Vanished Worlds, Enduring People

This online exhibition was first published in 2005 by Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. It accompanied and featured content from a physical exhibition of rare materials displayed in Cornell University’s Carl A. Kroch Library from October 21, 2005 to June 2, 2006. Cornell University Library archived the original version of the online exhibition in 2024 to preserve its earlier design. This version maintains access to the original images and text within an updated website.

Cornell University Library is honored to provide a home for the Huntington Free Library’s Native American Collection, transferred to Cornell University on June 15, 2004 from its former home in the Bronx, New York. With more than 40,000 volumes and thousands of manuscripts on the aboriginal peoples of the western hemisphere, the Native American Collection is the centerpiece of Cornell University Library’s extensive holdings on American Indians. Its wide-ranging array of documents support the study of multiple topics relating to indigenous peoples, from the pre-contact era to the present day, and spanning the hemisphere from the Arctic circle to the southern tip of South America.

Vanished Worlds, Enduring People was the first public exhibition of the collection at Cornell. It highlights the great range and depth of the Native American Collection and reaffirms Cornell’s commitment to dialogue and learning centered on native cultures.

Note: Ethnonyms in this exhibition preserve the words used in the texts themselves. As a way of recognizing that Europeans sometimes corrupted the tribal names they heard and that usage changes over time, label text also includes, between parentheses, names that native people use to identify themselves today, e.g., Delaware (Lenni Lenape).