Subject and Course Guides: U.S. History After 1865: The West

Online Resources

The American West, 1865-1900 - Library of Congress
Overview of expansion into the American West
American West - Adam Matthew Digital
From early topographical sketches and pioneers’ accounts, to photographs of Buffalo Bill and his ‘Wild West’ stars, explore the fact and the fiction of westward expansion in America from the early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Browse a wide range of rare and original documents including printed books, journals, historic maps, broadsides, periodicals, advertisements, photographs, artwork and more.
The American West - HarpWeek
The West represented opportunity and adventure. Americans were fascinated with the stories which Harper's Weekly brought to life with illustrations. The editorials and commentary describe a life which many readers could barely imagine.
American West Photographs - National Archives
Collection of photographs from the American West
Archiving the American West - Princeton University
Digitized materials from Princeton's collection related to expansion into the American West.
Holt-Atherton Special Collections - University of the Pacific
Materials related to the American West
Mormonism and the West
“Mormonism and the West” consists of PDFs generated from reproductions of original letters, diaries, journals, reminiscences and other records lent to The Huntington during the 1940s and 1950s by descendants of pioneering Mormon families, through the assistance of Mormon historian Juanita Brooks, as well as copies acquired from institutions such as Brigham Young University.
Mountain West Digital Library
Free access to over 1,000,000 resources from a network of universities, colleges, public libraries, museums, historical societies, and government agencies, counties, and municipalities in Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and other parts of the U.S. West.
The West - PBS Documentaries
Explore a selection of the memoirs, journals, letters, reports and images that went into the making of The West:
Westward Expansion -Library of Congress
Materials related to the westward Expansion into the American West.

Databases

America: History and Life (Full-Text) This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing, abstracts, and full-text for U.S. and Canadian historical and cultural literature, from prehistory to present. NOTE: Only 6 simultaneous users allowed.
America: History and Life is a comprehensive source for U.S. and Canadian history and culture, from prehistoric times to the present. The database contains indexing, abstracts, and full-text for over 1,700 journals as well as books, book reviews, theses/dissertations, and film project reviews. A strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including English abstracts of articles published in more than 40 languages. This database is an excellent bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of American history, Canadian history, popular culture, American studies, literature/folklore, genealogy, women's studies/gender studies, multicultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and the history of science. The database corresponds to the print America: History and Life, which is produced by ABC-CLIO. Updated regularly.

NOTE: Only 6 simultaneous users allowed.
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections This link opens in a new window
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections include digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals from the American Antiquarian Society, the premier library documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction. This content is not available for acquisition in digital form from any source other than EBSCO Publishing, and keyword searching is available on all titles.
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collections exists as a series of five databases created from a comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1691 and 1876. These databases include 6,500 titles featuring more than 10 million pages of content from the seventeenth century through the late nineteenth century. The collection also contains titles in more than
two dozen languages including French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and more.
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
A super-index to nineteenth century books, periodical, official documents, newspapers and archives.
C19: The Nineteenth Century is a source for discovering nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. It's a super-index to more than 16 million documents that includes the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, and the British Periodicals. It links to other 19th century full-text sources in the UTA Library's collection such as American Periodical Series Online, Periodicals Archive Online and Palmer's Full-Text Online.
JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
JSTOR (Journal Storage) is an archive collection of over 620 full-text scholarly journals primarily from university presses and professional society publishers. Additional titles are added to the collection as back files are digitized. Subject areas include: African American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Botany, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, Folklore, History, History of Science Technology, Language Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Public Policy Administration, Science, Slavic Studies, Sociology, Statistics.
NINES: Nineteenth-century Scholarship Online This link opens in a new window
NINES contains peer-reviewed scholarly and educational materials dealing with the all aspects of British and American culture during the long nineteenth century (1770-1920).
NINES vets freely-available digital objects in nineteenth-century studies for scholarly integrity and aggregates metadata (or descriptive information) about them in a faceted search-and-browsing interface. The objects themselves are accessible via links to the federated websites that have contributed them.
Included are traditional texts and documents as well as “born-digital” materials. Also there are software tools that aid collation and comparative analysis and enable pedagogical applications.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories This link opens in a new window
This collection includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. In selected cases, users will be able to hear the actual audio voices of the immigrants. The collection will be particularly useful to researchers, because much of the original material is difficult to find, poorly indexed, and unpublished; most bibliographies of the immigrant focus on secondary research; and few oral histories have been published.
This work in progress is composed of the personal narratives of immigrants to North America, including Canada
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
This database includes diaries, journals, and letters written by women visiting or living in North America between the years 1700 and 1950.
This work in progress, when completed, will be the largest collection of women's diaries and correspondence ever assembled and include the personal experiences of 1,500 women from all social classes.
ProQuest Recent Newspapers: The New York Times This link opens in a new window
Full-page images of the New York Times from 2008 to recent (1 month embargo). This digitized newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with cover-to-cover access to recent newspaper content. Every page is full-text searchable.

