The collection consists of photographs relating to Native Americans, which were submitted to the copyright office of the Library of Congress in and around the early 20th century. Many of the photographs are studio portraits as well as photographs made as part of expeditions and railroad surveys. It includes images of people, dwellings and other structures, agriculture, arts and crafts, burials, ceremonies and dances, games, food preparation, transportation, and scenic views. Some of the photographs were posed to illustrate literary works, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha, while others depict paintings or other artwork.
Collection is organized alphabetically by copyright claimant.
Biographical/Historical note:
The collection was formed from submissions made to the Library of Congress as part of the copyright registration process. In 1949, arrangements were made to allow the Bureau of American Ethnology to copy the collection and some negatives were made at that time, largely from the Heyn and Matzen photographs. The project was soon abandoned, however, as too large an undertaking for the facilities of the BAE. In 1957-1958, arrangements were begun by William C. Sturtevant of the BAE to transfer a set of the photographs from the Library of Congress to the BAE.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 59
Provenance:
In 1965, the Bureau merged with the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology to form the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology, and in 1968 the Office of Anthropology Archives transformed into the National Anthropological Archives.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Rights:
Contact the repository for terms of use.
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Citation:
Photo Lot 59, Library of Congress Copyright Office photograph collection of Native Americans, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Indians of North America -- Great Plains Search this
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Copy prints
Photographs
Place:
Alaska
Date:
1893-1926
Scope and Contents note:
Photographs depicting Blackfeet, Cree, Sarsi, Eskimo, and Chukchi people, as well as boats, interiors of igloos, and a camp. Many of the photographs are studio portraits. One series was made by Diamond Jenness on Little Diomede Island in 1926 and another by R. M. Anderson on the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-1916. Photographers represented in the collection include David F. Barry. J. B. Tyrell, F. W. Waugh, and J. D. Soper.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot R81N
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Additional Barry photographs held in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 90-1, Photo Lot 4605, Photo Lot 87-2P, Photo Lot 24, and in the BAE historical negatives.
Additional Jenness photographs held in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 8, and correspondence from him is held in the National Anthropological Archives in MS 7053, the Henry Bascom Collins, Jr. papers, the Frederica de Laguna papers, the Ales Hrdlicka papers, the John Peabody Harrington papers, the Society for American Archaeology records, and the Bureau of American Ethnology records.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Rights:
This copy collection has been obtained for reference purposes only. Copies may be obtained from the National Museum of Canada.
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Citation:
Photo lot R81N, Copies of National Museum of Canada photograph collection relating to American Indians, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Microfilm of the Benjamin Stone collection of photographs relating to Britain and Europe, North America, South America, Africa, India, and Australasia. Prints made from the microfilm are mostly of portraits of American Indians and some field images relating to delegations, expeditions, dwellings, and the 1862 Sioux uprising in Minnesota. They include depictions of Arikara, Ojibwa, Miniconjou, Dakota, Pawnee, Winnebago, Iroquois, Ute, Blackfoot, Cree, Crow, Salish, and Kootenai Indians. There are also images of buildings, boats, railroads, and scenic views from around America, as well as the Smithsonian Castle in 1871 and Chicago after the Great Fire. Photographers represented include B. H. Gurnsey, Joel Emmons Whitney, and Adrian J. Ebell.
Biographical/Historical note:
Sir John Benjamin Stone (1838-1914) was born in Birmingham, England, to a glass-making family, a profession he briefly joined before starting a career in politics. He was elected representative of the Duddlestone Ward on the Birmingham Town Coucil in 1869, later becoming Mayor Cutton (1886-1891) and Member of Parliament for East Birmingham (1895-1910). Inspired by a love of antiquities, Stone began to collect and then make photographs during his international travels to East Asia, the West Indies, Africa, and North and South America. As the first president of the Birmingham Photographic Society, he encouraged the development of the Warwickshire Photographic Survey. Additionally, he helped found the National Photographic Record Association, and served as President of the organization. During his time in Parliament, Stone made a photographic survey of the Palace of Westminster and was official photographer for the Coronation of King Geroge V in 1910. His photographs were published in the two-volume Sir Benjamin Stone's Pictures (1905).
