This is an excellent image of a young Native American, identified as a Navajo called ‘Indian Jim’ in the description. He is seated, holding a bow and arrow, with more arrows in his lap, a powder-horn and leather bag hung around his neck. He also has a woven bag, hanging on the opposite side, suspended from what appears to be a fur strap. He is wearing a checked shirt, a rag wound around his head, and denim trousers.

This photo is attributed to John Gaw Meem (1833-1908) and was copyrighted in 1914 by Cyrus P. Jennings. Another photo, posed similarly but depicting Manuelito of the Din’eh Navajo tribe, was also attributed to Meem and copyrighted in 1914 by Jennings, and is dated to about 1865. This John Gaw Meem was the first of three to bear that name in the family, and the grandfather of the famous architect. All three attended the Virginia Military Institute: the architect beginning in 1910, his father the missionary in the class of 1884, and this one in the class of 1852. He served in the Civil War, so if this attribution and date are correct, he probably served on the Western frontier after the war. I have found no other mention of his taking photographs; he returned to Virginia and farmed after leaving military service. The family doesn’t seem to have any other connection to the Southwest until after 1920 when the architect took up residence in Arizona.

This is an interesting image of Inuit Eskimos of Alaska, inside an igloo. We see three Eskimo women and a child sitting around a bowl of crabs, stripping the delicate meat out of the leg shells. With them is a non-native woman, the photographer’s wife according to the caption. That would be Margaret. Clearly, the photographer had to remove half of the roof of the igloo to make the shot, but no doubt the Eskimos didn’t mind. We have seen another image by this photographer of Eskimos building an igloo, probably this one — most likely built just to be photographed.

The photographer was Captain Frank E Kleinschmidt. He made documentary films 1912-34, such as The Alaska-Siberian Expedition (1912) and Captain F. E. Kleinschmidt’s Arctic Hunt (1914). His main occupation however was as Captain of a merchant freighter, plying the waters from Seattle to Alaska. His wife, Margaret Alaska Young Kleinschmidt (1884-1962), while not Inuit was Alaskan born. Her father was Rev. Samuel Hall Young, who went to Alaska with his young wife in the 1880s to spread the Gospel among the heathens (probably much to their everlasting regret). Frank and Margaret Kleinschmidt had twin daughters born in Nome, Alaska in 1907.

This attractive young woman looks up at the camera with her head slightly bowed, as if a bit dubious about the proceedings, but more curious than fearful. We know from the caption that she is Julia American Horse, a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe. She wears her traditional smock, tied loosely at the waist with a strip of cloth from which a frayed rope, perhaps of hair, hangs loosely. The wide sleeves are fringed with loose threads. The upper part of the frock appears to be thick, ribbed, poncho-like material, decorated with lines and figures. Julia wears her hair parted in the center and drawn back, braided into two tails that are brought forward over her shoulders and tied together with a strip of ribbon.

Julia’s portrait was taken against a plain backdrop, such as was popular in the early Native American photographs of the 1860s, but this image is much later, bearing the copyright date of 1900. The photographer was John Alvin Anderson (1869-1948), who had a studio in Rosebud South Dakota in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Listed as a photographer in the 1900 census, by 1910 John A Anderson is shown as a merchant - Indian Trader. In the year 2000 his descendants donated a waniyetu wowapi or Lakota Winter Count for a Lakota kinship group covering the period 1751-52 to 1886-87.

At first, the composition of this image appears too modern for its age, until we see it is by Edward S Curtis, who helped define modern photography. This image shows a reclining Zuni Indian (or Native American to be pc), his back toward the camera, propped up on one elbow and facing forward so his face is in profile. He is mixing pigments in a small bowl. He wears nothing but a loin-cloth and a rag wrapped around his forehead — and, we see, an earring. He is lying on a plain dark blanket, and in the background it looks like a plain tarp has been draped to block out the distracting clutter — though a corner is too short, so part of some unidentifiable object is visible behind it. The photo was copyrighted in 1925, though the original image may have been earlier.

Edward Sheriff Curtis was born in 1868 in Wisconsin, though the family soon moved to Minnesota, and when Edward was 19 they moved to Washington Territory. He began his photographic career in 1891 when he bought an interest in the studio of Rasmus Rothi in Seattle. Less than a year later he left Rothi to join Thomas Guptill as a partner in another studio.

About 1895 Curtis began photographing Native Americans, and did so with such sensitivity and artistry that by 1901 J P Morgan offered him $75,000 to produce a series of 1,500 photographs of traditional Native American life, to be published in 20 volumes. Curtis took over 40,000 photographs and also recorded folklore and history, providing a wealth of anthropological data — although at the same time he staged some of his photographs in a manner that made them historically inaccurate. After that brush with success, Curtis fell into financial difficulties, and died in 1952, if not quite in abject poverty still far from the wealth his talents deserved.

A Yuma Kokopelli, this image shows a highly painted musician of the Yuma tribe playing the flute. For some reason, the photographer has chosen to place three playing-cards face-up at his feet, a 10 of diamonds, 8 of clubs and 7 of hearts. These old-time cards do not have the numbers written on them, just the symbols. The body paint is also in the form of symbols, but not ones we are familiar with.

This photo was taken by Isaiah West Taber of San Francisco, probably in the 1880s. It is a studio portrait, with the bare-footed musician sitting on a tree stump shaped prop, against a plain background.