The TimesMachine Returns, Universal Rejoicing

Note: This post was originally made on February 25, 2008. Then within a few days, the resource disappeared. Just today I noticed that the TimesMachine is back so I am reposting this. Enjoy!


Never mind that whole thinly-sourced-story-about-McCain-
and-the-blond-lobbyist thing. The New York Times has just redeemed itself, by introducing the TimesMachine. "TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel."

The Times opened its archives a few months ago, apparently deciding that the potential revenue from click ads would outweigh the loss of access fees to the old Times Select system. The Times archives are a magnificent resource, but the search and navigation features left a lot to be desired. and the articles were served up one at a time. The reader never got the heady sense of exploring a historic newspaper that one gets from rolling the microfilm in the library. (Of course, microfilm is not key word searchable . . . ) TimesMachine presents the newspapers they way they were meant to be read, as a unified whole. It also makes it easier to put events in context.

(Oooops--TimesMachine seems to be down right now, I will post this anyway and perhaps return later to flesh out the post with some specific PNW content.)

UPDATE: It is gone!
I can't find out what happened to TimesMachine, but I am guessing it was just overwhelmed by users and the Times took it off line. Here is hoping that the service will return soon.

Online Historical Images Roundup from the ACRL

The newsletter of the Association of College and Research Libraries this month offers a terrific roundup of websites with deep collections of historical primary source images online. Relevant to PNW history are the Alaska Digital Archives, the University of Washington Digital Collections, and Calisphere ("a free online collection of more than 150,000 digitized primary materials contributed by libraries, archives, and museums from all over California"). It is from Calisphere we get the image below, "Bridge over Spokane River, downtown Spokane, Washington" [undated].

Echoes of Oregon History Learning Guide

The Oregon State Archives has a neat set of primary documents for teachers: the Echoes of Oregon History Learning Guide. The focus here is on short, exciting primary documents from the early history of Oregon. We get the text of each document, a high-quality scan, a paragraph or two putting the source in context and some questions relating to the document. For classroom teachers these are ready to go. Among the goodies are an 1858 Divorce petition, an 1857 Request to open Indian lands, and the 1854 Petition for Thomas family to stay in Oregon (they were a black family threatened with expulsion by Oregon's racist exclusion laws). My favorite document here is this 1851 Defendant's request, Whitman massacre trial:

The United States vs Telokite et al

Telokite one of the defendants makes oath that a certain Indian named Quishem now in the Cayuse country he thinks will be a material witness for the defendants in this case. That the materiality of said witness was not known in time to have him in attendance at this term of the court. He expects & believes that said witness will prove that the late Dr Whitman administered medi-cines to may of the Cayuse Indians and that afterwards a large number of them died, including amongst them the wives and children of some of these defendants. He expects further to prove by said witness that a certain Joseph Lewis, who resided at Waiilatpu informed these defendants a few days before the 29 November 1847 that the Cayuse Indians were dying in consequence of poison being administered to them by the late Marcus Whitman and he had heard Dr. Whitman say that he would kill off all of the Cayuse Indians by the coming of the ensuing spring-that he would then have their horses and lands. Witness will also prove it is the law of the Cayuse Indians to kill bad medicine men.

This is a rare glimpse into the legal system of the native inhabitants of the region and how they understood the Whitman tragedy. Of course it hardly need to be said that the request was denied. Here is the trial verdict.

Champlain Collection

Champlain Collection: "The collection contains eighty-three of the Champlain Society's most important volumes (over 41,000 printed pages) dealing with exploration and discovery over three centuries. It includes first-hand accounts of Samuel de Champlain's voyages in New France as well as the diary from Sir John Franklin's first land expedition to the Arctic, 1819-22."

There are some important sources for early PNW history here, including the narratives of Gabriel Franchére, George Simpson, and David Thompson. And the collections are searchable across the volumes. Just as a quick example of the riches in the Champlain Collection, here is this 1843 letter from Archibald McKinlay at Fort Nez Perces, reflecting on the American invasion of the northwest that was just beginning to arrive via the Oregon Trail:


"Although the Columbia is becoming quite a stirring place I do not know of much news that might be interesting to you[.] Americans are getting thick as Mosquettoes in this part of the world-- A party of about 300 individuals, Men, women, & children came up from the States last year for the Willamette and a much greater number are expected ensuing season.-- That Colony in increasing very fast and Yankee industry will I have no doubt make it a very thriving settlement ere long.--"

And also the following, from the journals of Alexander Henry, concerning the death of a slave woman who was held by the Chinooks and sold to service white traders and Indian men alike in the early 19th century. I used the quote in an article about native women and exploration that I never managed to publish. I think it is the most sad thing I ever read:

"Mr Franchere went down to desire Calpoh's family to come and remove the body of their deceased Slave Girl, and bury it, least the Hogs might devour it. They did so accordingly, but removed it in a most barbarous Savage manner, by dragging it down to the water, by fastening a cord about the neck, and perfectly naked, and towed it along the beach for some distance, where they squeezed the body in a Hole, pushed it down with a Paddle, and covered it over witht he Stones and Dirt. The Body was in a most wretched state of the last Stage of Venereal, black and Swollen and not the least care taken to conceal the parts from bystanders."

