If you're having trouble finding American Indian ancestors, you'll be glad to learn reservations took annual censuses between 1885 and 1940 at the behest of the federal government — and Ancestry.com has added those records to its US Deluxe subscription ($179.40 per year).

You can search by name, tribe, birth date, family members and other parameters. Those census rolls, also on microfilm M595 at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) <archives.gov>, serve as a good starting place for genealogists investigating American Indian ancestry. (To use the film, you have to know what tribe your ancestor belonged to.)