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HIST B36: Native American History: Secondary Sources

This guide can used to find primary and secondary sources on Native American History.

What is a Secondary Source?

A secondary source is a piece of information that was created AFTER a historical event by someone who DID NOT experience the event first-hand or participate in events or conditions you are researching. In historical research, secondary sources are normally scholarly books and journal articles. A magazine article or newspaper article would not be a good secondary source for historical research (in contrast to primary sources, where a newspaper article published during the historical event would count as a primary source). 

Finding Books

The best place to start searching for books about Native American history is in OneSearch, which searches all of our print and ebooks. If you'd like to limit your search to only ebooks, use Academic eBook Collection. You can find links to both below, and below that you'll find some more specific searches within OneSearch.

These links will take you to lists of print books we have at the BC library on these topics.

This link will take you to a search in our eBook collection for Native American history in the 20th century.

Interesting Print Books on Native American History

Using Library Databases

Databases are searchable collections of reliable, vetted resources, like magazines, academic journals, newspapers, and encyclopedias. We pay for access to these resources through subscriptions--like Netflix, but for articles!

  • Vetted= already evaluated or fact-checked

The databases listed below are the best databases for your class.

Interesting Print Books on the History of California & Native Americans

Interesting Print Books on the History of Native American Activism