Historical Portrait
Mrs. American Horse
Archive record
Photograph shows portrait of a Native American Oglala Lakota woman in traditional dress, who probably performed with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.
About this photograph
The portrait was taken by Oxford & Dillhoff in 1902. The subject, whose full name has not survived in the catalogue record, is described as Oglala Lakota. The Oglala are one of the seven divisions of the Lakota people.
The caption notes that she probably performed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. William F. Cody began touring the show in 1883, hiring hundreds of Native performers over the years, many of them recruited from Pine Ridge. How that employment should be understood remains contested. The shows staged Indian attacks for white audiences and relied heavily on stereotype, but they also paid wages and allowed participants to travel, speak their language, wear traditional dress, and practice ceremony at a time when federal assimilation policy was actively suppressing those things on the reservations.
Photographs of Native people from this period were made almost entirely by non-Native photographers working for government surveys, commercial studios, expositions or ethnographic projects. Subjects rarely controlled how the images were used afterward. Catalogue records often preserved the photographer's name while leaving the subject unidentified or noted only by nation. When a name was never written down, it is usually lost.
Compiled from the catalogue record and reference notes on the formats and events involved. The archive record above is the primary source.
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