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.