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot R4859
Reproduction Note:
Prints made by the Smithsonian Institution, 1969.
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Some photographs have been separated into Photo Lot 24. These photographs are represented by item-level descriptions linked to this record.
Contained in:
Numbered manuscripts 1850s-1980s (some earlier)
See others in:
Copies of photographs in the Benjamin Stone collection, circa 1862-1907 (bulk circa 1862-1871)
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Rights:
Copy prints of photographs in the Birmingham Public Library in Birmngham, England. Reference copies can be made for Smithsonian Institution staff only. Permission to publish and other prints can be obtained from the Birmingham Public Library.
50 Stereographs (circa 50 printed stereographs, halftone and color halftone)
1,000 Stereographs (circa, albumen and silver gelatin (some tinted))
239 Prints (circa 239 mounted and unmounted prints, albumen (including cartes de visite, imperial cards, cabinet cards, and one tinted print) and silver gelatin (some modern copies))
96 Prints (Album :, silver gelatin)
21 Postcards (silver gelatin, collotype, color halftone, and halftone)
Photographs relating to Native Americans or frontier themes, including portraits, expedition photographs, landscapes, and other images of dwellings, transportation, totem poles, ceremonies, infants and children in cradleboards, camps and towns, hunting and fishing, wild west shows, food preparation, funeral customs, the US Army and army posts, cliff dwellings, and grave mounds and excavations. The collection also includes images of prisoners at Fort Marion in 1875, Sioux Indians involved in the Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota, the Fort Laramie Peace Commission of 1868, Sitting Bull and his followers after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
There are studio portraits of well-known Native Americans, including American Horse, Big Bow, Four Bears, Iron Bull, Ouray, Red Cloud, Red Dog, Red Shirt, Sitting Bull, Spotted Tail, Three Bears, and Two Guns White Calf. Depicted delegations include a Sauk and Fox meeting in Washington, DC, with Lewis V. Bogy and Charles E. Mix in 1867; Kiowas and Cheyennes at the White House in 1863; and Dakotas and Crows who visited President Warren G. Harding in 1921. Images of schools show Worcester Academy in Vinita, Oklahoma; Chilocco Indian School; Carlisle Indian Industrial School; Haskell Instittue, and Albuquerque Indian School.
Some photographs relate to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876; World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893; Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, 1903; and Centennial Exposition of the Baltimore and Ohio Railraod, 1876. Expedition photographs show the Crook expedition of 1876, the Sanderson expedition to the Custer Battlefield in 1877, the Wheeler Survey of the 1870s, Powell's surveys of the Rocky Mountain region during the 1860s and 1870s, and the Hayden Surveys.
Outstanding single views include the party of Zuni group led to the sea by Frank Hamilton Cushing; Episcopal Church Rectory and School Building, Yankton Agency; Matilda Coxe Stevenson and a companion taking a photographs of a Zuni ceremony; John Moran sketching at Acoma; Ben H. Gurnsey's studio with Indian patrons; Quapaw Mission; baptism of a group of Paiutes at Coeur d'Alene Mission; court-martial commission involved in the trial of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 1877; President Harding at Sitka, Alaska; Walter Hough at Hopi in 1902; and Mrs. Jesse Walter Fewkes at Hopi in 1897.
Biographical/Historical note:
George V. Allen was an attorney in Lawrence, Kansas and an early member of the National Stereoscope Association. Between the 1950s and 1980s, Allen made an extensive collection of photographs of the American West, mostly in stereographs, but also including cartes-de-visite and other styles of mounted prints, photogravures, lantern slides, autochromes, and glass negatives.
Photo Lot 90-1, George V. Allen collection of photographs of Native Americans and the American frontier, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
The collection consists of photographs collected by the Albertype Company for their postcards and viewbooks, including portraits, scenery, camps, Native Americans schools, and some paintings and composites for postcard printing. Additional subjects include rock drawings in Maine; a statue in Kansas City, Missouri; Standing Rock Monument in North Dakota; people in Atlin, British Columbia; Carib rock drawings in the Virgin Islands; and totem poles in Vancouver.
