By BARBARA BRYANT
This is another in a series of occasional articles about the Library's new acquisitions or newly available collections.
Tribal leaders Geronimo and Red Cloud, early 20th century images of the Crow Fair, an annual tribal event still celebrated in Montana and Native American participants in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. These are just a few of the 3,200 photographs recently made available to researchers in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.
These images, taken from 1863 to 1940, are part of the Library's collection of Native American photographs. More than 8,000 have been processed and cataloged.
"Nearly all of the photographs in this recently cataloged group were produced for commercial purposes and were deposited in the Library for copyright protection. They were produced as tourist souvenirs, photographic postcards, magazine engravings and cabinet [display] cards," said Sarah Rouse, cataloger in the Prints and Photographs division. Others were obtained through gift, exchange, transfer and purchase. The latest group of images consists of silver gelatin prints and contains many formal and informal portraits of individuals and groups. Others depict tribal ceremonies, dances, games, scenes of daily life and structures.
"This is a rich collection for research on numerous topics, including the people in the photographs, the photographers and why the photographs were taken," added Arden Alexander, cataloger in the Prints and Photographs division.
The collection has received a great deal of attention from the media and others. For example, the August, 1992, _Esquire_ ran an article featuring the work of Gertrude Kasebier, who photographed Sioux Indians performing with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in New York in 1900 or 1901. Several makers of documentary films have used materials from the collection for TV programs. They include PBS, Turner Broadcasting, Nebraska Educational TV and Pathway Productions, which is making an eight-hour documentary produced by Kevin Costner to be aired on CBS.
Native Americans have also made extensive use of the collections. Many tribal members have examined photographs pertaining to their family history, including representatives from the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Oklahoma, the Western Shoshone Nation of Nevada and the Colville-Confederated Tribe of Washington state.
Well-known photographers represented in the collection include Frank Bennett Fiske of the firm of Heyn & Matzen, Katherine Taylor Dodge and Edward S. Curtis and his brother, Asahel Curtis. The Prints and Photographs Division has more than 2,300 of Edward Curtis's photographs, fewer than half of which are featured in a 20-volume set of his photogravure portraits and scenes, The North American Indian, which was published between 1907 and 1930 and enjoyed renewed popularity during the 1960s.
"The Curtis photographs are striking and by far the most popular collection requested by patrons in search of Indian photographs," said Jennifer Brathovde, reference librarian and the division's Native American specialist. "But many of his shots are posed, very romanticized, and the details are not always accurate. He frequently cropped images to create a sentimental mood, and he sometimes had subjects exchange their blue jeans and cowboy shirts for tribal clothes that belonged to an entirely different tribe."
Some of the oldest photos of this group were taken circa 1863 by A. Zeno Shindler, a Philadelphia photographer who moved to Washington, D.C., in the 1860s. "He took many of the delegation photos made by D.C. photographers during that decade," said Ms. Rouse. "Most of them were formal studio portraits, and the men -- they were always men -- wore combinations of their own clothes and tribal accessories Shindler had collected."
A unique album of photographs from the early 1870s by photographer Charles Gentile depicts Native Americans in Arizona, including Mohave, Maricopa, Pima and Apache people. The photographs show students and teachers at an "Indian school," Maricopa leader Juan Chivaria and his family and Hohakam ruins at Casa Grande.
Photographer Vince Dillon's postcards, which date from 1914 to 1923, feature performers with the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Wild West Show in Oklahoma. Included are pictures of Oglala chief Iron Tail (one of the models for the Indian head nickel), Standing Elk, Black Hawk and many others. Some postcards show obviously staged scenes of "war dances" and "councils."
A group of cabinet cards of Hunkpapa leaders taken by David F. Barry in the late 19th century depict Chief Rain in the Face and his wife, and Sitting Bull with his children. Another image in the group show a census being taken at Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
Inuit people in fishing camps, at church, carving ivory and participating in the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle appear in Frank H. Nowell's turn-of-the-century photographs. Most of these images were taken in the vicinity of Nome, Alaska.
Another lot of photographs includes two portraits of Lucy Thompson (her tribal name was Che-na-wha Weitch-ah-wah), author of To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yukon Woman, published in 1919.
Another group of photographs that bore the caption "U.S. troops surrounding the Indians on Wounded Knee Battlefield," turned out to be somewhat misleading. Research disclosed that these pictures were actually taken during the filming of the movie "The Indian Wars" that was produced by Buffalo Bill Cody in 1913 at the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
These newly cataloged photographs may not represent all of the Library's images of Native Americans. "We have a backlog of 10 million items in our arrearages" of all types of photos, explained Elizabeth Parker, assistant chief of the Prints and Photographs Division.
The decision to catalog the 3,500 Native American images was based in part on the impending retirement of Jerry Kearns, a reference specialist on Native Americans. Mr. Kearns, who worked in the division for more than 30 years, organized and identified many of the images. This was just one of many steps in a complicated process the Prints and Photographs staff completed to describe, index, and protect each image.
Researchers are invited to peruse the detailed catalog descriptions of the images before requesting permission to review specific lots.
"We're always looking for ways to protect the images, which can be damaged from frequent handling," said Ms. Brathovde. "The expanded description of the newly processed collection includes much more detailed information than previously described material. Now researchers can more precisely identify relevant collections by perusing the lengthy descriptions, which note such information as tribe, subject names, activity, time period and location. It's similar to reviewing an abstract of an article before reading the article. We hope that by offering a detailed description of the images ... we can reduce search and retrieval time while protecting the collection."
In addition to adding catalog records of these images to the Visual Materials file in MUMS (the Library's cataloging data base, which is now available to researchers worldwide over the Internet), the Library has made them available to bibliographic networks nationwide via MARC tapes.
The Prints and Photographs Division staffers are proud of the Native American collection and believe that it fills an important niche.
"The copyright deposits have provided us with an important and unique source of these materials," said Ms. Brathovde. "Our collection is very strong in the privately produced, commercial and stylized, type of photography on this subject produced at the turn of the century. It's far different from the Smithsonian's collection, which is heavily anthropological, and that of the National Archives, which holds the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other federal agency photographs, most of which document relations between Native Americans and whites."
William H. Geotzmann's book, The First Americans: Photographs from the Library of Congress, contains many photographs in the collection of Native American images. The index lists negative numbers, which patrons can use to order copies of photos.
"Our collection of Native American images is a unique and valuable resource for researchers," added Ms. Parker, "and a wonderful record of an exciting period in the nation's history."