Primary Sources: The American West: Visual & Fine Arts

Includes two letters and a photograph among other items.

View works by Bierstadt online.

"Through the Autry’s unique collection, we enrich the public’s understanding of the historical and contemporary American West and the diversity of the indigenous cultures across the Americas. Protecting and preserving our collection for future generations is one of our greatest responsibilities. With more than 600,000 objects and cultural materials, our collection contains art, firearms, saddles, Hollywood Western memorabilia, and Native American baskets, ceramics, jewelry, and textiles animating the following themes:

California History
Native America
Environment and Western Resources
Ranching and Cowboys
Archaeology and Anthropology
Popular Culture"

"The Chinese in California, 1850-1925 illustrates nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese immigration to California through about 8,000 images and pages of primary source materials. Included are photographs, original art, cartoons and other illustrations; letters, excerpts from diaries, business records, and legal documents; as well as pamphlets, broadsides, speeches, sheet music, and other printed matter." Some materials are available online.

"Photographs depicting the culture of the American West largely between 1905 and 1910. The collection includes images of cowboys, cattle, horses, and ranching culture. These items are drawn from a larger collection of tangible materials held by UNT Special Collections."

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Four letters (1827-1870) written by George Catlin regarding his works and U.S. Indian policy. Catlin accepts a commission (1827) from William L. Stone, who later (1830-1839) published Catlin's ""Notes of eight years travel amongst the North American Indians"" in his New York Commercial Advertiser. Responding to Benjamin Silliman (1841), Catlin defends his conclusions regarding the pipe stone quarry and forwards a copy of his new ""Letters and notes on the manners... of the North American Indians,"" which contained his observations on the subject. Catlin also offers (1844?) to sell his ""Album,"" presumably ""Catlin's North American Indian portfolio,"" for the reduced price of thirty pounds. Writing many years later to a Professor Harper, Catlin condemns the Jan., 1870, Piegan or Marias Massacre and the Indian policy of the U.S. military as revealed in a Mar., 1870, letter of Gen. P.H. Sheridan."

"The George Catlin collection consists of roughly 252 unbound illustrations of Indians in both North and South America, by artist George Catlin, and other items all related to Catlin’s unpublished manuscript The North Americans in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century."

"Artwork is an integral part of the Western History collection, with works dating from the mid-1800s to the present. The collection includes over 1,500 original works of art (sculptures, paintings, drawings) and over 2,500 prints (etchings, engravings, lithographs and posters)."

"A joint project of the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, The William F. Cody Archive provides an invaluable record of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century American national development. Through this digital archive and its associated texts, researchers and visitors have an unequaled opportunity to see, through the eyes of Buffalo Bill, the expansion and growth of the American West."