PROMINENT AMERICANS:
PHOTOGRAPHS OF TREATY DELEGATES AT THE SMITHSONIAN
BY HEATHER A. SHANNON WITH SKY CAMPBELL I
n the 1850s, tribal treaty delegates visiting Washington, D.C., inspired the first Secretary of the Smithson- ian to establish the institution’s first photograph collection.
Originally
conceived as a photographic record of eth- nic types, the now-vast collection consists of thousands of delegation portraits. But schol- ars of today, both at the National Museum of the American Indian and from the depicted tribes, see the subjects as individuals, as prom- inent Americans. With the help of Native scholars, the Museum Archives is working to collect proper identification and background information for the tribal leaders pictured in the photographs. By the mid-19th
century, the Smithsonian
had already assembled a celebrated collection of painted portraits of American Indians. In 1859, Secretary of the Smithsonian Joseph Henry sought to supplement the collection, noting the great potential of photography to document “the different Indian deputations which from time to time visit Washington.” After a fire destroyed the paintings in 1865, Secretary Henry returned to the idea of pho- tography with renewed vigor. He declared in an 1867 letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that it was time to “begin anew.”
As his letter to the commissioner made
clear, Secretary Henry had major ambitions for his photography project. Compared to painted likenesses, photographic portraits offered an unparalleled opportunity to amass “a far more authentic and trustworthy collec- tion of likenesses of the principal tribes of the United States.” Much like his contemporaries, Henry valued photography over painting for its apparent objectivity. To him, photographic portraits of Native delegates allowed for the accurate visual documentation of persons as types, with the attributes of a single individ- ual understood to represent an entire nation. Henry also noted that photographs could be easily reproduced and distributed “to any who might desire them.” Finally, the Secretary ar- gued in his letter that “[t]he Indians are pass- ing away so rapidly that but few years remain, within which this can be done….” He was no doubt aware that the delegates he proposed to photograph came to the capital to negotiate the very survival of their nations.
E SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 47
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