GARDNER, Alexander (1821-1882), photographer. Two albumen photographs taken at Fort Laramie, incl. Crow chiefs who signed the Treaty of 1868.

2 albumen photographs, both 12 3/4 x 9 1/2 in. on original 19 1/8 x 14 1/8 in. mounts., with Gardner's imprint and "Scenes in the Indian Country" printed on mount rectos, and with penciled captions/identifications to lower margins. The first features a group of Crow chiefs who signed the 1868 Treaty and a white subject, identified as US lawyer Dr. H. M. Matthews (left). Crow subjects include, from left to right, Mountain Tail, Pounded Meat, Black Foot, Winking Eye, White Fawn, White Horse, Poor Elk, Shot-in-the-Jaw, Crow (or Crane), and Pretty Young Bull.

The second features a group of Native, white, and mixed race family members including a white man named George Colhoff who had mustered out of military service at Fort Kearny and came to Fort Laramie in 1868 when the Treaty was signed. He married an Oglala Sioux woman and had children with her. Also pictured is white Interpreter Charles Gerue (spelled variously), who also married and had children with a Brulé Sioux woman. Mrs. Gerue and some of their children are also featured here. (Subjects identifications obtained via the Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection at the Newberry Library, which holds an example of this image with penciled identifications of the subjects on verso).

After a deadly ambush of Captain William Fetterman's troops by a group of more than 2,000 Sioux along the Bozeman Trail in December of 1866, the United States initiated plans for a treaty conference purposed to "establish peace, define tribunal boundaries, and provide mechanisms for civilizing the Indians," as well as to hold the tribes collectively accountable to American laws. (Katz, D. Mark. Witness to an Era: The Life and Photographs of Alexander Gardner, 238). The result was the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie conference, which consisted of a series of meetings between US officials including peace commissioners and military representatives, and leaders of the Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Crow, and Brule, Oglala and Miniconjou Dakota, to negotiate the terms of the Treaty that would guarantee the Lakota ownership of the Black Hills in the Wyoming Territory and end Red Cloud's War. Alexander Gardner, working for the Indian Peace Commission, was the only photographer present at the Fort Laramie Treaty conference. Gardner arrived at Fort Laramie from Washington on 24 April and made photographs between late April and early May 1868.

The conference brought together delegations of several tribes, including women and children, who lived in encampments during their stay at Fort Laramie. Gardner recorded daily life in those encampments along with the negotiations themselves, capturing activities like the distribution of gifts, the slaughter of cattle, women performing household chores, and even children playing. (Nottage, James. "A Treaty in His Lens: Alexander Gardner Photographs Fort Laramie, 1868.")

Gardner departed from the conference with around two hundred negatives, half of which were approximately 8 x 10 in. views, which would be published as "Scenes in the Indian Country," like the example offered here. Journalist Raymond J. DeMallie noted that the immense value of these images lies not only in their documentation of the commissions, but in their being the "earliest surviving photographic records of the Indians of the Northern Pains taken in their own territory." (Katz, 245).

The Larry Ness Collection of Native American Photography

This lot is located in Cincinnati.