Secondary Research - In our Collection

Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 by David Montejano
ISBN: 9780292788077
Publication Date: 2010-07-05
Winner, Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization Of American Historians, 1988 American Historical Association, Pacific Branch Book Award, 1989 Texas Institute of Letters Friends Of The Dallas Public Library Award, 1987 Texas Historical Commission T. R. Fehrenbach Award, Best Ethnic, Minority, And Women's History Publication, 1987 A major work on the history of Mexicans in Texas and the relations between Mexicans and Anglos.
Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the United States, 1848-82 by Najia Aarim-Heriot
ISBN: 9780252027758
Publication Date: 2003-01-07
Najia Aarim-Heriot forcefully demonstrates that the anti-Chinese sentiment behind the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is inseparable from the racial double standards applied by mainstream white society toward white and nonwhite groups during the same period. Aarim-Heriot argues that previous studies on American Sinophobia have overemphasized the resentment labor organizations felt toward incoming Chinese workers. As a result, scholars have overlooked the broader ways in which the growing nation sought to define and unify itself through the exclusion and oppression of nonwhite peoples.
The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen
ISBN: 9780300151176
Publication Date: 2009-05-19
This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of Indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches' remarkable impact on the trajectory of history.
The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950 by Susan Schulten
ISBN: 0226740552
Publication Date: 2001-04-01
In this rich and fascinating history, Susan Schulten tells a story of Americans beginning to see the world around them, tracing U.S. attitudes toward world geography from the end of nineteenth-century exploration to the explosion of geographic interest before the dawn of the Cold War. Focusing her examination on four influential institutions--maps and atlases, the National Geographic Society, the American university, and public schools--Schulten provides an engaging study of geography, cartography, and their place in popular culture, politics, and education.
Killing for Coal by Thomas G. Andrews
ISBN: 9780674031012
Publication Date: 2008-10-31
'Killing for Coal' offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the 'Great Coalfield War'. The text illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers' strikes over over the course of nearly half a century.
A Misplaced Massacre by Ari Kelman
ISBN: 0674071034
Publication Date: 2013-02-11
On November 29, 1864, over 150 Native Americans, mostly women, children, and elderly, were slaughtered in one of the most infamous cases of state-sponsored violence in U.S. history. Kelman examines how generations of Americans have struggled with the question of whether the nation's crimes, as well as its achievements, should be memorialized.
Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon
ISBN: 0393029212
Publication Date: 1991-04-01
Argues that the American frontier and city developed together by focusing on Chicago and tracing its roots from Native American habitation to its transformation by white settlement and development.
Revolution in Texas by Benjamin Heber Johnson
ISBN: 0300094256
Publication Date: 2003-10-11
In Revolution in Texas, Benjamin Johnson tells the little-known story of one of the most intense and protracted episodes of racial violence in United States history. In 1915, against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, the uprising that would become known as the Plan de San Diego began with a series of raids by ethnic Mexicans on ranches and railroads. Local violence quickly erupted into a regional rebellion. In response, vigilante groups and the Texas Rangers staged an even bloodier counterinsurgency, culminating in forcible relocations and mass executions. eventually collapsed. But, as Johnson demonstrates, the rebellion resonated for decades in American history. Convinced of the futility of using force to protect themselves against racial discrimination and economic oppression, many Mexican Americans elected to seek protection as American citizens with equal access to rights and protections under the US Constitution.