"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man…It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. . . As we have taken into our national family seven millions of Negroes, and as we receive foreigners at the rate of more than five hundred thousand a year, and assimilate them, it would seem that the time may have arrived when we can very properly make at least the attempt to assimilate our two hundred and fifty thousand Indians…The school at Carlisle is an attempt on the part of the government to do this. Carlisle has always planted treason to the tribe and loyalty to the nation at large. It has preached against colonizing Indians, and in favor of individualizing them..."

The two group portraits, taken at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, show Chiricahua Apache boys and girls at the time of their arrival in November 1886, and four months after arriving, in March 1887. John N. Choate was commissioned by the school to make portraits of the students as a public relations effort showing the success of the school in assimilating the Indians. Attended by over 12,000 Native American children from more than 140 tribes between 1879 and 1918, Carlisle was the model for nearly 150 Indian schools. Upon arrival, school officials cut the children's hair and exchanged their clothing for uniforms. Students were given Christian names, and were punished for speaking their native languages. Note the changes in dress, hair, and skin color, possibly due to the climate and to the emphasis on indoor activities. This group belonged to the Chiricahua Apache tribe, whose leader, the famous Geronimo, had surrendered with his followers in September 1886, marking the end of the Apache wars. The band, including 103 children, was taken prisoner and sent to Florida; many of the children were then taken to Carlisle School.

The students' names on the arrival photograph were recorded as (back row, left to right): Hugh Chee, Frederick Eskelsejah (Fred' k Eskelsijah), Clement Seanilzay, Samson Noran, Ernest Hogee. Middle row: Margaret Y. Nadasthilah. (front row): Humphrey Escharzay, Beatrice Kiahtel, Janette Pahgostatum, Bishop Eatennah, Basil Ekarden. A numbered version of the photograph exists. The photographer arranged the students in the same order in the later portrait. Scholars note that the "after" portraits followed established conventions of middle-class portraiture of the period, emphasizing the civilizing mission of the school. School founder Richard Platt described this goal in an 1892 speech "all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

Nick and the Sparrow Hills

'Write then how in this place [the Sparrow Hills] the story of our lives, yours and mine, began to unfold….'
A Letter, 1833

Three years before the time I am speaking of we were walking on the banks of the Moskva at Luzhniki, that is, on the other side of the Sparrow Hills. At the river's edge we met a French tutor of our acquaintance in nothing but his shirt; he was panic-stricken and was shouting, 'He is drowning, he is drowning!' But before our friend had time to take off his shirt or put on his trousers a Ural Cossack ran down from the Sparrow Hills, dashed into the water, vanished, and a minute later reappeared with a frail man, whose head and arms were flopping about like clothes hung out in the wind. He laid him on the bank, saying, 'He'll still recover if we roll him about.'

The people standing round collected fifty roubles and offered it to the Cossak. The latter, without making faces over it, said very simply: 'It's a sin to take money for such a thing, and it was no trouble; come to think of it he weighs no more than a cat. We are poor people, though.' He added. 'Ask, we don't; but there, if people give, why not take? We are humbly thankful.' Then tying up the money in a handkerchief he went to graze his horses on the hill. My father asked his name and wrote about the incident the next day to Essen. Essen promoted him to be a non-commissioned officer. A few months later the Cossak came to see us and with him a pock-marked, bald German, smelling of scent and wearing a curled, fair wig; he came to thank us on behalf of the Cossak—it was the drowned man. From that time he took to coming to see us.

Karl Ivanovich Sonnenberg, that was his name, was at that time completing the German part of the education of two young rascals; from them he went to a landowner of Simbirsk, and from him to a distant relative of my father's. The boy, the care of whose health and German accent had been entrusted to him, and whom Sonnenberg called Nick, attracted me. There was something kind gentle and pensive: I was high-spirited but afraid to rag him.

About the time when my cousin went back to Korcheva, Nick's grandmother died; his mother he had lost in early childhood. There was a great upset in the house and Sonnenberg, who really had nothing to do, fussed about too, and imagined that he was run off his legs; he brought Nick in the morning and asked that he might remain with us for the rest of the day. Nick was sad and frightened; I suppose he had been fond of his grandmother.

…After we had been sitting still a little I suggested reading Schiller. I was surprised at the similarity of our tastes; he knew far more by heart than I did and knew precisely the passages I liked best; we closed the book and, so to speak, began sounding each other's sympathies.

From Möros who went with a dagger in his sleeve 'to free the city from the tyrant,' from Wilhelm tell who waited for Vogt on the narrow path at Küsznacht, the transition to Nicholas and the Fourteenth of December was easy. These thoughts and these comparisons were not new to Nick; he, too, knew Pushkin's and Ryleyev's unpublished poems. The contrast between him and the empty-headed boys I had occasionally met was striking.

Not long before, walking near the Prenensjy Ponds, full of my Bouchot, terrorism, I had explained to a companion of my age the justice of the execution of Louis XVI.

'Quite so,' observed the youthful Prince O., 'but you know he was God's anointed!'

I looked at him with compassion, ceased to care for him and never asked to go and see him again.

There were no such barriers with Nick: his heart beat as mine did. He, too, had cast off from the grim conservative shore, and we had but to shove off together, and almost from the first day we resolved to work in the interests of the Tsarevich Constantine!

