Searching on THOMAS is a relatively simple process. Because THOMAS is a cgi-bin type database, it is impossible to link directly to search results on Native Americans.
First, go to the THOMAS home page. Scroll down until you find the section entitled "Historical Documents" and click on the highlighted text "Historical Documents."
You are now on the correct page to search all historical documents. If you want to search a particular document, say, the Federalist Papers, click on the appropriate box at the top of the page.
To search for native American sources you will want to search under the word "indian," rather than Native American, indigenous, etc. . . or other such terms. The reason for this is that "indian" was the term used to describe Native Americans in the historical time period of these documents.
Type the word "indian" into the search box and click on the search button. Be sure that it is set to search for variants of words as well. If you want to search for a specific tribe, simply type in the name of the tribe you are searching for. For example, to search for documents concerning the iroquois tribe, type in "iroquois" and click on the search button.
Look under the heading entitled "Bills." Find the session of Congress from which the bills you are seeking under the sub-heading "Bill Summary and Status." For the current session, click on the highlighted number of the current session. For a previous session, click on the highlighted word "Previous Congresses" and then click on the number of the session that you want under "Go To Search Page for Congress."
There are three useful ways to search for Native American bills on THOMAS:
You should use the Word/Phrase search to search for items that are very specific and that won't be covered by one of the subject-headings or "index terms" in the Legislative Indexing Vocabulary (LIV) Thesaurus. Recent bills have probably not yet been indexed by LIV terms and very old bills may not be indexed due to changes in LIV headings over time. For Native American research, a word search is also particularly useful for searching for bills regarding a specific tribe, region, reservation, treaty, or person.
Once you are on the search page for the session of Congress you are searching, scroll down until you see the first search box under the heading "Word/Phrase." Type in one of the following words: "native american," "native america," "indian," "indians," "american indian" or "american indians" and click on the search button. The search engine will search for bill titles, summaries, subject headings, sponsors, and committee names which contain these word(s). Note - The entire text of the bills will NOT be searched. Word searches are particularly useful for Native American research if you are researching a specific tribe, region, reservation, treaty, or person. If this is the case, simply enter the name of the tribe, region, reservation, treaty, or person in the search box and click on the search button. Note - This will not work in a subject term search.
You can use a subject term search for a broader search of all bills pertaining to Native Americans or to search for bills pertaining to a specific Native American issue. In order to conduct properly a subject-term search, you must first determine the subject, or LIV index term to use. If you don't use a proper LIV term, your search won't work. The main LIV term to use for a broad search is "indians". This will direct you to all of the bills that are indexed under this broadest category for Native Americans. To use this term, simply type "indian" into the search box under the heading "Subject Term" and click on the search button.
For a more specific search for bills pertaining to a certain Native American issue or topic consult the following list of LIV terms under the broad term "indians". For information on Native Hawaiians, check the following terms under the LIV heading "hawaiians". Finally, try searching the Legislative Indexing Vocabulary (LIV) Thesaurus for "native americans" for additional pertinent LIV terms.
Once you have located the term to use type it into the search box under the heading "Subject Term" and click on the search button.
The last method of search is by committee. For a search of all bills handled by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, scroll down on the search page to item number 6, entitled "Committees." Scroll down in the "U.S. Senate Committee" box until you can locate "Indian Affairs." Once you have done this, click on it and then click on the search button.
Document by Robert R. Hurd - 1997.