library.

Collection:A. Zeno Shindler American Indian Photograph Collection (Mss.970.1.Sh6)

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Delaware materials, Paul A. W. Wallace Papers

Culture:

Lenape includes: Lenni-Lenape, Delaware

Haudenosaunee includes: Iroquois, Onkwehonwe

Language:English

Date:1936-1959

Type:Text

Genre:Correspondence | Drafts | Essays | Reports

Extent:9 items

Description: Materials relating to Paul A. W. Wallace's research and writing on topics in Delaware history and culture. Items include drafts, with corrections, of a 1952 paper on the "Delawares-as-Women Problem" read at the Iroquois Conference, Red House; Wallace's undated report on a visit with Chief Joseph Montour (Delaware) at the Six Nations Reserve, Ontario; three copies of a document titled "We are the Six Nations" regarding relations between the Delawares and Haudenosaunee; a draft of Wallace's article "Last King of the Delawares " on Chief Joseph Montour, which discusses relations between the Delawares and Haudenosaunee as well as events in Montour's life; Wallace's correspondence with Montour; Wallace's correspondence with Nicholas B. Wainwright regarding the Delawares-as-women problem; Wallace's correspondence with E. Gordon Alderfer regarding a proposed literary history of Pennsylvania and the desirability of including Indian oral literature, and the validity of Walam Olum; Wallace's correspondence with John C. Ewers regarding the true national identity of the Indian in "Portrait of a Delaware Indian" by Charles B. J. Fevret de St. Memin; and three pages by John Witthoft on the age and origin of Polly Heckewelder's "Indian doll."

Collection:Paul A. W. Wallace Papers (Mss.Ms.Coll.64b)

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General Native American materials, Eugenics Record Office Records

Culture:

Wichita

Zuni includes: A:shiwi

Tohono O'odham includes: Papago

Santa Clara includes: Kha'po Owingeh

Shawnee

Ojibwe includes: Ojibwa, Chippewa, Ojibway

Pojoaque includes: P'osuwaege Owingeh

Lenape includes: Lenni-Lenape, Delaware

Kiowa includes: Ka'igwu

Cheyenne

Chickasaw

Choctaw includes: Chahta

Dakota includes: Dakȟóta

Apache includes: Inde

Arapaho includes: Arapahoe

Language:English

Date:1870-1934

Contributor:Estabrook, Arthur H. (Arthur Howard), 1885- | Koenig, Margaret W. Rhode, 1875- | McDougle, Ivan E. (Ivan Eugene)

Type:Still Image | Text

Extent:5 folders

Description: The Eugenics Record Office Records consist of 330.5 linear feet of materials relating to the ERO, founded in 1910 for the study of human heredity and as a repository for genetic data on human traits. The Eugenics Record Office Papers (1670-1964) contain trait schedules, newspaper clippings, manuscript essays, pedigree charts, article abstracts, reprints, magazine articles, bibliographies, photographs, hair samples, postcard pictures, card files, and some correspondence which document the projects of the Eugenics Record Office during the thirty-four years of its operation. Of particular interest might be Folder "A:9770-1-118 Indians from Oklahoma (Work Sent in by Mr. Paul Roofe)" (1926), containing 118 pages of Individual Analysis Cards containing personal and family information about students at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. There is also "Folder A:9770 #1. Indian Photographs, Bureau of American Ethnography" (1870-1912), containing 23 photographs of Native individuals, all men, most with both front and profile shots, and identifying information on the back. Cultures represented include Kiowa, Brule (Dakota), Apache, Delaware, Papago (Tohono O'odham), Arapaho, Wichita, Zuni, Santa Clara (Pueblo), Shawnee, Pojoaque (Pueblo), Cheyenne, and Bannock. Folder "A:9770 #3. American Indians" (1920-1934) contains material about Bolivia Indians, Chippewas (Ojibwe) in Michigan, and from Dr. Margaret W. Koenig of the Nebraska Medical Women's League regarding the family history of Permela Palmer (Chicksaw), who married a Choctaw and then a white man, and who was of particular note because of her supernumerary mammary glands and the similarly abnormal breast development of some of her daughters. Folder "A:974 x 7. Caucasian x Indian" (1920-1925) contains trait charts of mixed families, including charts of a French-Cree and Choctaw family and a French-Cree and Scotch-Cree family sent by Mrs. L. M. William of Battleford, Sask.; a three-page typed essay, "For a Universial Marriage Law," advocating the prohibition of mixed marriages, also attributed to Mrs. William; and a magazine article, intended to be humorous, titled "Indian Wives and White Husbands" by Josiah M. Ward. Folder "A:976 x 70. American Indian - Negro" (1919-1928) contains charts, anecdotal data, notes, etc. regarding the traits of mixed children of Native and African American parents, several examples of which are stamped State Normal School, Montclair, NJ; a letter from the state registrar of Virginia to the Census Bureau concerning the efforts of people trying to gain recogition as Chickahominy, Rappahannock, and other groups despite having been previously been designated as "mullatoes," fear about such people having "broken into the census as Indians," and from there "have gotten across into the white race," and hopes to clarify matters for the 1930 Censuses; and materials (interviews, family trees, forms, notes) from a study directed by A. H. Estabrook and I. E. McDougle of the Sociology Department of Sweet Briar College--with fieldwork (such as interviews) performed by Sweet Briar students--titled "The Isshys, An Indian-Negro-White Family Group Near Amherest, Virginia."

Collection:Eugenics Record Office Records (Mss.Ms.Coll.77)

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Selected papers, [ca. 1819-1863], relating to Benjamin Franklin

Language:English

Date:1830-1846

Contributor:Sparks, Jared, 1789-1866

Subject:Antiquities | Mounds | Portraits

Type:Text

Genre:Diaries

Extent:98 pages

Description: Diary excerpts. Original in Harvard College library. Records interview with follower of Braddock who reports that Washington advised taking Indian aid; reads manuscript introduction to McKenney's contemplated volumes of Indian portraits; finds Albert Gallatin "full of zeal" on collecting Indian languages (1830-1831). Meets with Ephraim G. Squier; suggests he look at additional western mounds (1846).

Collection:Selected papers, [ca. 1819-1863], relating to Benjamin Franklin (Mss.B.Sp25)