Printed and Manuscript Americana

No place, 1910. In two volumes. Original typed diary of American photographer and leader of the Wanamaker expeditions, Joseph Kossuth Dixon. First volume comprising 113 typed pages and 52 mounted original silver gelatin prints; second volume comprising 172 typed pages and 66 mounted original silver gelatin prints. Original limp brown leather three-ring binder; stamped in blind; front covers lettered in gilt; boards, joints and extremities rubbed; front board of first volume detached; front board of second volume starting, spine of same volume largely perished.

American photographer Joseph Kossuth Dixon's (1856-1926) personal diary for the second Wanamaker expedition--one of three missions he led that sought to document the lives and cultures of Native Americans in the western United States at the beginning of the 20th century.

The diary encompasses a 17-month period, from June 25, 1909 to October 29, 1910. It begins by detailing the expedition's proposal by its sponsor, Rodman Wanamaker (son of the Philadelphia department store magnate), and then follows its planning and preparation, Dixon's journey west to the Valley of the Little Bighorn, Montana, his series of interviews with various Native American tribal chiefs, his attendance at the Last Great Indian Council, and finally, to the compilation of his data for future publication. Notably, this journal contains 118 largely unpublished vernacular photographs that document Dixon's expedition, including depictions of the landscape, scenes from Dixon's and various Native American camps, as well as images of various Native Americans, including those on horseback, camping and cooking, and people such as Chief Two Moons, Chief Tin-Tin-Meet-Sa, and Chief Umapine.

The diary contains notable behind-the-scenes information and commentary from Dixon regarding his interactions with the various Native American tribes and councils he interviewed, as well as explanations regarding the photographs he took during this time. Describing the image that he would use as the published book's frontispiece, "The Last Outpost", Dixon notes, "I posed an Indian first on foot, then on horseback on this pinnacle--photographing him with the rugged edge of the cliff dropping sheer away from his feet--photographing against the sun, so that the rugged outline of the rock would be underexposed and thus remain in deep shadow, with the shining flow of the river far down at the base--the far stretch of valley sweeping away in the distance. My idea was to express in this picture that the Indian had reached his last frontier, hence I shall call it 'The Last Outpost'..."

Dixon would go on to publish the results of his expeditions, using information from this diary, in 1913 as The Vanishing Race.

Beginning in 1908, Dixon led three expeditions to the American West, sponsored by philanthropist and department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker, to document the lives and cultures of Native peoples of the United States. Dixon and Wanamaker, "believed, like so many of their contemporaries, that the traditional Indian was destined to disappear…The old chiefs, by then fifty or sixty years old, were dying and their history was disappearing with them. It was time to gather the last generation to tell their stories and be photographed for Dixon's book...Representatives from nearly every reservation--Crow, Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Cayuse, Umatilla, Creek, Kiowa, Apache, Comanche, Cheyenne and Sioux--were assembled. Portraits were made of the chiefs, as well as scenes of camp life and battle. Dixon also re-enacted General George Armstrong Custer's Battle of the Little Bighorn for both film and still photographs..." (Fleming and Luskey, The North American Indians in Early Photographs, 1988, p. 217).

Never before published or offered for sale.