Genealogy


Native American Resources

Nationwide: The Heritage Center has a number of useful finding aids for those wishing to establish Native American lineage. It has the Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, with index; a number of microfilm reels containing Dawes Commission applications to the Five Civilized Tribes, 1898-1914; the Index to the Guion-Miller (Eastern Cherokee) Rolls, 1909; and Cherokee by Blood, vols. 1-9, which abstracts much of the information found in the Dawes Commission applications. Researchers should note that much of this information is now available online, through the National Archives' Archival Records Catalog (ARC).

The Access Genealogy Native American Genealogy Web site contains state-by-state listings of online resources devoted to Native Americans, and a large group of searchable tribal rolls.
Other general Native American genealogy Web sites worth reviewing include:

Bureau of Indian Affairs Webpage
Index of Native American Genealogy on the World Wide Web
Links to American Indian Sites
Native American Studies Collection: (extensive bibliographical resource)
NativeWeb Resources
Tulsa City-County Library: Has a genealogy page with especially helpful Native American searching guidelines.

California: The Heritage Center has special censuses of California Indians for 1907-1915, 1928 and 1933, along with microfilmed records of the Sherman Institute (Riverside, California), an Indian educational facility; and the Finding Guide to the California Indian Library Collections (vols. 1-8, with 3 vols. devoted to Fresno County).

Fresno County's major tribal groups, during the prehistoric period and today, are the Yokuts and Monache (Mono). Some of the more useful online resources for the groups are listed below. The Room also has copies of the major printed references to Native Americans in Fresno County, including:
Frank F. Latta's Handbook of Yokuts Indians (Exexter/Salinas: Brewer's Historical Press/Coyote Press, 1999);
A.L. Kroeber's Handbook of the Indians of California (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1925); and the
Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8, California, edited by Robert F. Heizer (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978).

 Early California Population Project (searchable vital records from the California missions, 1769-1850)

A roster of all federally-recognized Indian tribes in California is available.

The Phoebe Apperson Hearst museum at the University of California, Berkeley, has pictures and information on various Yokuts and Mono artifacts. The Buena Vista Museum of Natural History also has interesting Yokuts material.

Sub-tribal units of the Yokuts--the Chukchansi and Tachi --maintain Web sites containing cultural and historical information.

The Madera County residents listed in the 1928 special census may be found on the Madera County GenWeb, and the Room has an abstract of Fresno County residents listed in the 1933 census.