Henry was unable to secure support from
Indian Affairs in 1867, but a like-minded pa- tron soon came to the Secretary’s aid. Fewer than 10 years later, the Smithsonian’s inaugu- ral photograph collection contained hundreds of delegation portraits, chiefly in the form of glass plate negatives. By the end of the century, the photographs numbered in the thousands; they are now housed at the National Museum of Natural History’s National Anthropological Archives (NAA). As Henry had predicted, there was wide-
spread demand for the Smithsonian’s delega- tion portraits. Vintage prints distributed by the institution are now scattered throughout museums, libraries and archives in the Unit- ed States and Europe. In fact, this Museum inherited from its predecessor institution, the Museum of the American Indian – George Gustav Heye Foundation, hundreds of vintage prints made by the Smithsonian in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. Perhaps
as the result of Henry’s emphasis on photo- graphing types rather than individuals, the names of the Native delegates were often – and continue to be – incorrectly, inaccurately or not at all documented. Our Museum is in the fortunate position
to help set the record straight and to re-focus attention on the pictured individuals. For example, the Museum owns a group por- trait of five members of an Otoe-Missouria delegation, who in the fall of 1880 arrived in Washington to negotiate the sale of their Nebraska–Kansas lands and the purchase of a reservation in Indian Territory. (In this case, the original negative is housed at the National Archives and Record Administration, but the NAA owns the negatives of the portraits made of each individual.) The men have long been identified as (left to right, front row) Stand- ing Eating, Baptiste Deroin, Standing Buck, (left to right, back row) Crawfish Maker and James Arkeketah. Visual evidence in NAA’s collection suggested the misidentification of a few of the sitters, and so our Archive Center staff turned to Otoe-Missouria Tribe language director, Sky Campbell, for guidance. Campbell not only amended the iden-
tifications of the delegates but crucially re- turned to them their Native-language names and provided accurate English translations. “Names are an incredibly important resource for language preservation and revitalization,” Campbell says, “as they offer insight into the thought processes and cultural worldview of a language that simple word lists usually can’t.” 52 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER/FALL 2014
Light Beard or Barbas Huero, probably a member of an 1874 Diné delegation to Washington, D.C.
PHOTO BY CHARLES MILTON BELL, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN ARCHIVE CENTER (P15804)
According
to Campbell,
tribal
nations
often use the Smithsonian’s resources for language-revitalization efforts. He rightly as- serts that it is “critical for the [Smithsonian’s] information to be as accurate as possible” because institutional
“inaccuracies could
become a part of that rebuilt language and have far-reaching consequences.” Through Campbell’s scholarship and work at language revitalization, we now know the photograph to picture (left to right, front row) Waruje Nayi (or Standing Eating), Munje Xanje (or Big Bear), Hari Gra (or Goes Far and Returns After He Found What He Was Looking For),
(left to right, back row) Ma Ska Gaxe (or White Arrow Maker), and Chedo Nayi (or Standing Buffalo Bull, aka James Arkeketa). By asserting the identities of the delegates,
Campbell has reversed the original intent of an old photograph. The Otoe-Missouria delegation photograph no longer represents, to paraphrase Henry, a trustworthy likeness of an American Indian type but rather is a portrait of leaders of a nation, of prominent Americans. In the collections of the Smithso- nian, there are many more such prominent Americans awaiting similar recognition. X
Heather A. Shannon is the photo archivist at NMAI. Sky Campbell is language director for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe.
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