Included are works of Charles Milton Bell, E. A. Benson, C. R. Bourne, H. E. Brown, William Bull, H. H. Clarke, George B. Cornish, Frank Bennett Fiske, H. Lee Flood, N. W. Halsey, Fred Harvey, H. R. Hazeltine, Kiser Photograph Company, W. H. Martin, C. W. Mathers, Frank Matsura, W. H. Matthewson, Charles E. Morris, Ernest Moses, J. S. Myers, M. OʹConnor, G. W. Parsons, Roland W. Reed, C. B. Robinson , J. E. Stimson, W. M. Stoltz, and H. H. Watkins. Clarke and Fiske, however, are the only photographers with more than a few images.
Biographical/Historical note:
The Albertype Company, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, published viewbooks and postcards for national distribution. Founded by Adolph and Herman Witteman, the company began publishing souvenier photographic albums as early as 1867. The Wittemans established Witteman Brothers in 1885, and then the Albertype Company in 1890. From 1890 to 1950, the firm published collotypes made from the photographs of its agents (including Adolph Witteman), other companies, and independent photographers. The firm was purchased in 1952 by Art Vue Post Card Company.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 25
Reproduction Note:
Modern copy negatives and prints made by Smithsonian Institution, circa 1972.
Location of Other Archival Materials:
The Library of Congress, Wisconsin Historical Society, and Historical Society of Pennsylvania also hold original Albertype Company prints and negatives.
Albertype Company views are also held in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 88-37, Photo Lot 92-37, and Photo Lot 92-3.
Restrictions:
Original nitrate negatives are in cold storage and require advanced notice for viewing. Modern copy prints and copy negatives for nearly all images are available.
Studio portraits made by the James E. McClees Studio and published by the Blackmore Museum, depicting Native American visitors to Washington, D.C. The series is identified by an 1863 broadside in the collection as "Photographs of some of the principal Chiefs of the North American Indians, made when they have visited Washington as deputations from their Tribes." Yankton, Sisseton, Mdewakanton, Wahpeton, Pawnee, Potawatomi, Sauk and Fox, Ponca, and Ojibwa people are represented. Three additional portraits depict men (possibly Cree) and were probably made by a different photographer.
Biographical/Historical note:
James Earl McClees (1821-1887) trained as a daguerreotypist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before opening a studio in Washington, D.C. in 1857. He was an early user of paper photographic processes and was well-known for photographing delegations of American Indians. His Washington studio, known as the James E. McClees Studio, operated in 1857-1858 with Julian Vannerson (1827-?) and Samuel Cohner as its most established operators. The studio was taken over by Robert W. Addis in 1858. Among Addis's proprietors was Antonio Zeno Schindler, an artist who made copies of photographs for English philanthropist and collector William Blackmore (1827-1878). Blackmore purchased the McClees Studio's negatives from Shindler, later transferring them to the Smithsonian. The Bureau of American Ethnology absorbed the photographs upon its formation in 1878-1879.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 4286
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Additional McClees Studio and Vannerson photographs held in the National Anthropological Archives in the BAE historical negatives and Photo Lot 4420.
Glass negatives relating to William Henry Blackmore, including copies of photographs collected by Blackmore, held in the British Museum and in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 31 and the BAE historical negatives.
Artifacts collected by Blackmore held in the anthropology collections of the National Museum of Natural History in accessions 1846, 2371, and 1826.
Photo Lot 4286, James E. McClees Studio photographs of Native American delegates to Washington DC, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Photographs of sketches and paintings made by Paul Kane in 1845-1856, including portraits and scenes of camps, dances, and a buffalo hunt, relating to the Ojibwa, Ottawa, Menominee, Potawatomi, Eastern Sioux, Cree, Assiniboine, Chinook, Cowlitz, Clallam, Cowichan and Babine. The sketchbook, of which the microfilm may be incomplete, includes many of the same subjects as the paintings, as well as artifacts, scenic views and scenes from Kane's studies in Europe. The collection also includes a photostat of the catalog published in Kane's "Wanderings of an Artist..." and a typed list of the captions for the sketches.
