Browse Items (32 total)

In 1901, Seattle photographer Curtis conceived the most ambitious photographic project to document the lives and customs of American Indians, whom he called the "vanishing race." He received funding in 1906 from American banker J. Pierpont Morgan…

The upper-class Cameron and her husband emigrated from Britain to Terry, Montana, in 1889 to try their hand at ranching. Cameron learned photography there and, when ranching proved unprofitable, was able to sell her photographic work locally to make…

More than five hundred American Indians from thirty-five tribes attended the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska. American ethnographer James Mooney (1868-1921) of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology hired Omaha native…

The Ghost Dance movement began in Nevada in 1889, promising American Indians the coming of a messiah who would vanquish the whites and aid in restoring the natives' way of life. The Ghost Dance quickly spread east to the Sioux reservations in North…

Many U.S. treaties with American Indians included promises of food and clothing because the tribes were often prohibited from entering their traditional hunting grounds. This photograph shows members of the Sioux Nation collecting beef rations at an…

In the photograph displayed here, Hillers demonstrates his ability to compose ethnographic views with an artistic sensibility. He uses light and darkness to dramatic effect, positioning a dense shadow diagonally across the bottom of the view that…

Tuell was a self-taught photographer who lived with her schoolteacher husband on Cheyenne and Sioux reservations in Montana and South Dakota. She taught home economics at reservation schools and in her spare time documented the social customs and…

Arguably, no one did more to perpetuate the romantic ideal of the West in the American consciousness than William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917). Cody was a true Westerner, having worked as a messenger for the Pony Express, as a scout for the U.S.…

Students were responsible for planning the College of New Jersey's first geological survey to the American West in 1877. The highly organized affair led to many discoveries and publications in the fields of paleontology and topography. The students…

Coastal northern Oregon was the traditional territory of the Siletz Indians. In 1856, the U.S. government forced the Siletz to absorb at least twelve other Oregon tribes on the reservation created from their homeland. Within just fifty years, the…