This collection of miscellaneous papers concerning Indians of North America covers the period 1620 to 1895 and contains a folio volume of historical notes on the English and French settlement of North America, and the "state" of the Indian tribes of North America from 1620 to 1691. The manuscript was apparently written by a Mr. Burnet, who gave it to Thomas Jefferson in 1763, and includes chronological paragraph descriptions of historical events in three parallel columns. In 1982 Daniel Richter, a Daniels fellow at AAS, wrote the following about this folio volume: "The volume, in its broad outlines, presents an unexceptional chronicle of Euro-Indian relations in northeastern North America during the 17th century, which the anonymous author compiled largely from commonplace French and English published works and arranged--not very consistently--in three colums entitled 'English Discoveries & Settlements...'; 'French Discoveries & Settlements...'; and 'State of the Indian Tribes in North America.'" "The bulk of the work is devoted to the period from 1677 to 1691, and it is here that its scholarly value is hidden. Much of the material the author presents for these years is based on the first volume of the records of the Albany Commissioners for Indian Affairs--a book that disappeared in the early 19th century. Minutes of various treaty sessions between the English and the Iroquois and Mahican appear in paraphrases and, in a few cases, full transcriptions. Many of these minutes are either missing entirely or only briefly discussed in the published works that scholars have used to replace the lost Albany records (Colden's _History of the Five Indian Nations_, Wraxall's _Abridgement of the New York Indian Records_, the two O'Callaghan documentary collections, and Leder, ed., _The Livingston Indian Records_). The accounts of treaty sessions from the late 1670s and early 1680s are particularly enlightening on the early evolution of the 'Covenant Chain' relationship between the Iroquis and the colonies of New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Maryland. The volume seems to have been compiled between 1703 and 1727--there are several references in the text to Lahontan's New Voyages to North America, which appeared in English in 1703, but none to the very relevant Colden, _History of the Five Indian Nations_, which was published in New York in 1727." Also included in this collection are seven folders of miscellaneous papers including the following: a folder of miscellaneous documents from 1652 to 1895, such as deeds, a petition for settlement of a boundary line for the Penobscot Tribe in Mass., correspondence from South Dakota Indians to agent Charles G. Penney requesting aid, a few accounts, and miscellaneous historical notes; a folder of extracts from Indian speeches, delivered from 1700 to 1810 by various Indian chiefs at various places, sometimes pledging loyalty, sometimes expressing disdain (also included is a 1777 speech by Burgoyne asking for Indian loyalty to the King); a folder of accounts of Jasper Parrish (1767-1836), an agent to the Six Nations of Indians, covering the period 1817 to 1828, and including receipts and acknowledgements of government payments to Indians; a folder of papers on Indian languages, from 1818 to 1891, including English-Indian dictionaries of dialects of many Indian tribes; a folder of 1825 papers of Wilkins Tannehill (1787-1858) concerning Indian monuments of Tennessee and Alabama; a folder of papers on land claims in Alaska, from 1887 to 1889, including settlement of Annette Island at Metlakatla by Indians removed from Nova Scotia; and a folder containing a typescript copy of an 1889 report of the Associate Justices of the Superior Court of Massachusetts concerning money owed to Indians in Dudley, Mass.
