Photographs by John N. Choate mostly documenting the United States Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The images include portraits of students, parents, staff and other visitors, as well as interior and exterior images of the school, buildings, and classrooms. Choate also had a thriving commercial practice outside of the Indian School, producing studio portraiture as well many photographs of buildings, farms and industry in and around the town of Carlisle, as well as images of Dickinson College. Some of the photographs in the collection were made by other photographers and perhaps collected by Choate. A few copper plates prepared for publications are also included in the collection.
Biographical/Historical note:
John N. Choate (1848-1902) was a commercial photographer in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The United States opened its first non-reservation government-supported school there in 1879 under the supervision of Lt. Richard Henry Pratt. Choate photographed almost every student upon arrival and during their school career, as well as school activities, staff, and visiting chiefs and families. Choate remained the primary photographer for the Carlisle Indian School until his death in 1902.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 81-12
Reproduction Note:
Contact prints made by Smithsonian Institution, 1981.
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Additional Choate photographs held in National Anthropological Archives MS 4241, MS 4537, MS 4544, MS 4574, MS 4988, Photo Lot 73-8, and Photo Lot 90-1.
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 81-12, John N. Choate photographs of Carlisle Indian School, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Timber Yellow Robe (also called Chauncey Yellow Robe), Henry Standing Bear, and Wounded Yellow Robe (also called Richard Yellow Robe) soon after their arrival at Carlisle School
Creator:
Choate, John N., of Carlisle, Pennsylvania Search this
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.
Indians of North America -- Southern states Search this
Citation:
Photo Lot 90-1, George V. Allen collection of photographs of Native Americans and the American frontier, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Indians of North America -- Great Plains Search this
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Albumen prints
Cabinet photographs
Cartes-de-visite
Photographs
Studio portraits
Date:
circa 1879-1902
Scope and Contents note:
Photographs depicting students in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, many with handwritten notation identifying pictured individuals. Included are individual and group portraits showing Crow, Gros Ventre, Iowa, Omaha, Pawnee, Ponca, and San Felipe students. There are also some images of Carlisle School buildings, and one of a parade, made by Philadelphia photographer Charles Truscott.
Biographical/Historical note:
John N. Choate (1848-1902) was a commercial photographer in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The United States opened its first non-reservation government-supported school there in 1879 under the supervision of Lt. Richard Henry Pratt. From the opening of the Carlisle Indian School, Choate began photographing almost every student upon arrival and during their school career, as well as school activities, staff, and visiting chiefs and families. Choate remained the primary photographer for the Carlisle Indian School until his death in 1902.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 73-8, NAA MS 4778
Location of Other Archival Materials:
MS 4778, previously filed in Photo Lot 24, has been relocated and merged with Photo Lot 73-8. These photographs were also donated by Mrs. James Bradford Ritter and form part of this collection.
The National Anthropological Archives also holds the original John N. Choate Negatives (Photo Lot 81-12)
Additional Choate photographs from the Carlisle School can be found in the National Anthropological Archives in MS 4241, MS 4537, MS 4544, MS 4574, MS 4988, and Photo Lot 90-1.
See others in:
John N. Choate photographs of Carlisle School students, circa 1879-1902
Indians of North America -- Southwest, New Search this
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Lantern slides
Place:
Montezuma Castle National Monument (Ariz.)
Casa Grande (Ariz.)
Date:
circa 1871-1913
Scope and Contents note:
The collection includes hand-colored glass lantern slides collected by Dr. Carlos Montezuma and used for his lectures on Native American rights. Many of the photographs are portraits, some made at Ft. McDowell and Fort Apache. Other images show schools, reservations, dwellings, Charles Dickens (a Yavapai store owner), Montezuma's Castle, Casa Grande, and scenic views. A special series includes photographs made during a 1913 hunting and sightseeing trip that he organized, probably including photographs made by Montezuma's guests, John T. McCutcheon and Charles B. Gibson.
Some of the images were made by Charles (Carlos) Gentile, the photographer and benefactor of Montezuma in his early years. There are also several by Father Peter Paulus Prando and John N. Choate, and one portrait each by Napoleon Sarony and Matthew Brady. Otherwise, the photographers are unidentified.
Biographical/Historical note:
Carlos Montezuma (1866-1923, also called Wassaja) was an Native American activist and physician. He was Yavapai, though he often identified himself as Apache. He was captured by Pima Indians at a young age and sold in 1871 to Italian-immigrant and pioneer photographer Carlo (or Charles) Gentile, who adopted the child and took him to New York. Montezuma graduated from the University of Illinois (1884) and received his MD from the Chicago Medical College (1889). He developed a friendship with Richard Henry Pratt, head of the Carlisle Indian School, and took a post as reservation physician for the Bureau of Indian Services. During this time he developed an opposition to BIA policies and became an Native American advocate, speaking out against reservations. He gave numerous lectures on Native Americans at institutions around the United States, helped organize the Society of American Indians, and published a personal newsletter entitled Wassaja (1916-1922). In 1896, Montezuma established a medical practice in Chicago. He died in Arizona in 1923.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 73
Varying Form of Title:
Carlos Montezuma-Doris Collester Collection of Lantern Slides
General note:
The handwriting on the slides has been identified as that of Dr. Carlos Montezuma by John Larner, the editor of Montezumaʹs papers. Information in this catalog record has been taken from Cesare Marino, Solving the Mystery: The Carlos Montezuma-Doris Collester Collection of Lantern Slides in the NAA : Report of Background Research and Interview with Mrs. Doris Collester, Donor of the Carlos Montezuma Collection of Hand-tinted Lantern Slides to the Smithsonian Institution, conducted in Williamstown, West Virginia, August 2013.
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Correspondence from Montezuma is held in the National Anthropological Archives in the records of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
Carlos Montezuma's papers are held in the Newberry Library, Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections; Arizona State University Libraries, Charles Trumbull Hayden Library; and University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections.
