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Beef Issue at Spotted Tail's Agency, Nebraska
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…
Aboriginal Life among the Navajoe Indians, near Old Fort Defiance, N.M. [sic]
O'Sullivan took the photograph displayed here during Lt. George M. Wheeler's (1842-1905) 1873 survey of eastern Nevada and Arizona. Wheeler twice described O'Sullivan's domestic image, once in 1874 and again in 1889, and his remarks reflect the…
Koyemshi, or Mudheads, in Plaza, Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico
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…
Ute Teepee, Los Pios Agency, Colorado
In Mesa, Canon, and Pueblo, Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859-1928) described the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest as "peaceable and industrious, quiet farmers by profession, as they were when the world first found them." Lummis clearly intended to…
Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde, Colorado
Lummis spent his entire career promoting the Southwest and its "Original Americans." An obituary in the Los Angeles Times described the American explorer, author, and amateur photographer as "one of the first writers to realize that the history of…
William S. Hart Paramount Studio Portrait
Perhaps attracted by the theatrics of Wild West shows, the early film industry enthusiastically embraced the Western genre. William S. Hart (1870-1946) was a Shakespearian stage actor who became a celebrity of Westerns in the silent film era,…
Geronimo's Final Buffalo Hunt at the 101 Ranch near Ponca City, Oklahoma
Kentucky native Colonel George Washington Miller (d. 1903) established the 101 Ranch in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in 1879. Through acquisitions and lease agreements with the Ponca, Tonkawa, and Osage Indians, the ranch grew from a modest 2,000…
A Rodeo Performance in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show
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.…
Buffalo Bill Cody and General Nelson A. Miles Surveying Wounded Knee with Captains Frank Baldwin and Marion P. Maus, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota
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…
Reno Ford of the Little Bighorn with Vignette Inset of Captain Frederick Benteen and Reno's Crossing with Vignette Inset of Major Marcus Reno, Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana
On June 25, 1876, General George A. Custer led the Seventh Calvary into battle against Sioux and Cheyenne Indians along the Little Bighorn River in Montana. The utter defeat of Custer and his men at "Custer's Last Stand" is one of the defining…