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Exploring Native American Constitutions and Treaties Using Primary Sources

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Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Nation, 1875

Native American nations have long histories of negotiating with other nations and creating their own laws and structures of government. Primary sources from the online collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of items in different formats that document these processes and provide opportunities for students to explore many aspects of this rich and complex history.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many Native American nations adopted written constitutions. The Library’s online collection Native American Constitutions and Legal Materials