Summary | Significance and Scope of the Documents | Importance of Digital Access | Cultural Sensitivity Issues | Selection of Materials |

Summary

In 1999 the University of Georgia Libraries, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville Library, the Frank H. McClung Museum and the Tennessee State Library and Archives were awarded a National Leadership Grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to digitize 1,000 original documents and visual images relating to the Native American populations of the Southeastern United States. In September 2000, the University of Georgia Libraries and the University of Tennessee Library were awarded a second grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to continue work on the Southeastern Native American Documents database. An additional 1,000 original documents have been digitized, bringing the total number of items in the database to around 2,000 and extending its date coverage to 1730s-1870s. Among the additional documents are those selected from the holdings of two new institutional partners, the Tennessee State Museum and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Although these collections primarily focus on the Cherokees and Creeks, other groups, such as the Seminoles, Chickasaws and Choctaws are also represented. Individually, most documents are relatively brief, from one to ten pages in length, but when combined they form a rich corpus capable of supporting any level of research or educational outreach. The original documents reside in many separate manuscript collections within the participating institutions, but as digital entities they have been brought together into a single electronic collection. Work on this project began in November 1999, and the final product is the Southeastern Native American Documents database containing facsimile images and transcribed texts, individually cataloged and full-text searchable, made available within the Digital Library of Georgia, a component of GALILEO (GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online), the World Wide Web-based server sponsored by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, available to the public at www.galileo.usg.edu .

Significance and Scope of the Documents

The importance of native tribes in the early history of America has been universally acknowledged, but primary sources remain scarce, especially for students below the college level and for the general public. The documents in this database can communicate to the modern reader how Native Americans viewed the European settlers as fellow human beings, both positively and negatively, from the first contacts to the point when the native peoples were forcibly removed from their lands. Conversely, these documents also reveal how Europeans perceived Native Americans during the same era. They provide insight into the everyday life and social structure of southeastern communities.

Documents selected for this project include formal treaties between American powers and tribal representatives, letters documenting the negotiation of treaties, Native American law codes, and other sources that testify to the richness and continued viability of Native American culture even as it was encroached upon and eroded by European settlement. Images from the McClung Museum's Tellico Reservoir Archaeology Project collection provide an archaeological record of Cherokee town sites in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Journals and correspondences reveal how eighteenth and nineteenth century whites related to southeastern native peoples, depicting tenuous bonds and strategic alliances.

Because of its geographical limitations, this is not a definitive Native American collection; no such collection currently exists, and to create one would require the participation of numerous repositories throughout the country. However, this database does represent the most comprehensive digital collection to date of primary source materials relating to this region and to the Native American tribes who inhabited it in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Importance of Digital Access

The early history of Native Americans in the Southeast, as in most of America, is a story of voices falling silent. At times the silencing was sudden and violent, as in the forced migration known as the Trail of Tears that tore so many people from their homes forever. It also proceeded more subtly, as when native languages lost their last speakers. The silence can persist even in carefully preserved historical documents when wide public access to them is lacking.

The organization of many manuscript collections, while faithful to the principle of provenance, is often at odds with the needs of scholars, who pursue subject themes that can range across many collections. The Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Georgia, for example, houses a rich store of materials documenting the early history of Native Americans in Georgia, yet no single collection is the source of this wealth. Because they are dispersed throughout the holdings of this library as well as others, documents concerning Native Americans are as scattered as the native authors who produced them. Traditional collection descriptions and finding aids are not available for all collections and have limited value for identifying subjects covered in individual documents. Even when identified, many of these documents are available only in their original form, and access is limited due to the age, value and condition of these materials.

Digital technology can resurrect Native American voices by creating a new, virtual collection of Native American documents and revolutionizing access to these materials. Users do not have to travel to the particular university or museum to view them; vulnerable originals do not need to be handled; and multiple users, including entire classes of students, can examine the same document simultaneously.

Cultural Sensitivity Issues

The documents in this database reveal the rich variety of relations between Native Americans and European settlers in the early American Southeast. Nevertheless, the story of interactions between natives and whites is also one of undeniable harshness and bitter losses on the Native American side. While it is of great importance to allow primary source materials to speak for themselves in documenting this dark era, many of them contain opinions of the times concerning Native Americans that could be offensive or hurtful if presented devoid of context. As creators of the database we emphasize that material that is disrespectful of Native Americans does not represent our viewpoint or that of our institutional sponsors.

Selection of Materials

The documents and images included in this database were identified and selected by the curators, scholars and staff members in the participating institutions who were most familiar with their significance and previous use. While some documents were obvious choices, many more have emerged through the detailed and systematic examination of many different manuscript collections. All documents are in the public domain, free from copyright restrictions, and represent no infringement upon the privacy of any contemporary individual.