Drawings in the Collection
Gertrude Käsebier's Indian Portraits
Video Transcription
There are fifteen drawings that accompany the Gertrude Käsebier photographs of the Sioux Indian performers with the Wild West and they're very much a surprise. As a historian of photography, they were unexpected because there are many collections—anthropological collections—that highlight the pictograph drawings of Indians over the course of many, many decades. But these images are made by the Sioux Indian performers for the Wild West Show and they do not depict the show itself, but they depict just what would be familiar to them in their home setting. The tipis where they live, the buffalo, the deer, the horses, cowboys, and some images of dancing, and also some that are termed "catch girls." Sammy Lone Bear and Joe Black Fox in particular draw some images of blanketed figures, male and female, and that whole ritual of courtship is portrayed in there. But nothing like what they would experience as performers in the arena recreating battles or participating in races during the Buffalo Bill Wild West.
These were very much quick, I think, drawings that were done while waiting to be photographed, but they really do capture what might be very important for these individual men. Thinking about the Plains and thinking about their lives there, they were taking a moment to draw what they wanted to. And it wasn't the city that they were in currently, and it wasn't themselves as performers, or the scene of performing. It was very much something that they chose at that moment to share with their new friend, Gertrude Käsebier.
And so there are fifteen of these drawings. There's one wonderful image of Chief Iron Tail, Joe Black Fox, Sammy Lone Bear, and Phillip Standing Soldier at one table. And I'm thinking, did Käsebier give them materials? Did she just bring out some paper and some pencils to keep them busy? What was going on in the studio that would prompt her to do that? Or did she have other sitters do anything like that for her? I haven't seen anything else in any other collections of her work like this. There are letters from other sitters that go back-and-forth, and there are letters that I know she exchanges with these Indians, including the four who are pictured in that image at the table.
But these images stand out for one portrait sitting in a way that don't depict a year in the life of the Indians, or a battle that they were part of. Just some different figures, human and animal, that they felt like drawing at the time. It brings into context who these men were. They weren't just performers. They were Indians who were far away from home and enjoyed thinking about what they would see when they went back.
Video produced and edited by, Rebecca Wingo, University of Nebraska—Lincoln
Videography, Jeremy Goodman, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Featuring, Michelle Delaney, Smithsonian Institution
The William F. Cody Archive
codyarchive.org
2013
Senior Digital Editor, Douglas Seefeldt, Ball State University
