Scope and Content Note
The papers of Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903) span the years 1833-1933, with the bulk of the material dating from 1833 to 1903. The collection documents primarily Dawes's service as a United States representative and United States senator from Massachusetts and his tenure as chairman of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes. The papers are in English and are organized into the following series: Family Papers, General Correspondence, Autograph Correspondence Collection, Letterbooks, Personal File, Biography File, Speeches, Indian Affairs, Miscellany, Scrapbooks, and Oversize.
The Family Papers consist mainly of Dawes's correspondence with other family members and his wife, Electa Allen Sanderson Dawes. Also included in these papers are diaries of Henry L. Dawes and those of his daughter, Anna Laurens Dawes, and Electa S. Dawes. This series also includes correspondence and other papers of Anna. An unfinished and unpublished manuscript of a biography of her father by Anna is in the Biography File.
Throughout Dawes's public career, he worked on issues relating to the American Indian, and this work is documented in his papers. Also reflected in the papers are his connections with Oakes Ames, a congressman; Credit Mobilier of America, a railroad construction company; the George Chorpenning claim case; and his involvement with the United States Weather Bureau, the tariff, and Gallaudet College in the District of Columbia.
Of special interest are the Speeches and Indian Affairs series. The former contain his early speeches and include reminiscences of his service in Congress and the federal government, sketches of prominent men, the civil service and tariffs, Reconstruction, Indian affairs, and political campaigns and conventions. The Indian Affairs series contains correspondence, copies of House and Senate bills and legislative documents, and pamphlets, newspaper clippings, and miscellaneous material relating to Dawes's concern with Indians, specifically in his role as a member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and later as chairman of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes (also known as the Dawes Commission) in the Indian Territory.
Prominent among the correspondents in the papers are Lyman Abbott, Charles Allen, Oakes Ames, Montgomery Blair, Cornelius Newton Bliss, Samuel Bowles, Selwyn Zadock Bowman, Calvin Clifford Chaffee, William Claflin, Schuyler Colfax, Cushman Kellogg Davis, Edward Everett, Joseph R. Hawley, George Frisbie Hoar, Henry Oscar Houghton, John Davis Long, S. S. McClure, Nelson Appleton Miles, John Tyler Morgan, T. J. Morgan, Justin S. Morrill, William P. Porter, Charles Sumner, Lyman C. Thayer, Edward R. Tinker, E. B. Washburne, and Herbert Welsh. Other correspondents include James Gillespie Blaine, Cyrus W. Field, James A. Garfield, Edward Everett Hale, Mark Hopkins, L. Q. C. Lamar, Robert Todd Lincoln, Henry Cabot Lodge, George Brinton McClellan, John W. Noble, Orville Hitchcock Platt, Theodore Roosevelt, Philip Henry Sheridan, John C. Spooner, and Ida M. Tarbell.
The Autograph Correspondence Collection includes letters to Dawes and Anna L. Dawes from Charles Francis Adams, Henry Adams, Susan B. Anthony, George Ashmun, Alexander Graham Bell, Maud Ballington Booth, Benjamin F. Butler, Frances Folsom Cleveland, Richard Henry Dana, Grace H. Dodge, Theodore F. Dwight, Samuel A. Eliot, Alice C. Fletcher, John Watson Foster, Richard Watson Gilder, Sir Ben Greet, Edward Everett Hale, George Frisbie Hoar, O. O. Howard, Julia Ward Howe, F. D. Huntington, Sarah Orne Jewett, Frank O. Lowden, S. S. McClure, Simon Newcomb, Alice Freeman Palmer, Gifford Pinchot, Ella Farman Pratt, Vinnie Ream, Alice Robertson, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, William H. Taft, Booker T. Washington, Robert C. Winthrop, and Mary Emma Woolley.
An addition to the collection, a letter of 1861 from Dawes to S. D. Brooks commenting on national politics, was interfiled in the General Correspondence, Container 18.