Before that day we had few long conversations. Karl Ivanovich pestered us like an autumn fly and spoilt every conversation with his presence; he interfered in everything without understanding, made remarks, straightened Nick's shirt collar, was in a hurry to get home: in fact, was detestable. After a month we could not pass two days without seeing each other or writing a letter; with all the impulsiveness of my nature I attached myself more and more to Nick, while he had a quiet deep love for me.

From the very beginning our friendship was to take a serious tone. I do not remember that mischievous pranks were our foremost interest, particularly when we were alone. Of course we did not sit still: our age came into its own, and we laughed and played the fool, teased Sonnenberg and played bows and arrows in our courtyard; but at the bottom of it all there was something very different from idle companionship. Besides our being of the same age, besides our 'chemical affinity,' we were united by the faith that bound us. Nothing in the world so purifies and ennobles early youth, nothing keeps it so safe as a passionate interest in the whole of humanity. We respected our future in ourselves, we looked at each other as 'chosen vessels,' predestined.

Nick and I often walked out into the country. We had our favourite places, the Sparrow Hills, the fields beyond the Dragomilovsky Gate. He would come with Sonnenberg to fetch me at six or seven in the morning, and if I were asleep would throw sand and little pebbles at my window. I would wake up smiling and hasten out to him.

These walks had been instituted by the indefatigable Karl Ivanovich.

In the old-fashioned patriarchal education of Ogarëv, Sonnenber plays the part of Biron. When he made his appearance the influence of the old male nurse who had looked after the boy was put aside; the disconnected oligarchy of the hall were forced against the grain to silence, knowing that there was no overcoming the damned German who fed at the master's table. Sonnenberg made violent changes in the old order of things. The old man who had been nurse positively grew tearful when he learnt that the wretched German had taken the young master himself to buy ready-made boots at a shop! Sonnenberg's revolution, like Peter I's, was distinguished by a military character even in the most peaceful matters. It does not follow from that that Karl Ivanovich' thin little shoulders had ever been adorned with epaulettes; but nature has so made the German that if he does not reach the slovenliness and sans-géne of a philologist or a theologian, he is inevitably of a military mind even though he be a civilian. By virtue of his peculiarity Karl Ivanovich liked tight fitting clothes, buttoned up and cut with a waist; by virtue of it he was a strict observer of his own rules, and, if he proposed to get up at six o' clock in the morning, he would get Nick up at one minute to six, and in no case later than one minute past, and would go out into the open air with him.

The Sparrow Hills, at the foot of which Karl Ivanovich had been so nearly drowned, soon became our 'sacred hills.'

One day after dinner my father proposed to drive out into the country. Ogarëv was with us and my father invited him and Sonnenberg to go too. These expeditions were not a joking matter. Before reaching the town gate we had to drive for an hour or more in a four-seated carriage 'built by Joachim,' which had not prevented it from becoming disgracefully shabby in its fifteen years of service, peaceful as they had been, and from being, as it always had been, heavier than a siege gun. The four horses of different sizes and colours with sweat and foam within a quarter of an hour; the coachman Avdey was forbidden to let this happen, and so had no choice but to drive at a walk. The windows were usually up, however hot it might be; and with all this we had indifferently oppressive supervision of my father and the restlessly fussy and irritation supervision of Karl Ivanovich. But we gladly put up with everything for the sake of being together.

At Luzhniki we crossed the river Moskva in a boat at the very pot where the Cossak had pulled Karl Ivanovich out of the water. My father walked, bent and morose as always; beside him Karl Ivanovich tripped along, entertaining him with gossip and scandal. We went on in front of them, and getting far ahead ran up to the Sparrow Hills at the spot where the first stone of Vitberg's temple was laid.

Flushed and breathless, we stood there mopping our faces. The sun was setting, the cupolas glittered, beneath the hill the city extended farther than the eye could reach; a fresh breeze blew on our faces, we stood leaning against each other and, suddenly embracing, vowed in sight of all Moscow to sacrifice our lives to the struggle we had chosen.

This scene may strike others as very affected and theatrical, and yet twenty-six years afterwards I am moved to tears as I recall it; there was a sacred sincerity in it, and our whole life has proved this. But apparently a like destiny defeats all vows made on that spot; Alexander was sincere, too, when he laid the first stone of that temple, which as Joseph II said (although then mistakenly) at the laying of the first stone in some town in Novorossiya, was destined to be the last.

We did not know all the strength of the foe with whom we were entering into battle, but we took up the fight. That strength broke much in us, but it was not that strength that shattered us, and we did not surrender to it in spite of all its blows. The wounds received from it were honourable. Jacob's strained thigh was the sign that he had wrestled in the night with God.

From that day the Sparrow Hills became a place of worship for us and once or twice a year we went there, and always by ourselves. There, five years later, Ogarëv asked me timidly and shyly whether I believed in his poetic talent, and wrote to me afterwards (1883) from his country house: 'I have come away and feel sad, as sad as I have never been before. And it's all the Sparrow Hills. For a long time I hid my enthusiasm in myself; shyness or something else, I don't myself know what, prevented me from uttering it; but on the Sparrow Hills that enthusiasm was not burdened with solitude: you shared it with me and those moments have been unforgettable; like memories of past happiness they have followed me on my way, while round me I saw nothing but forest; it was all so blue, dark blue and in my soul was darkness.