Biographical/Historical note:
Paul Kane (1810-1871) was born in Ireland and emigrated to Toronto (then called York) when he was nine. He worked as a decorative furniture painter before turning to portrait painting and studying art at centers throughout Europe. Inspired by George Catlin's paintings documenting the Plains Indians, Kane set out on an expedition from Fort William (Thunder Bay) to Fort Vancouver to document the peoples of the Northwest. From 1845-1848, Kane traveled amongst tribes of the Great Plains, Pacific Northwest, and elsewhere, sketching and describing his experiences in a journal. When Kane returned to Toronto, he published "Wanderings of an artist among the Indians of North America" (1859) and made over 100 paintings based on his journal sketches, commissioned by George William Allen. The entire Allen collection was later purchased by Sir Edmund Osler and donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 4428, NAA Photo Lot 4427
Reproduction Note:
Copy prints and microfilm made by the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology.
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Photographs previously filed in Photo Lot 4427, have been relocated and merged with Photo Lot 4428. These are photographs of paintings by Kane in the Royal Ontario Museum and were donated with the photographs of sketches already filed in this collection.
Additional photographs of paintings by Kane held in National Anthropological Archives MS 4642 and the BAE historical negatives.
Contained in:
Numbered manuscripts 1850s-1980s (some earlier)
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Rights:
Restrictions: Publication rights granted to Bureau of American Ethnology or Smithsonian Institution staff members for use of small selections of the material; collection not to be published in its entirety. Royal Ontario Museum wishes to be informed when and where illustrations are used. Persons outside the Smithsonian Institution must obtain publication permission as well as photographic prints from the Royal Ontario Museum; the Smithsonian may not make copy negatives for the general distribution of prints.
Notebook (labelled "1935 VI") containing Albany Ojibwa notes and Weenusk (Winusk) Cree text collected by Truman Michelson during his field research in the region of James Bay and Hudson Bay in 1935. Michelson obtained Albany Ojibwa vocabulary and ethnological notes from John Martin, with William Allan, a Cree speaker, serving as an interpreter. The notebook also contains a sample Cree syllabic text from a Weenusk woman at Moosonee; a phonetic text version dictated by a Roman missionary; and an English translation from Allan based on a reading of the Weenusk text by Harvey Smallboy, a Moose Cree speaker. Also present are two loose leaf pages with slightly different versions of the English translation and phonetic text.
Local Numbers:
NAA MS 3401
Local Note:
Title changed from "Cree and Chippewa Linguistic (and Ethnological) material 1935" 6/3/2014.
Photographs made by Humphrey Lloyd Hime for the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858. Photographs show the Red River and prairie, settlements, farms, churches, watercraft, Cree and Ojibwa communities and individuals, and graves. The collection contains images of human remains.
Scope and Contents note:
Photographs made by Humphrey Lloyd Hime during the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858, depicting Lord Selkirk's Settlement on the Red River of the North. They include images of Cree and Ojibwa people, settlements, dwellings, camps, churches, watercraft, and graves.
Arrangement note:
Photographs are numbered and arranged in sections accordance with their order in Henry Youle Hind's 1860 folio, Photographs take at Lord Selkirk's Settlement of the Red River of the North. Section titles are also from folio.
Biographical Note:
Humphrey Lloyd Hime (1833-1903) was a photographer and surveyor with the firm "Armstrong, Beere, and Hime, Civil Engineers, Draughtsmen and Photographists" in Toronto, Ontario. In 1958 Hime was hired as the photographer for Henry Youle Hind's Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition.
Historical Note:
The Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858 was commissioned by the Canadian Government to establish a reliable trade route between Lake Superior and the Red River. The Hudson's Bay Company's permit to trade exclusively in the Canadian interior was set to expire in 1859. To procure an extension, a thorough investigation of the area to document its topography, vegetation, native life, and settlement potential was required. Under the charge of Professor Henry Youle Hind, a geologist and naturalist at Trinity College in Toronto, the explorers were instructed to obtain comprehensive geographic information that would help to create maps illustrating the natural and cultural features of the land between the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine rivers.
Note on Description:
Collection and image descriptions provided in this finding aid were compiled using the best available sources of information. Such sources include the creator's annotations or descriptions, collection accession files, primary and secondary source material (i.e. documents, publications, and websites), and subject matter experts. While every effort is made to provide accurate information, it is understood that errors may reveal themselves following review by other subject experts, and new information is welcome.
Photo Lot 4285, Humphrey Lloyd Hime Photographs of the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
