Autry National Center

Braun Research Library

The Braun Research Library was established more than one hundred years ago as part of the Southwest Museum, Inc. The library collections provide the research materials necessary to place the museum collections in their cultural and historical contexts. Today, the library continues to support the Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection and the broader mission of the Autry National Center.

The strength of the library’s holdings, including its special collections and research material, also provides a context for the study of the art, literature, history, culture, and archaeology of the Native peoples of the Americas. This renowned collection includes approximately 50,000 books and serials, 2,000 sound recordings, 3,000 maps, more than 147,000 historic photographs, 3,000 works of art on paper, and 700 manuscript collections.

Books and Serials

• Strong in the fields of ethnology, archaeology, linguistics, folklore, and the history of Arizona, California, and the Southwest.
• Includes works on tribal histories, government, and the social life and customs of the Native peoples of the Americas.
• Publications are in English, Spanish, German, and French, as well as Native American languages.
• See Library Catalog.

Photo Archives

• Important resource for the study of Native American tribes of the Great Plains, California, and the Southwest, as well as the history of the Southwest and Southern California.
• Photographs relate to the history, culture, and archaeology of Eskimos and Native Americans from other regions of the United States and Mexico.
• See Collections Online.

Sound Recording Archives

• Includes a unique collection of 990 wax cylinder recordings. Of those, more than 700 recordings are of Mexican American and Native American songs recorded by Charles F. Lummis between 1895 and 1912 in the Southern California area. These are believed to be the first recordings of Mexican American folk songs in California.
• See Collections Online.

Manuscript Collections

• Strong in local history and the early history of American anthropology and archaeology.
• Major collections include the papers of Charles F. Lummis, George Wharton James, and the anthropological papers of Frank Hamilton Cushing, Frederick Webb Hodge, George Bird Grinnell, Alanson Skinner, and Walter McClintock.
• The James, Lummis, and McClintock collections provide documentation for their ethnographic collections.
• The Mark R. Harrington, Campbell, and Edwin Walker collections also provide documentation for the Southwest Museum archaeological expeditions dating between 1929 and the early 1950s.

Works of Art on Paper

• The library houses more than 3,000 works of art on paper, including drawings of Southwest Museum objects made during a WPA project in the late 1930s and works by Native American and Western artists.
• The Eva Scott Fenyes watercolors of California adobes and missions, dated between 1898 and 1930, number more than 300. Some of the images are the only known representation of the historic adobes.
• Ledgerbook drawings include works by Howling Wolf, Zotom, and Tom Bird.
• See Collections Online.

The Braun Research Library Reading Room

Access to the Braun Research Library is by appointment only. Appointments for research are available Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (holidays excluded), with some limited hours available on Wednesdays. Please see the research rules and application for more details. Your research project may require “researcher level” access to view catalog records not yet in the public view. Please contact a librarian to request an ID and password at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The library is located at 234 Museum Drive, Los Angeles, California.

Contact Us
You may contact a librarian to ask a question or get more information about the collections:

E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Phone: 323.221.2164, ext. 256
Mail: Braun Research Library
234 Museum Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90065

The Charles Fletcher Lummis Manuscript Collection

The Charles Fletcher Lummis Manuscript Collection contains his personal correspondence with over 5,000 individuals, diaries, journals, and scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine articles either by or about him. The Land of Sunshine and Out West Series contain copies of articles and artwork that appeared in those magazines. The Los Angeles Public Library Series relates to when Lummis was City Librarian and includes reports to the board of commissioners and memos to the library staff. The Spanish Songs Series includes the musical transcriptions by Arthur Farwell of many of the wax cylinder recordings and documentation about Lummis's Old Spanish Songs of California publication. The Sequoya League Series includes documentation for the Cupeño removal from Warner’s Ranch in 1903 to their current home on the Pala Reservation. Other series relate to Lummis's publications and include some original manuscripts.

The Frank Hamilton Cushing Collection

Illustration of Frank Hamilton Cushing in full dress as a Zuni War Chief, from Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 24, 1882. Braun Research Library Collection

Frank Hamilton Cushing was an ethnographer and early participant observer of the Pueblo of Zuni, where he lived from 1879 to 1884. He was adopted into the Zuni tribe and was a member of the Bow Priest Society. During the late 1880s he interested wealthy socialite Mary Hemenway in funding an archaeological expedition to find the origins of the Zuni people. The project began in 1887 with an excavation at Los Muertos, Arizona, and then moved to the Zuni Reservation. Cushing became ill and was removed from the project in 1889. He continued to work for the Bureau of American Ethnology during this time and until his death in 1900. He also worked on the Pepper-Hearst Archaeological Expedition to Florida (1891–1896) where they excavated the Key Marcos site.

The Cushing Collection is composed of his personal correspondence, diaries, notes, Zuni language cards, maps, business documents, drafts of manuscripts and lectures, page proofs, reprints of articles by Cushing, and published works such as newspaper articles, ephemera, photographs, and other works written about Cushing.