'Write then,' he concluded, 'how in this place' (that is, on the Sparrow Hills) 'the story of our lives, yours and mine began to unfold.'

Five more years passed. I was far from the Sparrow Hills, but near me their Prometheus, A. L. Vitberg, stood, austere and gloomy. In 1842, returning to Moscow, I again visited the Sparrow Hills, and once more we stood on the site of foundation stone and gazed at the same view, two together, but the other was not Nick.

Since 1827 we had not been parted. In every memory of that time, general and particular, he with his boyish features and his love for me was everywhere in the foreground. Early could be seen in him that sign of grace which is vouchsafed to few, whether for woe or for bliss I know not, but certainly in order not to be one of the crowd. A large portrait of Orgarëv as he was at that time (1827-8), painted in oils, remained for long afterwards in his father's house. In later days I often stood before it and gazed at him. He is shown with an open shirt collar; the painter has wonderfully caught the luxuriant chestnut hair, the undefined, youthful beauty of his irregular features and his rather swarthy colouring; there was a pensiveness in the portrait that gave promise of powerful thought; an unaccountable melancholy and extreme gentleness shone out from his big grey eyes that suggested the future stature of a mighty spirit; such indeed he grew to be. This portrait, presented to me, was taken by a woman who was a stranger; perhaps these lines will meet her eyes and she will send it to me.

I do not know why the memories of first love are given such precedence over the memories of youthful friendship. The fragrance of first love lies in the fact that it forgets the difference of the sexes, that it passionate friendship. On the other hand, friendship between the young has all the ardour of love and all its character, the same delicate fear of touching on its feelings with a word, the same mistrust of self and absolute devotion, the same agony at separation, and the same jealous desire for exclusive affection.

I had long loved Nick and loved him passionately, but had not been able to resolve to call him my friend, and when he was spending the summer at Kuntsevo I wrote to him at the end of a letter: 'Whether your friend or not, I do not yet know.' He first used the second person singular in writing to me and used to call me his Agathon after Karamzin, while I called him my Ralphael after Schiller.

You will smile, perhaps, but let it be a mild, good-natured smile, such as one smiles when one thinking of the time when on was fifteen. Or would it not be better to muse over the question, 'Was I like that when I was blossoming out?' and to bless your fate if you have had youth (merely being young is not enough for this), an to bless it doubly if you had a friend then.

The language of that period seems affected and bookish to us now; we have become unaccustomed to its vague enthusiasm, its confused fervour that passes suddenly into languid tenderness or childish laughter. It would be as absurd in a man of thirty as the celebrated Bettina will schlafen, but in its proper time this language of youth, this jargon de la puberté, this change of the psychological voice is very sincere; even the shade of bookishness is natural to the age of theoretical knowledge and practical ignorance.

Schiller remained our favourite. The characters of his dramas were living persons for us; we analysed them, loved and hated them, not as poetic creations but as living men. Moreover we saw ourselves in them. I wrote to Nick, somewhat troubled by his being too fond of Fiesco, that behind every Fiesco stands his Verrina. My ideal was Karl Moor, but soon I was false to him and went over to the Marquis of Posa. I imagined in a hundred variations how I would speak to Nicholas, and how afterwards he would send me to the mines or the scaffold. It is a strange thins that almost all our day-dreams ended in Siberia or the scaffold and hardly ever in triumph; can this be the way the Russian imagination turns, or is it the effect of Petersburg with its five gallows and its penal servitude reflected on the young generation?

And so, Ogarëv, hand in hand we moved forward into life! Fearlessly and proudly we advanced, generously we responded to every challenge and single heartedly we surrendered to every inclination. The path we chose was no easy one; we have never left it for one moment: wounded and broken we have gone forward and no one has outdistanced us. I have reached…not the goal but the spot where the road goes downhill, and involuntarily seek thy hand that we may go down together, that I may press it and say, smiling mournfully, 'So this is all!'

Meanwhile in the dull leisure to which events have condemned me, finding in myself neither strength nor freshness for new labours, I am writing down our memories. Much of that which united us so closely has settled in these pages. I present them to thee. For thee they have a double meaning, the meaning of tombstones on which we meet familiar names.

…And is it not strange to think that had Sonnenberg known how to swim, or had he been drowned then in the Moskva, had he been pulled out not by a Cossak of the Urals but by the soldier of the Apsheronsky infantry, I should not have met Nick or should have met him later, differently, not in that room in our old house, where, smoking cigars on the sly, we entered so deeply into each other's lives and drew strength from each other.

Why I Taught the Source

Autobiographical writing as a rich source for the exploration of European childhood and youth is self evident; in many cases, it is one of the most nuanced ways to understand historical actors' earliest experiences. 1 Such is the case in Russia, where there emerged a new genre of writing on childhood and youth in the middle of the 19th century. Russian authors tended to paint bucolic portraits of their own childhood years on the gentry estate, often spent away from the tyrannical clutches of parental discipline and ensconced instead in the pleasures and freedoms of roaming through domestic corridors and wild gardens. These narratives of Russian childhood and youth often provide poignant examples of how individuals came of age amidst a backdrop of radical insurgence, peasant emancipation, and decades of repression. Many of these narratives, written by members of Russia's first generations of intelligentsia, include descriptions of rebellion against their elders and an attachment to their peers. My Past and Thoughts, written by Alexander Herzen—the first self-proclaimed Russian socialist—fits precisely into this genre of 19th-century Russian writing. It is in this historical context that I use this particular text in my course on Modern Russia.

