Library catalog records often do not adequately describe the contents of books or of the illustrative materials they contain and it is often difficult to locate drawings or photographs (and far more difficult to find specific ones). Equally troublesome to historians is finding material on individual Indians scattered through numerous books. This work remedies these twin problems as they relate to books about the Great Plains Indians.

The index (first published by McFarland in 2004 in hardcover) has two uses: it guides readers to photographs, drawings, maps and other illustrative materials that appear in 340 selected books about Native Americans published within the previous 90 years. And it guides researchers to more than 1,200 biographical references to individuals found in these books. Tribes covered include the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Omaha, Pawnee, Sioux, and Winnebago, among many others.