This dissertation is a biography of Thomas Hutchins, the military engineer, map-maker, and "Geographer of the United States."

Fenton compiled this reel from several collections for his research on American Indians. From the George Chalmers Collection (1750-1775) are correspondence, intelligence reports, and records of treaties concerning the Indians of the Ohio Valley. The writers include Thomas Cresap, Thomas Hutchins, and Sir William Johnson. There are also papers from the Philip John Schuyler papers (1710-1797) and one item from the Withrop, Wait, and Leverett Memorial (1709).

Between 1764 and 1781, the Scots surveyor George Gauld was assigned by the British Admirality to chart the waters of the Gulf Coast off British West Florida, an area that extended from New Orleans to the modern-day Florida. In 1773, Gauld submitted some of his findings to the APS, probably in hopes of having them published in the Transactions, and although these were not published, they became one of the first mansucripts entered into the Society's collections. Contains occasional brief references to Native peoples of the areas described. The Gauld manuscript also includes an extract of a letter from John Lorimer to Gauld, 1772, and a sketch of the Middle and Yellow Rivers of West Florida by Thomas Hutchins. When it was received at the APS, it was endorsed: "This long uninteresting Paper can hardly obtain a Place in the Transactions of a Philosophical Society. It should however be preserved in the Files for the Use of Historians or map makers."

Most of the items microfilmed are from the Public Archives of Canada. From the Daniel Claus Papers, 1761-1796, are letters and papers on Indian affairs at Forts Pitt, Niagara, and Detroit, with letters of Dr. Alexander McKee, Arthur St. Clair, Joseph Chew, Richard Butler, Joseph Brant, and John Graves Simcoe. From the papers of Brigadier Robert Monckton, 1760-1761, are appointments, returns, reports, bills and receipts, and letters relating to Forts Pitt, Bedford, and Niagara, with letters of James Burd, Horatio Gates, Henry Bouquet, Lewis Ourry, Sir John St. Clair, Thomas Hutchins, John Stanwix, and Lord Amherst. There are also excerpts for minutes of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Albany, 1723-1746; transcripts from the Public Record Office on Indians, trade, defense, 1698-1767, including names of persons naturalized in British America, 1740-61, and accounts of Lt. Col. Harry Gordon, 1756-1761, 1764-1767; Duquesne-Centrecoeur correspondence, 1752-1753, Fonds Verreau, from the Université Laval, Quebec; and, miscellaneous documents. All materials concern eighteenth-century Indian affairs, especially the Six Nations, and Algonquian Indians.