How I Introduce the Source

My undergraduate class on modern Russia provides an introduction to the history of the tsarist era from the time of Peter the Great in 1682 to the end of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. Over the course of the semester we discuss and debate the nature of autocracy, Russia's relationship to Europe, the emergence of the intelligentsia and radicalism as well as the building of the vast Russian empire. We also concentrate on the everyday lives of rulers, peasants, workers, intellectuals and student radicals, by using primary documents, whether memoirs, poems or political tracts. The course proceeds both chronologically and thematically, with special attention paid to gender, including the subject of this discussion: masculinity and youth.

Reading the Source

An excerpt of Alexander Herzen's memoir My Past and Thoughts is placed in the syllabus about mid-way, during the session where we discuss the emergence of the first generation of Russia's intelligentsia and Russia's relationship to "the West," both imagined and real. We read the text with particular attention to Herzen's own self-conscious telling of his youth and coming of age: both as an intellectual and as a young man. I remind students that this is a story written decades after Herzen's own experiences as a highly influential anti-autocratic author took place.

At the outset, I draw students' attention to the ways in which Herzen's autobiography both conforms to and challenges a larger, emergent 19th-century genre in Russian literature, that is, narratives on childhood and youth. 2 Herzen's writing, on the one hand, tends to reject the notion of a bucolic domestic experience so important in the Lev Tolstoy-inspired "myth" of Russian childhood as a golden age of freedom on the estate. On the other hand, it is through his friendship —alternately Romantic and erotic—with Nikolai Ogarev that Herzen is able to capture some of the joys of childhood and magic of first love. In Herzen's own depictions, it was the oppressiveness of his father's house that ultimately pushed him into the arms of his friend and inspired his coming of age from boyhood to youth. It was this friendship with Nikolai Ogarev—the Russian poet, historian, political activist, and fellow-exile and collaborator of Herzen—which serves as a point of departure for understanding homosociability (i.e., same-sex relationships) and masculinity among Russia's first generation of intelligentsia. While George Mosse argues in Nationalism and Sexuality that romantic friendships between men declined by the early part of the 19th century, young Russian men expressed their affections for one another well into the 19th century and beyond. 3

Another aspect of my introduction involves contextualizing the text in a variety of ways, the literary and the historical. I explain the propensity of 19th-century authors to script their own childhood and youthful experiences in Romantically-tinged language (a practice evidenced in Herzen's descriptions not of his own domestic experiences, but certainly of his friendship with Ogarev). Moreover, by the time we encounter Herzen, everyone is well versed in the social, cultural and political history of Russia up until that point and with the various intellectual struggles within Russian educated society to keep up with the "West," most often embodied in France (but sometimes England).

A close reading of the text provides insight into the ways in which gender roles and norms of sociability are historical in nature and change over time. The logistics of teaching Herzen's text includes a formal, small-group, in-class discussion exercise. About 30 students in all divide themselves into small groups of 5-6 and study the relevant passages included in their course readers. They are instructed to focus on the language and tone of Herzen's depictions of his friend and what it might reveal about the nature of male friendship in 19th-century Russia. (As most of the readings in the course are primary sources, including other autobiographical writings, my students already know how to conduct a close reading of a historical document.) I draw their attention to the role that "Sparrow Hills"—the site of Herzen and Ogarev's boyhood vow of love—has in Herzen's memory. "Flushed and breathless. . . the sun was setting, the cupolas glittered. . . a fresh breeze blew on our faces, we stood leaning against each other and, suddenly embracing, vowed in sight of all Moscow to sacrifice our lives to the struggle we had chosen [toppling the autocracy]. (62)" Through a close reading of these passages, students learn how Herzen's memories of coming of age became intertwined with his love of Ogarev, his loss of childhood innocence, and their commitment to political activism. These passages illustrate what friendship meant for Herzen: it was more powerful than love and its intensity was reflected in the beauty of the natural surroundings. During his youth, male friendship and homosocial relations signaled for Herzen the highest of callings-—more powerful than romantic love. The power of this friendship was only heightened by their frequent outings, where they basked in their connection with the natural surroundings and in their writing.

What emerges from their analyses is a picture of two young boys meeting and declaring their devotion to one another, a devotion that—according to Herzen—included a politically self-conscious desire to overthrow the autocracy together. A particular theme that we examine is the homoerotic language with which students are often unaccustomed. We examine such as passages: "Nick attracted me. . . [there was] something kind, gentle and pensive about him. . . . His heart beat as mine did. . . . With all of the impulsiveness of my nature I attached myself more and more to Nick, while he had a quiet, deep love for me (pages 58-60)." Elsewhere Herzen declares that "I had long loved Nick and I loved him passionately (64)." These descriptions provide us with the opportunity to discuss 19th-century social and gender norms. I explain that closeness between young men was part and parcel of their coming of age experiences.

