What did it mean to be a national Native American leader?  That is, what did it mean to be a pan-Indian leader, not just a leader of one’s tribe of origin?  This website will be a digital project that analyzes Carlos Montezuma’s correspondence to illuminate the kind of networks that he was enmeshed in.  Students will transcribe his correspondence from the eighteen microfilm reels housed at Burling Library, enter relevant data into mapping software, and create a visual image to illuminate Montezuma’s personal and professional networks.

Carlos Montezuma—a Native American activist in the late 1800s and early 1900s—had a vision for how Native Americans could advance in American society. Despite the majority of curriculum of American public schools, Native Americans did not disappear from history. They were active and vocal members of American society with conflicting ideologies and understandings of what it meant to be American. Carlos Montezuma was a radical figure in the Native American community. He was an enthusiastic advocate for assimilation—an ideology often described with the words”changing is not vanishing”.