Native American Tribes or Nations were often represented by a delegation including one or more chiefs, sagamores, or sachems. The documents usually favor naming the individuals representing the tribe rather than the name of the tribe itself. As research progresses, we hope to be able to link individuals to specific tribes rather than a generic term for tribe.
Scholarship around the Indigenous Peoples and Native Americans often describe their associations as Nations, Groups, Communities rather than using the word Tribe. We are using the word Tribe for the moment, in part, because of the use of this word in the documents and much of the scholarship over the past several centuries. We hope to be as inclusive as possible given the language used in many of the materials we are utlizing.