Reflections

The one real difficulty that I encountered with this exercise was the challenge of getting students to think historically about interpersonal relationships, patterns of sociability, and gender expectations. For many students, the notion of male romantic, expressive friendship as a legitimate topic of historical investigation was a new idea. Interfering with their ability to think historically was a contemporary prejudice against homosexuality. Therefore, it is essential to define "homosociability" and to emphasize it political potential especially among youth who contest the social order.

Featuring approximately 600 photographs chronicling daily life and politics in Swaziland, the Swaziland Digital Archives provides visual insights into the experiences of childhood and adolescence in southern Africa over the past century. The Swaziland National Trust Commission hosts the website, but it is the work of a Swaziland-based author and photographer who has collected, scanned, and posted historical images drawn from private collections and the Swaziland National Archives.

The photographs are organized into galleries based on decades, and the collection can by searched by title, date, caption, and photographer. There are also brief historical essays linked to each gallery sketching the main events of each decade, which vary in quality. While the first essays dealing with the late 19th century are detailed and fairly sophisticated, the entries covering the later decades of the 20th century are little more than quick blurbs.

Consequently, non-specialists planning on using the website might wish to consult the following sources: Hilda Kuper, Sobhuza II, Ngwenyama and King of Swaziland: The story of an Hereditary Ruler and His country, (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1978); Alan Booth, Swaziland: Tradition and Change in a Southern African Kingdom, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983); Alan Booth, Historical Dictionary of Swaziland, 2nd Edition, (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2000).

Children and adolescents figure prominently in the collection. Using the "caption" search function, which is more productive than searching "title" tags, yields 19 hits for "children," seven for "student," eight for "boy," 11 for "girl," and four for the antique category of "maiden." Both Swazi and European children (from settler and missionary families) are the subjects of these photographs.

Each image has a catalogue number, approximate date, and a caption that can range from highly informative to whimsical. While the website's search feature is reasonably thorough, it is still worthwhile to browse the galleries for more unconventionally tagged child-related pictures.

If properly contextualized, the images in the Swaziland Digital Archives suggest some interesting possibilities for exploring the various and changing meanings of childhood in 20th-century southern Africa. While the Swazi ruling family dates to the 19th century, modern Swaziland was originally a British protectorate that spent much of the last century under the economic and social influence of South Africa.

The series of photographs chronicling the childhood of Swaziland's Paramount Chief (later iNgwenyama, 'King') Sobhuza II, coupled with two related pictures on the Images of Empire website, illustrate how British imperial officials ruled by co-opting local institutions of authority. These images, which show the young Sobhuza with his mother and grandmother (and queen regent), sitting in state council (Images of Empire, Media ID 00007073), inspecting the present of a toy elephant from the wife of a British imperial official (Images of Empire, Media ID 00007077), and as a young recently enthroned ruler, offer students a unique look into a highly politicized form of African childhood.

The numerous photographs of young Swazi girls and "maidens" in varying degrees of dress and undress are equally illuminating but should be used with caution and are probably not for younger students. Western colonial-era male photographers obviously found them a popular subject, but teachers can give these young Swazi women their proper dignity through lesson plans that consider the cultural and political form and function of their clothing styles.

Grouping their portraits with the collection's corresponding images of young Swazi Catholic "communicants" and European girls in Swaziland (Watts family, St Marks Kids, and Holtman family will help students understand how education, religious conversion, and race shaped the experience of gender and childhood in colonial southern African society. The archive's various initiation and marriage images similarly show how these young western and African Swazi women marked the transition to adulthood (e.g., "Miss Krogh's Wedding," "Wedding Smile," "Umcwasho Maiden," "Umcwasho maidens," Dlamini Khumalo wedding, "Dlamini Khumalo wedding," "lamini Khumalo wedding," and "Dlamini Khumalo wedding," "Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland, with toys," [Images of Empire, Media ID 00007077] "Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland, as a child" [Images of Empire, Media ID 00007073]).

Imagine walking down a hallway lined with photographs. Now imagine walking through a labyrinth of hallways with 10 million photographs and drawings, the approximate number of images available in the LIFE photo archive, hosted by Google.

On one wall, a black-and-white photograph shows a white baby perched on the edge of a sink holding a toothbrush in its mouth. On another, an African American toddler sits snuggled in a blanket on a shelter chair during a flood in Louisville, Kentucky. Still other images show two daughters of Czar Nicholas II of Russia on an outdoor patio, school children in Ecuador waving flags during a visit by U.S. President Richard Nixon, uniform-clad boys in the Nazi Youth Movement marching in formation, or an 11-year-old Amish girl shooting marbles in the U.S. national girls' tournament.

This remarkable collection is a visual goldmine. Teachers and students of an almost endless number of topics related to children and youth in American and world history can explore for hours, searching photographs and drawings from the 1750s to the present, most of which are seen publicly for the first time on this website. The majority of the images come from the 20th century, showcasing the work of famous photographers, such as Gordon Park, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Margaret Bourke-White, among many others.

Exploring this archive, however, is at once fascinating, rewarding, and incredibly frustrating. Search results are capped at a maximum of 200 images, meaning that a search on "children" returns only a tiny fraction of the possible matches. Some images are presented with basic source information, such as title, location, date, photographer, and image size while others provide no information at all, leaving the viewer with many unanswered questions.

