This gateway offers a wide range of links to primary and secondary documents, bibliographies, maps, images, and other resources for the study and teaching of the American West. Its 31 topics include agriculture, economics, the environment, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, military history, political and legal history, religion, settlement, technology, and water. Also highlights six selected "outstanding sites."

Well-designed, comprehensive, and easy to navigate, the site also furnishes syllabi and additional teaching materials and suggestions.

Descriptive information about the lives and works of 136 "women writers of color in North America" is provided in this site, designed primarily for high school and college classroom use. Offers introductory material, including images, bibliographies, quotations, biographical sketches, and critical views with regard to writers such as Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Evelyn Lau, Winona LaDuke, Terry McMillan, and Alice Walker.

While the site concentrates primarily on 20th-century figures, it also contains 10 entries on women from the 19th century, including Sarah Mapps Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

The material is arranged into four indexes: name, birthplace, racial/ethnic background, and significant dates. Annotated links to 18 related resources are included.

The site relies on contributions from interested students and teachers, and promises to grow to more than 500 entries in the future.

Features 141 texts relating to the culture of the American south "from the viewpoint of Southerners," during the latter half of the 19th and beginning decades of the 20th centuries, " a period of enormous change." Focusing on the voices of women, blacks, laborers, and Native Americans, the site offers a variety of documents--including ex-slave narratives, travel memoirs, personal accounts and diaries, and autobiographies, such as Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America (1843). Includes some materials published prior to 1860. Provides a 31-title bibliography, with some resources geared toward young readers, and links to 13 related sites. Part of the University of North Carolina's digital library project, Documenting the American South, which is described further in its own History Matters entry.

An impressive archive of more than 30,000 digitally reproduced images "illustrating California's history and culture," taken from nearly 200 collections at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library. The site, searchable by keyword, features photographs, sketches, and paintings in six categories: early California missions and mining activities, natural landscapes, Native Americans, San Francisco, World War II and Japanese relocation, and portraits of notable and ordinary Californians from diverse backgrounds. More than 100 images selected from the larger collection are included in an accompanying California Cornerstones Collection. Includes 158 finding aids, additional links to the Bancroft Library, and six "web-based lesson plans" for using the collection in K-12 classrooms. While the text accompanying each image is limited to artist/photographer, subject, and date, the sheer number of images available makes this a valuable resource for those studying California's history.

This exhibit "examines the first sustained contacts between American people and European explorers, conquerors, and settlers from 1492 to 1600." Divided into six sections--"What Came To Be Called 'America'," "The Mediterranean World," "Christopher Columbus: Man and Myth," "Inventing America," "Europe Claims America," and "Epilogue"--the materials include background essays, illustrations of objects such as Columbus' Coat of Arms, and a 15-title bibliography. An interesting exhibition that consists mostly of secondary text.

This website offers links to lesson plans, audio recordings, and video lectures related to the Antebellum, Civil War, and Gilded Age eras. There are 15 lesson plans on the Antebellum era focused on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, antislavery, Cherokee removal, slavery and the legal status of free blacks, gender roles, religion in political life, and the free-market labor vs. slave labor, "mudsill" theory debate. The nine lesson plans on the Gilded Age include such diverse topics as the WCTU and the lynching controversy, civil service reform, bimetallism, free trade, and political campaign songs. There are 145 downloadable songs organized by topic.

The site also offers access to downloadable video lectures on 12 different topics that include African Americans and race, economic development and labor, frontier settlement, law and society, religion and culture, women and gender, and political development. Most topics have 10 or more lectures available. A small site, but very useful for teaching the history of these three eras.

This website presents all known correspondence of the wife of James Madison, containing roughly 2,000 letters. Although many letters are thank-you notes or polite responses to social invitations, others offer rich insights into the personality and experiences of the First Lady, especially those exchanged with her sisters. The letters are organized into five periods: birth and youth; the years as wife of the secretary of state; the years as first lady; retirement; and widowhood. Users can search by name, date, topic, or place. A table of contents lists the letters by date, author, and recipient.

Additional features include a biographical sketch; "Crosslinks" listing all names (including nicknames, middle, and maiden) appearing in each letter, in order of appearance; a different color font to highlight unclear or missing characters or words; and a summary of the contents of each letter. Although the site is gated, a free trial option is accessible to all.

In 1851, Massachusetts passed the first law recognizing adoption as a legal and social operation. Since then, adoption has had a rich history in the United States, documented at this website through close to 200 reports, writings, letters, adoption narratives, and other documents. Users unfamiliar with adoption history might begin by exploring the detailed timeline that traces adoption history from 1851 to 2000, when Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 eliminating the process of naturalization for international adoptions. Moving on to the Topics in Adoption History section, with in-depth explanations of orphan trains, proxy adoptions, infertility, child welfare, and eugenics, will help build historical context. The Document Archive and Adoption Science sections boast documents from the late 1800s to the present by notables such as Pearl Buck, adoptees searching for information on their biological parents, and court decisions on adoption throughout the 20th century.

George Catlin, a lawyer turned painter, traveled throughout the American West in the early 19th century to chronicle the Native American experience. His paintings of the Plains Indians are the center of this virtual exhibit. From 1830 to 1836, Catlin visited more than 50 tribes from North Dakota to Oklahoma. His original Indian Gallery was designed to document the transformation of Native Americans and "rescue from oblivion" their customs and lifestyle.

Thirty-one of Catlin's more than 400 paintings are presented in this virtual museum, including one of William Clark, the famous explorer of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Designed for middle school and high school teachers the "classroom" section offers lesson plans that incorporate George Catlin's paintings, Native American artifacts, and primary documents to teach students about early American history, geography, and art appreciation. The lesson plans are thematic and feature scholarly commentaries on the life and work of Catlin. A valuable resource for teaching about the Indian Removal of the 1830s, the transformation of the Western frontier, and the encounter of Anglo American and Native American cultures.