This collection contains 260 photographs depicting many American Indian communities including Diné (Navajo); Hopi; Isleta Pueblo; Pikuni (Piegan) [Blackfeet Nation, Browning, Montana]; Taos Pueblo; and Lacandon Maya, as well as others. Photographs were shot by amateur photographer Herbert Underhill Silleck circa 1924-1944 during his travels with his wife Agnes Smartt Silleck.

This collection consists of 534 glass lantern slides depicting Indigenous groups throughout North America. It also includes a small number of publications written by Elmer E. Higley and others about Native Americans and missionary work during the early twentieth century.

This collection contains 85 glass plate negatives depicting Iroquois students and student life at the Thomas Indian School on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in New York state, circa 1900-1945.

Photography taken by George Heye, Joseph Keppler, David Sinclair and William Stiles during a trip to the Cornplanter Reservation in Pennsylvania and Onondaga, Allegheny, Cattaraugus, Tuscarora, and Tonawanda Reservations in New York October 1939.

Tribes covered in the photographs are: Arapaho, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Iowa, Iroquois, Mahican, Menomini, Ojibwa, Oto, Plains Cree, Potawatomi, Seminole, Seri, Shinnecock, Sioux, Winnebago, Zuni Pueblo. The majority of photographs (552) have Skinner listed as the photographer and presumably are photographs he took on his expeditions. However, 104 photos are of the Seminole in Florida. According to Dennis P. Carey's biography of Skinner (Unpublished? 1980) Julian Q. Dimock, a well-known photographer, accompanied him on his expedition to the Seminole in Florida; how many of the photos were taken by Dimock is unknown, but he is listed as the photographer for 23 of them. Skinner's other photographs are of the Seneca Iroquois in New York; the Zuni Pueblo and Hawikku site; several tribes in Wisconsin; the Chippewa in Minnesota; and miscellaneous shots taken in Canada, Costa Rica, Florida and New York. Two photographs of the Mahican were taken by Huron H. Smith (1923) and two of the Winnebago were taken by C.J. Van Schaick (c. 1870). The remaining photographs have no photographer listed but were in Skinner's collection of photographs and are of varying tribes with dates ranging from 1909 to 1923.

This collection contains 374 photographic prints and 38 copy negatives made by Grace Nicholson, a collector and dealer of Native American and Asian arts and crafts in Pasadena, California. The majority of the photographs were made between 1910 and 1930 among various native communities in California, though there are smaller amounts of photographs in Arizona and New Mexico. Communities photographed include—Hupa, Yurok, Pomo, Karuk (Karok), Tolowa, Yokayo Pomo, Achomawi (Pit River), Atsugewi (Hat Creek), Hopi Pueblo, Kumeyaay (Digueno), Mojave (Mohave), Paiute, Taos Pueblo, Wintu, Acoma Pueblo, Maidu, Chukchansi Yokuts, Yokuts.

Photography taken by MAI staff photographer Carmelo Guadagno during a research project expedition with Lewis Krevolin on behalf of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation in March of 1973. The project focus was pottery making techniques in various Indigenous settlements across Mexico in support of the 1976-1977 exhibition "Traditional Pottery of Mexico."

The Phyllis Hersh collection consists of papers and photographs associated with a book project on contemporary Hopi, Navajo, Santo Domingo, and Zuni jewelry and jewelers. The collection measures 1.3 linear ft. of mansucript materials, 521 photographic prints, and 85 photographic negatives, and dates from 1974 to 2008, with the bulk of the material dating from 1975 to 1980. The papers primarily document Hersh's work on "The Indian Jewelers' Art," an unfinished book on contemporary Native American jewelry.

The majority of the images are individual and group portraits of Southwestern tribes, photographed between 1900-1902, including Laguna Pueblo, Hopi Pueblo, Zuni Pueblo, Taos Pueblo, San Juan Pueblo, White Mountain Apache, Ute, San Carlos Apache, and Navajo Indians.

Images depict the Seneca Iroquois Indians on the Cattaraugus Reservation in New York.