Some images are part of collections, such as the hundreds of "Gibson Girls" drawings or the "Circus Girl" photographs taken in 1952. In the right column, "related images" sometimes appear and many of the images are tagged with "labels" that offer pathways through the mass of images. An image of a baby, for example, might lead to a tag for "baby carriage," "children at play," "blind children," or "child care," all of which lead down other paths or abruptly end. Or an image might link to no other images, sending you back to the beginning to find another path.

Photographs appear in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Images are presented at 300 dpi and even the medium-sized images are of decent size for classroom use, roughly 400 x 600 pixels. The larger scans contain a LIFE watermark and while all images are available at no cost for personal and research purposes, the archive also offers each image for sale, framed, at a cost of $79.99 and up.

The photographs as a whole depict a range of childhood experiences, from famous young people in formal settings (Shirley Temple on her 11th birthday "wearing her first long dress, a fluffy frock of marquisette trimmed with a dubonnet ribbon") to ordinary children engaged in everyday activities, such as the children at a Turkish tobacco factory daycare "where working moms drop their kids during their day shift."

Spanning several centuries and many borders, this collection provides a glimpse into many different experiences of childhood and youth. Students could examine a range of customs across time and culture, exploring, for example, the material culture of childhood from swaddling to cribs or the role of institutions, such as schools, hospitals, orphanages, in the lives of young people. Even more revealing, however, would be an assignment exploring what the words and images found within this archive tell us about the society that produced and consumed Life magazine—the photographers, editors, writers, and subscribers who interacted with these images and created meaning from them day to day.

The caption next to the young girl in the shelter, for example, reads, "Lonely little African-American baby sucking her thumb." Next to a 1938 photograph from Romania is the caption, "A Gypsy lighting the small oven while holding her dirty child." White children are rarely described as "lonely" or "dirty," even when collected under the label "poverty."

The subjects selected are equally telling. Several photographs of African mothers nursing their newborns focus on the women's breasts and nipples. Other women from Myanmar, Vietnam, Finland, Albania, Pakistan, and Israel are also shown nursing. Compare this to images of white women with their young, fully dressed and often, in the mid-20th century, with a bottle. What does this say about perceptions of motherhood, gender, and child rearing? About gender, race, and nationality?

This rich archive can provide primary source material on a host of national and international topics, from dress, play, education, and health to national identity and international relations. Whether looking for something specific, such as images from a 1951 hearing on comic books, or broad, such as high school, you will likely find many images worth exploring. The images are high enough quality to print and use easily for research or class assignments. Keep in mind, however, that despite the powerful Google search engine, in some ways you are left to wander through the labyrinth unguided, without a map that might provide a sense of how images fit into the collection as a whole. It is hard to know exactly what a given search term will return and with the limit on search results, it is impossible to see the full range of images on many topics. It is, however, a worthwhile adventure if you begin with patience and creativity.

The New Child: British Art and the Origins of Modern Childhood, 1730-1830 exhibit at the University Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley is presented in this companion website of mixed quality and effectiveness. The site consists of nine segments that feature artworks related to themes of childhood such as innocence, parenthood, childrearing, play, institutions, and charity. Most of the thumbnails of the artworks are available in larger size, though not sufficient for detailed study, and some enlargements are unavailable. Hyperlinked word definitions and identifications in the text are mostly broken links. The site is aesthetically very ordinary, with its robin's egg blue background, serif font text, and small image size that do not flatter the mostly dark-toned paintings.

The exhibit claims to document a significant change in the "construct" of childhood in Europe, representing a change in attitude toward children's needs and development. Moreover, British artworks of the Georgian period reflect these changes as Britain "led the way in Europe to viewing childhood as a special phase of human existence." The introduction further claims that family relations changed to "bonds of affection rather than economics. The child, once on the periphery, moved to the center of family affections." The text relates this social change to mercantile economies, urbanization, and industrialization, but the paintings and engravings nearly all represent upper and upper-middle class life. Scenes of lavish interiors, well-dressed portrait sitters, and verdant estates in the background of these paintings depict children as the objects of adoring parents, or make them appear as accessories of the virtuous and prosperous life. Children wearing formal clothing appear stiffly posed in romantic outdoor scenes, and as oddly small figures in dramatic classical interiors with huge columns and drapery. A few, such as George Morland's "Blind Man's Bluff" present children more naturally, but place them in idyllic woods.

Notes to the segments of the exhibition do explore themes of class divisions and disparities in urban and rural society, particularly the enclosure movement. One of the few functioning external links on the site leads to Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village," a poem that laments the devastating effects of enclosure on traditional rural life. At a time when children labored under dreadful conditions, faced imprisonment for petty crimes, and impoverishment was rampant in Britain, it seems ironic at best to make the general claim that affection rather than economics defined children's place in the family. The point is made in some of the exhibit segments, but not consistently presented throughout. For example, William Hogarth's 1751 engraving "First Stage of Cruelty," is placed in the segment Child's Play, Toys and Recreation. Another incongruous sequence has wealthy children playing with a hobby-horse in the midst of artworks on foundlings, orphans and moral instruction.

