American Indian and Alaskan Native Documents in the Congressional Serial Set: 1817-1899

The Guide to American Indian Documents in the Congressional Serial Set: 1817-1899 by Steven L. Johnson is a bibliography on the 3rd floor of the OSU Library with the call number 0.163405273 J69g. Listing titles within the United States Serial Set* that relate to Native American tribes, this volume was the basis for the digitization project conducted by the Marilyn Nicely and Steve Beleu at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, American Indian and Alaskan Native Documents in the Congressional Serial Set: 1817-1899. Nicely is a retired Law Librarian for Native Americans from the University of Oklahoma and Beleu is retired from the Oklahoma Department of Libraries as Federal Government Information Specialist.

What is this digitization project all about? 

Available at the University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Commons website, the database is a "collection that offers detailed contemporaneous documentation of political, military, and governmental activities related to the indigenous peoples of the United States and Alaskan territory during the 19th century" and is a subset of the entire Serial Set. The Digital Commons site includes to date about 7,731 out of the 10,949 titles included in the bibliography. The documents have been scanned and are arranged in chronological order and can be found in different categories such as Senate Reports, House of Representative Documents, Senate Documents, maps and illustrations, etc. On the left side of the website, keywords can be typed into the search box to filter the results. Right under the search bar is an option to click on 'advanced search.' Advanced search allows filters by date, abstract, subject, author, institution, title, document type, and publication. In addition, on the left hand side of the home page are additional links to resources related to Native Americans. The website is an excellent resource for reviewing historical documents related to the tribes and for discovering new materials.


*The Serial Set contains the House and Senate Documents and the House and Senate Reports. The reports are usually from congressional committees dealing with proposed legislation and issues under investigation. Documents cover a wide variety of topics and may include reports of executive departments and independent organizations, reports of special investigations made for Congress, and annual reports of non-governmental organizations. (Library of Congress American Memory Project, https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwss.html)