Found / Discovery

American Indians, Playing Themselves

As Buffalo Bill's performers, they were walking stereotypes. But a New York photographer showed the humans beneath the headdresses.

by Michelle Delaney via What It Means to Be American on January 27, 2015

...sometimes adding props or clothing he carried. Curtis’ body of work was intended to document the vanishing Indian. Kasebier’s portraits, by contrast, are rich images of men in transition, individuals determined to embrace 20th-century opportunities and experiences far from their Western homes.

Many audiences were introduced for the first time to American Indians and their culture (albeit one filtered by white Americans’ sensibilities) through the Wild West performances. When the shows started, the U.S. government was still fighting what became known as the Indian Wars. In the decades following the Civil War, these conflicts that had started as a result of manifest destiny were exacerbated by United States push to reunify, and claim lands seen as rich in resources. Violent clashes resulted across the West from the late 1860s to early 1890s, with the eventual removal of hundreds of tribes from their native lands.

The 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee officially ended those wars, but audiences to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West remained fascinated with the “enemy.” The American Indian performers at Buffalo Bill Cody’s show—and its imitators—created a “safe” context in which to explore the complicated relationships between the American Indian, the government, and the American public.

Each year the show toured, several hundred American Indians welcomed the opportunity to play themselves, and the federal government’s agents on their reservations helped sign them up for Cody’s company. An Indian typically got paid $25 to $75 a month, with additional pay for extra tasks. Ironically, when traveling with the show, American Indians could wear traditional items and perform certain rituals that federal rules now forbade on reservations.

But the Indians faced challenges on the show, including being far from home for the first time and encountering new types of illnesses—not to mention the strain of two three-hour performances, six days a week. And they had to contend with marketing images promoting them as uncivilized but noble savages, even as many of the younger Indian performers were educated and fluent in English.

Käsebier wanted to capture this complexity. So she penned a request to Cody for a portrait sitting in her studio with the American Indian performers. On April 24, 1898, the last day of the three-week spring booking at Madison Square Garden, a dozen Sioux Indian performers arrived with their interpreter at Käsebier’s studio on Fifth Avenue.