Immigration of Native Americans…

This website from the Library of Congress is devoted to immigration of most cultures found in America, including Native Americans. On the left hand side the observer clicks on a photo of whatever nationality they want to view and this brings them to the part of this site for that nationality. In the Native American section there are 11 pages that include pictures, maps, and information on Native Americans from the 1700s to present day. But within these 11 pages there are also links to other sites that give more detail on information written in this website. One interesting aspect of this site is a found under the vocabulary section, where the observer can play a game to try and find locations in the United States labeled by Native American names. Not only does this game give you information on how Native Americans named things it also tests the observer’s knowledge of the 50 states. Additionally, on the right hand side of this site is a timeline from 1770- 2005 where the observer can click on a year and a fact from that year pops up on the top of the webpage. One thing to be cautious when using this website is the top tool bar. This tool bar is for the entire immigrantion website and takes the observer away from viewing information on a specific nationality. While this tool bar does contain interesting information of recipes, interviews and teaching resources for all nationalities it is categorized by region instead of nationality so it can be hard to determine which aspects are for which nationality for some regions.

The American West Resource Guide

This website is fully devoted to everything and anything that deals with the American west. The contents of this site range from the frontier days of the west to today’s Modern West. The website contains one page exclusively for westwards expansion and one page exclusively on Native Americans. While this website does not have many original postings it is filled with numerous links to other websites. Even though, this website seems to be mostly a resource to find other websites it is linked to by many websites, such as, ed technology websites of many universities and besthistorysites.net.

Native American Resources Web blog

This is a collection of blogs posted by various people relating to Native Americans. This blog site is very current and updates at least once a week. The blogs include specific facts and reactions to current events, reactions and information on Native American memorials, monuments and historical landmarks. Additionally, there are posting on new recommended websites, books, videos, upcoming shows, etc relating to Native Americans. These blogs are good because they portray the role of Native Americans in society today. Additionally, from reading these blogs the reader can learn about different ways people perceive the Native Americans today. One thing that would make this site more user friendly would be to categorize the links instead of only displaying the 10 most recent posts prior to the blog the reader is currently reading.

Drawing the Western Frontier: The James E. Taylor Album

This photographic album found within the Smithsonian website from their National Anthropological Archives contains photographs taken by James E. Taylor in the second half of the 19th century. The album contains 1,109 drawings, photographs, newspaper dipping and letters, but this website only displays 748 of those items. On the website there are four main pages that give information on the era and the importance of this album intermixed with some of Taylor’s photographs. Additionally, throughout these four pages there a couple of links to the rest of Taylor photographs. Within every picture the observer is able to enlarge it to not only view it in more detail, but see the notes written on the edges and see the blurb newspapers included along with the photo if the image was printed in a newspaper. Unfortunately, the written aspects are hard to read and it would have been better if on the website the observer could enlarge the photograph even more. A second fault of this website is that there is only one link to view the online catalog of all 748 displayed items and this link could easily be missed. Therefore, this website creator has pretty much decided for the observer which images are the most important of the 748 that can be accessed. Overall, even with these few faults this is a great site with a variety of photographs reflecting White - Native Americans relations in the Western Frontier post-civil war.

PBS series "THE WEST"

This website is based off of an eight-part documentary series, “THE WEST” which premiered on PBS in 1996. The multimedia tour is split up into seven sections titled, the program, people, places, events, resources, lesson plans and quizzes which progress chronologically by the episodes in the series. The program section gives information about the actual TV series. The people section contains a huge biographical dictionary of both Native Americans and how western expansion affected them and there tribes, along with many commonly known and many unknown white men who appeared in the show. The places section is very interactive and allows the observer to click on a state then view a detailed archival map from the 1860s-1880s that shows natural features of the region, trails used by whites and trails/settlement of Native Americans. Unfortunately, while this section does include some pictures representing the time period, more non-map pictures would be useful to the viewer. The events section contains a detailed timeline from pre 1500 to 1917. The resource section, probably the best part of this site, provides a library of primary source material on the history of the American West including full texts of many memoirs, journals, diaries, letters, autobiographies, archival photographs, and other documents/images found during the five years’ research that went into the production of “THE WEST”. The last two sections are useful to someone looking at this site from a teaching prospective because the site includes lesson plans and quizzes. Overall, this is a great detailed site, but it is very broad so if you are trying to only focus on one aspect of Western expansion, such as, its impact on Native Americans, a lot of exploration of this site is necessary to determine what sections and documents are important.

Battlefield Vietnam

This website was produced by PBS as companion to the film Battlefield: Vietnam. The website has a timeline, links to other websites, and background history. It needs more pictures!