Researching the PNW by way of California

"California as I Saw It:" First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 is one of the topical collections from the Library of Congress' American Memory site. Northwest historians know that the early histories of California and the Oregon Country were intimately connected. The wagon trail west from Missouri was the California-Oregon trail until the paths parted ways in Missouri. The California Gold Rush drained off much of the white population of the fledgling Oregon Territory, and when the gold didn't pan out many a failed California miner found his way to Oregon.

So it is no surprise that "California as I Saw It" has a substantial amount of Northwest material. A search for "Oregon" under the descriptive information box reveals 11 documents, including The Gold Seekers of '49 by Kimball Webster, a New England forty-niner who ended up a surveyor in Oregon, and Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer by Peter H. Burnett, an important figure in the government of early Oregon. A full text search turns up an even 1oo references to Oregon throughout the collection.

I was going to analyze one of those references here--and amazing and perhaps unlikely story about an elderly Klamath man. But the tale deserves a post of its own.

(By the way, the "special presentation" Early California History: An Overview offers a decent thumbnail history of the state.)

Chronicling America

Chronicling America: "Chronicling America . . . allows you to search and read newspaper pages from 1900-1910 and find information about merican newspapers published between 1690-present." This beta site from the Library of Congress digitizes selected newspapers from California, District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, and Virginia and only for the first decade of the 20th century. At 100,000 pages for each state, the site holds three-quarters of a million pages of historic newspapers.

Chronicling America is exactly what the future of newspaper digitization should look like. It has a reasonably sophisticated search engine, allowing Boolean as well as keyword searching and searches for two words within 5 words of one another. Newspaper pages may be viewed in text (!) down loadable image, or PDF format. The site is responsive and search results and newspaper pages load briskly.

Unfortunately no Northwest newspapers are digitized as yet (unless we want to include San Francisco--do we?). However many northwest events may be investigated through the site--I got hits with such search terms as Chief Joseph, Edward Curtis, Spokane, and many others. To the left is one such story from the May 19, 1902 issue of The San Francisco Call about a threatening gold rush on the Spokane Reservation.

::: American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Collection :::

::: American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Collection :::: "This site provides an extensive digital collection of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures, complemented by essays written by anthropologists, historians, and teachers about both particular tribes and cross-cultural topics. These cultures have occupied, and in some cases still live in parts of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Maps are available that show traditional territories or reservation boundaries."

The maps and pictures at this site are amazing, but best of all are the nine essays on Northwest Indians by scholars like Jay Miller and Deward Walker. They are excellent introductions to their topics and could also serve as lecture fodder. There is also a collection of documents, mostly government reports.

Segregated Seattle

Segregated Seattle: "For most of its history Seattle was a segregated city, as committed to white supremacy as any location in America . . . This special section presents research that will surprise many Pacific Northwesterners. "

Segregated Seattle is part of The University of Washington's Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. Created and maintained in part by students and members of the community, it is both a valuable historical resource and a nice example of collaborative teaching and community outreach using digital technology. The student Research Reports are quite good--see for example Nicole Grant's "Challenging Sexism at City Light: The Electrical Trades Trainee Program" and Heather McKimmie's "Quileute Independent and Quileute Chieftain, 1908-1910." The rich site also contains short films and slideshows, Activist Oral Histories, and a page where you can browse the site by time period or topic. There is much more--take a look!

I am going to begin teaching my seminars and perhaps select upper-level courses this way. The trick will be to come up with the website and some basic templates before the course begins. I tried something like this last year, adopting the ideas in Michael Lewis' 2004 Environmental History article "Reflections: 'This Class Will Write a Book': An Experiment in Environmental History Pedagogy" to my own environmental history class. It was a mixed success--the course was small (5 students) and lacked the critical mass to develop much momentum. I am teaching Introduction to Local History in the spring and will try again.

Indian Claims Commission Decisions

Oklahoma State University has put the entire Indian Claims Commission Decisions online. The ICC was established in 1946 by Congress to investigate the claims of Indian tribes against the United States. Tribes had five years to file claims that their treaty rights had been violated. The ICC would recommend compensation if appropriate, and the whole process would wrap up in ten years.

The actual process proved much more difficult and controversial than anticipated, taking until 1978 to be completed. The government paid out a total of $800 million dollars in 285 cases.

The reports, filled with expert testimony from historians, anthropologists, and native elders are a historical treasure trove. This digization makes the 43 bulky volumes keyword searchable and far easier to use than in the past. Many northwest peoples are represented in the collections, and some fun searches include "Chief Joseph" "Chief Moses" and "Spokane Garry."

The Google-powered search software is sophisticated. A search for Kamiakin brings zero results, but does prompt the message "Did you mean kamaiakun?" since that is the spelling used in the ICC records. On the other hand the optical character recognition leaves much to be desired. For example:

Original Sentence: "Chief Joseph and his followers did, in fact, move onto the Colville Reservation and the members of his band or the descendents thereof continued to reside on the reservation until the present date."

OCR Transcription: "Chief Moses and h i s followers did, in fact, Eove cnto the Colville Reservation 2nd tke meribers of h i s band or the descendmts thereof have c ~ n t ~ u etod r eside on t h a t reservation
- until the Fres at date."

Fortunately the default display is not this OCR text but an easily-legible PDF of the original page. As with other PDFs you can print or save each document.