The segment Family and Sentiment is a jumble of didactic paintings and engravings on different subjects, in which the reader would benefit from more detailed notes on each work than the bare exhibit tags with title and artist. Children, Class, and Countryside displays seven artworks that depict romanticized rural poverty, idealized children, satire, and nostalgic rural scenes. The notes describe a coherent view of how British artists represented class and economic issues of the day, but the artworks are too random and unexplained to really illustrate the movement. Some of the notes completely contradict the displayed items. The Georgian Family segment discusses middle class families as leaders in the changing family structure, but the paintings display what seem to be aristocratic family portraits, except for two, as near as the viewer can tell.

Among the most interesting and revealing features of the site is the interview with the curator of the original exhibit, James Steward. He explains how this collection fits within the body of European art, and how the paintings, drawings, and engravings selected for the exhibit exemplify a departure from earlier European and British art in a way that should be better reflected in the collection displayed and the introductions to each segment. His statements about the background in literature and economic changes in Britain give greater credence to the historical significance of the exhibit than the notes on each segment.

A feature of the site that is still functional is the Self-Guided Tour for Young People and their Families. Only four paintings in the exhibit are illuminated by a few sentences of explanation and 4–5 guiding questions for examination of the image, and definitions of artistic terminology. The questions are open-ended and without expert answers, however, and the images are too small for careful examination. Five of the exhibit segments are not represented by this feature.

This site surely highlights an important period and location in the history of childhood—post-Enlightenment Britain in the midst of its early industrialization. The site is a good source of images that illustrate social and intellectual trends among largely upper-class people and the artists they patronized. The site does not provide convincing evidence, however, for the over-generalized claims made in its curatorial text segments. The complete exhibit may have done so effectively when it was mounted in 1995, but the site built to accompany it is ineffectively designed and poorly maintained.

The World Images site, a project of California State University, is designed for simplicity of use if not aesthetic elegance. It is a utilitarian database well suited to teachers, professors, or students looking for presentation images licensed for educational use on a comprehensive range of subjects including photography, painting, illustration, and material culture with global geographic representation.

The image collections are arranged as thumbnail panes on the home page, each hyperlinked to a list of portfolios that indicate how many images each contains. The site holds an archive of 72,000 images organized into 867 portfolios, and a tutorial shows how to create Community Portfolios. Users can browse the collection using keywords, artists, topics, titles, regions, or periods in quick or advanced search modes. Search results can be viewed as titles with hyperlinked acquisition numbers, as thumbnail images with titles, or as small or zoomable images with their metadata.

Categories include institutional collections in the database, faculty collections, course materials, and a collection of image portfolios correlated to required history topics in the California Educational Standards for grades 4–10. Since these curricular requirements are fairly common across the U.S., and in world history beyond the U.S., this is a valuable resource for teachers.

World Images is rich in images related to children and youth. The "People and Portraits" portfolio contains three sub-categories on children with a total of 1,094 images, some overlapping. They include Children to 1500 (234), Children 1500-2000 (544), and Children of the World (316).

The first is fairly inclusive geographically, but includes many images from Western traditions. The second is almost entirely European and American, and the third includes North and South American, African, Asian, and European children's photos and a few artworks and artifacts. Much of the third collection is the work of photographer Kathleen Cohen.

The following search terms returned images on children and youth: "children" (1000), "childhood" (80), "girl" (382), "boy" (555 items), "infant" (119), and "family" (858). The metadata provided with each image includes title, artist or maker, historical period, region or country of origin, copyright holder of the image, and/or museum holding the object. The individual object view also shows what other collections include the object, and links to other objects by the same artist or unknown generic maker from that culture. The photographs are labeled with title, year, location, and photographer, but nothing further, though some of the titles are very descriptive.

The information associated with World Images is thus limited, providing no further contextualization, nor are there links to descriptive information on museum sites where some are housed, for example. For this reason, the works of art found through this website are starting points for research about children in history rather than destinations. Some images, however interesting, remain mysterious.

Teachers wanting to illustrate already researched lectures or activities with licensed images will find this site a rich resource, especially if the lack of detailed information on the images is not a problem. Interesting objects from the collection can stimulate fruitful discoveries of available research on the web or from books and articles. For example, an image of an ancient baby bottle led to a trove of online information about infant feeding through the centuries.

Teachers can also create thematic collections that can be used for primary source investigations. A number of art images show punishment of children's misbehavior, for example, and children at play, as well as infant equipment from various times and places. These images can be used as exercises in examining primary sources as if they were "found objects" at a site or in an archive.

World History Sources at the Center for History and New Media has extensive lessons, exercises, and scholarly models for analyzing primary sources, including photographs, that could provide tools for working with the rich sources available on this website. A feature called "You be the Historian" could be adapted to interrogating the images from the World Images collections, and would reveal much about childhood by investigating questions to ask, and suggesting how to find answers.

The 84 photographs in the Robert E. Williams Photographic Collection database were taken by Robert Williams, an African American who operated a photography studio, R. Williams and Son, in Augusta, Georgia from 1888 to roughly 1908. The photographs themselves date from 1872-1898, and thus span the brief period of post-civil war society when African Americans temporarily enjoyed augmented civic rights and social mobility before plunging into exacerbated racial segregation in the 1890s. The images document various aspects of the domestic, working, and religious lives of African Americans in Georgia. Children are featured both as central subjects and background observers in 34 photographs in the Collection. Williams captured them playing, toiling, getting baptized, and eating watermelon.

