Histories of the American West at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

Every collection that addresses the histories of the American West is rife with settler colonial narratives, and the Clark Library’s collection is no exception. The collection has racist ethnographic studies of Indigenous life by white Americans; popular nonfiction about relationships between white Americans and Indigenous people; and falsified and prejudiced narratives about Indigenous responses to American brutality and settler colonialism. These books were greatly desired in the 19th and early 20th centuries because American readers in and beyond the American West could foray into fictitious versions of Indigenous life without leaving their homes.

Collection materials include:

• Adventures with Indians and game, or Twenty years in the Rocky Mountains (1903): An autobiography by William Alonzo Allen (1848–1944), also known as “Montana Allen.” He co-founded Billings, Montana, and embodied the public image of a Western pioneer.

• Belden, the white chief: or, twelve years among the wild Indians of the plains (1870): From the diaries and manuscripts of George Pfauts Belden (1844?–1871), edited by General James S. Brisbin (1837–1892). 

• Indian horrors: or, Massacres by the Red men (1891): A violent and violating look into Indigenous life, including descriptions of Sitting Bull (1831–1890), the Hunkpapa Lakota leader; Apache, Kiowa, Nez Perce, Ute, Cheyenne, and Comanche tribes; ghost dances; and medicine men by Henry Davenport Northrop (1836–1909), a reverend known for his racist tomes. 

• The Indian races of North and South America (1864): An extensive ethnographic account of Indigenous life in the Americas, including descriptions of communities in Mexico, Florida, Virginia, New England, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Chile, and Brazil by Charles De Wolf Brownell (1822–1909), an American landscape and still life painter, and J.T. Headley (1813–1897), an American clergyman and author. The text is written from the perspective of settler colonial actors.

To find printed books, pictorial works, and manuscripts go to UC Library Search. Click on “Advanced Search,” select the “Subject” field, and type either “Indians,” “Peuples autochtones – Guerres –  États-Unis,” “Indians of North America,” “Frontier and pioneer life,” or “West (U.S.) – Description and travel.” To search for works by specific figures, select the “Author” field, and type “Northrop, Henry Davenport, 1836–1909,” for example. You can also do a keyword search either in the simple search or in the “Any field” field of the “Advanced Search.” Once you have search results, you can limit to the Clark Library by selecting it from the “UCLA Locations” facet.