The American Antiquarian Society has built strong collections of books and pamphlets relating to Indigenous peoples in what is now the United States and Canada from the 16th through the 19th centuries.
The Society's comprehensive holdings on European encounters with Indigenous peoples in eastern North America are augmented by a collection of works on the American West. Other resources include U.S. government documents and treaties since 1814.
Collections include mission press imprints in various languages as well as missionary reports, images of Indigenous peoples and and captivity narratives created by colonizers.
Featured Online Exhibitions
Reclaiming Heritage: Digitizing Early Nipmuc Histories from Colonial Documents effectively creates a digital archive of several Algonquian-language printed books and pamphlets, or wussukwhonk as they are called in the Nipmuc language, chosen for the value they add to current language reclamation work taking place in Nipmuc country.
From English to Algonquian: Early New England Translations explores the contributions of those who labored in translating and printing works in the Algonquian family of native languages.
Additional resources:
Our Beloved Kin: Remapping A New History of King Philip's War
Lisa Brooks, AAS member and fellow, created this website as a digital companion to her book Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (Yale University Press. 2019), winner of the 2019 Bancroft Prize.
Pakachoag - Where the River Bends (Fall 2020)
This video explores sites of Nipmuc life before, during, and after colonial contact around the area of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Cheryll Toney Holley, Leader of the Hassanamisco Band in the Nipmuc Nation, provides an introduction and commentary. AAS member Thomas Doughton, Senior Lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Holy Cross, and Colin Novick, Executive Director of the Greater Worcester Land Trust, narrate. Images from AAS collections are included.