Indians of North America -- Great Basin Search this
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Albums
Photographs
Date:
circa 1877
Scope and Contents note:
Albums probably assembled by William Henry Jackson, mostly containing portraits of Native American delegates in Washington, D.C. and photographs made on US Geological Surveys (including the Hayden and Powell surveys). Photographs from the field include John K. Hillers' photographs of the Southwest, photographs of Fort Laramie (possibly by Alexander Gardner), Orloff R. Westmann's photographs of Taos Pueblo, and Jackson's photographs of Crow, Shoshoni, Pawnee, and Nez Perce Tribes and related sites. Most of the photographs were made circa 1860s-1870s.
The albums were probably by Jackson while working under Ferdinand V. Hayden for the United States Geological Survey of the Territories. The reason for their creation is uncertain, though it may have been a project set up by Hayden or a continuation of William Henry Blackmore's tradition of publishing albums. Some of the albums include captions pasted from Jackson's Descriptive Catalogue of Photographs of North American Indians (1877) while others have handwritten captions.
Biographical/Historical note:
William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) was an American painter, photographer and explorer. Born in New York, he sold drawings and retouched photographs from an early age. After serving in the Civil War, he opened a photography studio in Omaha, Nebraska, with his brother Edward. As photographer for the US Geological and Geographical Surveys (1870-1878), he documented the American west and published the first photographs of Yellowstone. When the surveys lost funding in 1879, Jackson opened a studio in Denver, Colorado, and also worked for various railroad companies. Many of Jackson's photographs were displayed at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago (1893), for which he was the official photographer.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 4420
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Original negatives for many of the photographs in this collection can be found in the National Anthropological Archives in the BAE historical negatives.
The National Museum of the American Indian Archives holds William Henry Jackson photographs and negatives.
Additional Jackson photographs held in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 4605, MS 4801, Photo Lot 14, Photo Lot 24, Photo Lot 29, Photo Lot 37, Photo Lot 40, Photo Lot 60, Photo Lot 93, Photo lot 143, Photo Lot 87-2P, Photo Lot 87-20, and Photo Lot 90-1.
Correspondence from Jackson held in the National Anthropological Archives in MS 4517, MS 4881, MS 4821, and collections of personal papers.
Indians of North America -- Southern states Search this
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Citation:
Photo Lot 4420, William Henry Jackson photograph albums based on his Descriptive Catalogue of Photographs of North American Indians, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Notes and texts on Stockbridge collected by Truman Michelson during his fieldwork in Wisconsin in 1914, with handwritten copies of his notes made by Frank Speck during the 1940s and 1950s. Michelson's notes consist mainly of vocabularies with small amounts of data on the history, population, and racial composition of the tribe and brief notes on the people who knew the language. A few words were collected from a Brotherton informant. The Stockbridge texts include strict interlineal translations and separate free translations. Speck's copies of the notes are in an order different from Michelson's originals. They are incomplete, in part because Speck omitted some vocabulary items when informants agreed as to their form. Speck's material also includes a copy of the report on Michelson's work in Explorations and field work of the Smithsonian Institution, 1914, pages 90-93 (1 page typescript).
All Stockbridge texts are by Jameson "Sot" Quinney, with some translated by William Dick. Other people that Michelson worked with include Lucius Dick (Brotherton), Edwin Miller, Alfred Miller, Sterling Peters, Agnes Butler (previously cataloged as Agnus Butler), and Bernice Robertson (previously cataloged as Robinson; see note below).
Local Numbers:
NAA MS 2734
Local Note:
Regarding Bernice Robertson's surname: In Michelson's notes, Bernice Robertson's name appears with "Robertson" crossed out and "Robinson" written in. According to Ives Goddard (2007, November 20), "Frank T. Siebert, Jr., collected some words from the same woman in 1935, and he refers to her as Bernice Robertson in notes he sent to Morris Swadesh (APS, Swadesh papers, Freeman Guide #2081 or 2083). I also heard him mention her many times, since he liked to point out that she was one of the last speakers of Mahican even though to look at her she was African American. In his own field notes (1937) Swadesh first wrote Robison and Robeson, but changed this to Robinson. (Robison is a possible mishearing of Roberston, if this name is unfamiliar; less likely that Swadesh would not have caught the common name Robinson.) In his typed list of informants, however, he writes 'Bernice Robertson' (APS as above)."