These arresting images document telling elements of African Americans' daily lives in Georgia during this period. Unfortunately, many of them are grainy or shadowy, making it difficult to decipher important detail in them, such as subject' facial expressions. The photographs are presented on the Collection’s site in thumbnail views in an unsearchable browse format, but since this the small database is small, scanning through them to find images dealing with children is feasible. Another alternative, however, is to search the collection from the Digital Library of Georgia web site. From there, a basic search of "Robert E.Williams children" turns up 34 images in the collection. Searching the items in this way also provides users with slightly more bibliographic information about the pieces (for example, more detailed titles) than are available on the Collection's own web site page.

The site provides no contextual material on the photographer, the circumstances under which the photos were taken, the generation of their titles, or the contemporary experiences of his subjects. Consequently, most instructors will need to refer students to other reading materials. For the latter point, another site at the University of Georgia, "Georgia African American History and Culture" would serve as a good starting point for further research.

In photographic collections from this period (for example, the "Images in Canada" collection), family portraits are prominently featured. Unusually, however, in the Williams Collection, only one photograph depicts what is explicitly labeled as a "family"; a second pictures a "family cabin". More often, the images' titles refer to "groups" of people, or state simply, "Photograph of an African American woman with six children. . . ." Similarly, there are no photographs of children in school. Instructors might initiate students' examination of children's history as treated in this site by asking them to consider why family portraiture—or school photographs—are so atypically under-represented here. Is their absence in some way a reflection of assumptions made by the person who titled the images, a manifestation of the photographer's choices, or evidence of his subjects' realities? Why might children have been more often presented in these photographs in other settings—for instance, playing or working—than in the settings of the school and the family?

One feature that makes this collection unusual is that, atypically for this time period, the photographer as well as his subjects were African American. Instructors might ask students to reflect upon whether they think this fact visibly affected the way children are depicted in such images as "Photograph of two children standing in front of house in Richmond County, Georgia, in late 19th century" and "Photograph of twin African American toddlers sitting in the grass and eating watermelon." These and other images from the site might fruitfully be studied alongside other contemporary primary sources documenting 19th-century African American history, including the Library of Congress's "Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection". Contemporaneous with Williams's photographs are several annual reports of the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children in the Murray Collection. Also included are appendices containing several letters by children themselves. Students might compare these disparate representations of 19th-century African American children’s lives and analyze the reasons for Williams' distinctive portrayal of children’s experiences.

A remarkable collection of historical images focused on biomedical and other scientific topics, the Wellcome Images website is a treasure trove for educators and students. Although there is not an emphasis on children’s and youth history, creative use of the site’s search engine allows scholars and students of the history of childhood some fascinating glimpses into changing presentations of children in various historical locations and eras. Moreover, there are many resources to facilitate education, particularly in the realms of medicine, biology, and the changing nature of scientific knowledge over time. This makes the Wellcome Images website a welcome addition to any educator’s toolbox for teaching.

Scholars of childhood histories will find that the site's built-in search function easy to use, and, by plugging in keywords such as "boy," "girl," and "child," a plethora of images will emerge that depict a variety of historical representations of children. Many European images depicting methods of child health care, ranging from the medieval to modern eras, are available on the site. There are also scores of 20th-century promotional posters available that reveal (mainly) British public health education efforts promoting preferred methods of child rearing and health care. Moreover, there are tens of advertisements from the past 200 years, depicting children as promotional tools for selling hygiene products. There is a wealth of photographs and manuscripts from the medieval and modern eras from India that illustrate changing attitudes toward children and health care.

The Wellcome Images website is easy to navigate, and all images are free for personal and academic use under Creative Commons sharing rules. The site has divided its collections into five categories: "Illness and Wellness," "Life," "Culture," "Nature," and "War." Each image may be downloaded in a low-resolution format that is acceptable for websites, multi-media presentations, and other educational presentation needs. Users who wish to purchase high-resolution scans and physical prints may do so, for a price. Moreover, users who register (for free) with the website may save images to a "Lightbox," in order to compile, organize, and view their collections at any time. This is a welcome addition to the website and allows users to collect a variety of images at once, then sort and organize them later.

A useful section of the website is the "Life" section. Curated with an emphasis on human body parts and historically shifting notions of human anatomy, images from this group would be excellent sources for educators who wish to illustrate the changing conceptions of biology throughout the ages. Images of x-rays and microscopic cell photography sit side-by-side with Victorian "cure-all" advertisements and early modern anatomical illustrations. Like the rest of the site, the user must select his or her own images and place them within a larger historical context. However, given the proper supplementary information, this section in particular would be a wonderful basis for illustrating historical trends in understanding human biology. Comparing and contrasting images of children and adults would allow scholars of childhood histories the opportunity to discern changing attitudes about the nature of children and their anatomies over time and space.

Educators may want to keep a couple of caveats in mind when using this site. First of all, the collection is not comprehensive, nor it is chronologically organized. It is a marvelous resource for image finding, but not a starting point for obtaining information about any subject matter. Second, there are some rather graphic depictions of warfare, medical procedures, and biological functions shown in some of the images. Adults may want to preview the site before having younger children conduct research. That being said, the Wellcome Images website is a wonderful resource for educators and students who are looking for some fascinating historical images of scientific understanding of youth across cultures and eras.