The 116 black-and-white photoprints in the Frederica de Laguna Greenland Photograph Collection originate from Frederica de Laguna's six-month expedition to Greenland taken with Danish anthropologist Therkel Mathiassen in 1929. The expedition is significant for being the first scientific archeological excavation in Greenland. The trip was a transformational one for de Laguna, for through it she experienced her first taste of extensive anthropological fieldwork. Because of it, she decided to pursue a career in anthropology upon her return to the United States, enrolling in the doctoral program in anthropology at Columbia University under Franz Boas. Images in the collection include photographs of Kalaallit (Greenlandic Inuit) people, de Laguna and Mathiassen in the field, the Arctic landscape, excavation sites, settlements, animals, sea vessels, etc.

The United States Indian School at Carlisle, Pa., was founded by Gen. Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, and served as a model for government boarding schools for Indians until its closure in 1918. Over 10,000 students enrolled at the Carlisle Training School during its 39 years, where, separated from their native cultures, the students were prepared for work in industrial and manual labor and socialized into "civilized" life. Given new white names to replace their Indian ones, the students were prohibited from speaking their native languages, were instructed in Christianity, and were fed, clothed, and housed under strict military discipline. The 27 photographs in the Speck-Choate Photograph Collection were taken by J. N. Choate, a local commercial photographer in Carlisle, Pa., and collected by the anthropologist Frank G. Speck. Choate advertised "Photographs of all the Indian Chiefs that have visited the Indian Training School at Carlisle Barracks, also of children in native and school costumes" and were intended to document the benefits of civilization that the school brought to Indians. Typical images include "before and after" shots of students in native dress and school uniforms, the school band, and shots of the students at work in the saddle shop and making shoes. Choate also took a number of images of visiting chiefs in traditional dress, including the Lakota chief Spotted Tail, and the Cheyennes Man on Cloud and Mad Wolf. One photograph depicts Richard Henry Pratt seated with Quaker supporters. Among the tribes represented are the Lakota, Laguna, Cheyenne, Creek, Lipan, and Pueblo.

A traveler, archaeologist, and photographer, Désiré Charnay (1828-1915) was one of the most important early expeditionary photographers. During his tours of Yucatan, Oaxaca, and Chiapas in 1858-1860 and 1880-1886, Charnay became one of the first to use photography in documenting the great Meso-American archaeological sites and to make ethnographic photographs of indigenous Mexicans. His major publications Cités et Ruines Américaines (Paris, 1862) and Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde (Paris, 1885) are important transitional works to the later scientific archaeology of Alfred Maudslay. The collection of photographs taken by Desire Charnay are representative of the range of images he took of Meso-American archaeological sites during three tours of Mexico in 1858-1860 and 1880-1886. Although some of the images have suffered an unfortunate degree of fading, they convey the power and fascination that these sites held for Charnay and his contemporaries, and include some of the best early examples of the use of photography in the documentation of Mexican archaeology. The collection includes 123 images of the sites at Tula, Teotihuacan, Iztaccihuatl, Chichen Itza, Comalcalco, and Palenque, of archaeological specimens held at the Museum of Mexico, and of landscape and villages in Yucatan, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, as well as a series of Lacandon, Mayan, Mixtec, and Yucatec "racial types."

A small collection rich in imagery, the Ellen Lehman Native American Photograph Collection consists of 19 albumen prints of late nineteenth-century Native American leaders on cabinet cards. The bulk of the images date from the 1880s and portray important members of the Dakota Indian tribes, many of whom fought against the 7th Cavalry of the U.S. Army at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Among the leaders depicted are: Sitting Bull, Gall, Rain in the Face, Crow King, and White Bull. The collection also includes two images of Geronimo, the Bedonkohe Apache leader who resisted Mexican and American expansion in the Southwest in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The majority of the photographs in the collection were taken by David Francis Barry, with Orlando Scott Goff and George W. Scott also contributing.