Visual Sources

Visual materials, i.e., drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, films, videos, etc. are to be found in many Harvard libraries. Records for many, but by no means all, individual Harvard University Library images are available in HOLLIS Images, an online catalog of images. Records are also included in HOLLIS Library Catalog, but HOLLIS Images offers better viewing options.

Explore over 18,000 Photographs from the Bureau of Indian Affairs --  National Archives Catalog records

Edward S. Curtis's "The North American Indian"

American Indian histories and cultures. [Art], 1565-1922 1830-1909. 
--Select Art from Document Type list
--Offers art works from the Edward E. Ayer Collection in the Newberry Library. The art works represented within the resource include oil portraits by Elbridge Burbank of prominent figures such as Geronimo, Simon Pokagon and Red Cloud. There are significant collections of sketches, paintings and illustrations by Frederick Catherwood, George Catlin, Karl Bodmer and Frederic de Waldeck, including portraits, images of Aztec and Mayan ruins, buffalo and North American landscapes. The collection also includes native artwork such as the Black Horse ledger, the Wadsworth ledger book, Hawgone’s drawings and Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts.
HOLLIS Record includes names of artists represented

American Indian histories and cultures. [Maps], 1500-1911 1720-1900
Select Map from Document Type list
Offers maps from the Edward E. Ayer Collection in the Newberry Library. Maps covering the United States, Canada, Mexico and wider Central America, South America and the Caribbean are included in the resource. Along with maps from early colonial expeditions and colonial territories, there are plans of forts, cities and towns, maps of individual states and significant areas for the fur trade and transportation networks. The maps cover a variety of themes, including: military, missionaries, Overland Trails, railroads, rivers, trade. The collection includes Cortes’ map of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), and maps produced by the Office of Indian Affairs, Pratte Chouteau and Company, and the American Fur Company.

American Indian histories and cultures. [Photographs], 1862-1985 1889-1920.
Select Photograph from Document Type list
Summary : Electronic reproduction of photographs selected from the Edward E. Ayer Collection in the Newberry Library. The collections include photographs of individuals and groups (both American Indian and European Americans), landscapes and settlements through Mexico, United States and Canada. Among the significant collections are the Seeing Indian Exhibition and BIA Relocation records, images of the pueblo of Taos in New Mexico by W.H. Jackson, stylistic portraits by Emma Freeman and works by Christopher C. Augur, E.A. Burbank, D.F. Barry and Elmo Scott Watson. There are photographs of individuals such as Sitting Bull, Buffalo Bill and Red Cloud, as well as numerous photographs of the students and buildings of Indian boarding schools, including the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The photographs document the activities of the Office of Indian Affairs and later Bureau of Indian Affairs.
HOLLIS Record includes names of photographers and subjects represented

Photographing the American Indian: Portraits of Native Americans, 1860-1913, from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society

Indians; the great photographs that reveal North American Indian life, 1847-1929, from the unique collection of the Smithsonian Institution, by Joanna Cohan Scherer, with Jean Burton Walker. New York, Crown Publishers, 1973, 189 p.
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive full text

Indian images: photographs of North American Indians, 1847-1928, from the Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives. Exhibition July-August, 1970, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Catalog by Joanna Cohan Scherer. Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press; 1970 [i.e. 1971], 31 p.
HOLLIS Record
Internet Archive full text

Great Plains Indian illustration index, by John Van Balen. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland, 2004, 399 p.
HOLLIS Catalog
--Index to photographs, drawings, maps and other illustrative materials that appear in selected books about Native Americans published within the last 75 years. Includes over 1,200 biographical references. Tribes covered include Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Omaha, Pawnee, Sioux, and Winnebago, and others.
 

Biography

Thomas McKenney  --  Charles Bird King  --  Henry Inman

Many more biographies are also available in the American National Biography Online.    For additional biographical sources. 

Search in Government Publications

You can search full text in these government publications (and much else) by going to Advanced Full Text Search in HathiTrust, adjusting the second search box to title, and putting your full text keywords in the top box.  Phrases work best.

Annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
HathiTrust Version 1824-1831
HathiTrust Version 1824-1830, 1836-1908  (1st in list 1809/1870) is really just 1870
ProQuest Version 1830-1845

Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.
HathiTrust Version

Contemporary Magazine Articles

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection (1691-1877)

American Periodicals (1740-1900) offers full text of about 1100 American periodicals. In cases where a periodical started before 1900 coverage is included until 1940.

Index to 19th-century American art periodicals

Modern Articles on the Artists and Portraits

International Bibliography of Art (2008- ) covers European and American art from late antiquity to the present. Includes citations to periodical articles, book content, conference proceedings, dissertations, and exhibition catalogs. Very comprehensive. Continues: Bibliography of the history of art (1975-2007) .

ArtBibliographies Modern contains abstracts of journal articles, books, essays, exhibition catalogs, dissertations, and exhibition reviews. Covers Impressionism in the (late 19th century) - late 20th century. Photography is covered from its invention in 1839 to the present.

Art Full Text (1984– ) offers worldwide coverage of art and architecture periodicals. Selected full-text coverage, 1997- . Indexes reproductions of works of art appearing in periodicals. Continues: Art Index Retrospective (1929-1984).

Frick Art Reference Library periodicals index

History of the Indian tribes of North America

History of the Indian tribes of North America: with biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs ; embellished with one hundred and twenty portraits from the Indian Gallery in the Department of War at Washington, by Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall.
HathiTrust Version