Indian Treaty

By cryptoref on Wed, 09/14/2022 - 15:49

Forums

I need to cite an Indian Treaty in a discussion regarding when land records become available. I'm in the middle of Alabama in 1814 and need to cite Andrew Jackson's huge land grab after the Creek war. Really interesting is that NARA has the actual treaty images online. 

Ratified Indian Treaty 61: Creek – Fort Jackson, August 9, 1814; Indian Treaties, 1789-1869 (NARA microfilm M668); Record Group 11: General Records of the United States Government, 1778-2006; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; imaged at National Archives (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/183393123 : accessed 14 September 2022 ).

I used 

IMAGE COPIES: NARA MICROFILM  NARA STYLE CITATION QuickCheck model as the base for the citation. 

Being pedantic I was wondering if there needed to be another layer for when Congress ratified the treaty. I don't think so, but I thought it was an interesting question.

Submitted byEEon Wed, 09/14/2022 - 18:44

Hello, Cryptoref:

Let's go back to basics for a moment. The most fundamental thing of all, citation-wise, is this: We cite what we use. 

Are you using microfilm? No. You’re using a website. More specifically, you’re viewing one isolated document taken out of context and imaged at a specifically titled website operated by the U.S. National Archives. Those are the key elements in the citation. Whatever else the website tells us about the record group it is in or the microfilm from which the digital image was made, those are details we report in the last layer that begins with “citing ….”  I'm sure you will have noticed—and wrestled with—the fact that the information for the microfilm given us by the website is not even sufficient to create an appropriate citation for the microfilm.

The simplest format is exactly the same as any other titled item that has been published in a larger publication—whether it’s a chapter in a book, or a database at Ancestry, or an article in a journal, the basic format is this:

“Item Title in Quotation Marks,” descriptor, Author/Creator, Publication Title in Italics (Publication data), page number; any useful source-of-the-source data offered by the provider.

Converting that to this Indian treaty would give us this:

“Ratified Indian Treaty 61: Creek— Fort Jackson, August 9, 1814,” imaged, U.S. National Archives, National Archives Catalog (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/183393123 : accessed 14 September 2022), p. 6 [or whatever]; citing NARA microfilm M688 created from  Series: Indian Treaties 1789–1869, Record Group 11: General Records of the United States Government 1778–2006, National Archives, Washington, DC.