Lot 520A email save

BELL, Charles Milton (photographer). Albumen phot

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[Washington, 1877]. (Image:190 x 125 mm; mount: 255 x 200 mm). With an early typed identification mounted below the image (although incorrectly ascribing the portrait as "Ogalalla. (Washi-ta-tonga) American Horse"). Condition: minor soiling to the mount, mount worn at edges. lovely studio image of an important chief, taken during the lakota delegation to washington in the fall of 1877. On 24 September 1877 twenty three delegates from the Lakota and Arapaho tribes met with President Rutherford B. Hayes to protest their removal from northwestern Nebraska to the Missouri River. The reason for the change of agency was to ease the government's ability to resupply the tribes. The delegation, however, protested the move as the new location contained poor hunting grounds. After several weeks in Washington, a compromise was reached where the tribes were moved to the Missouri River for the winter, but allowed to find a new location in the spring. The following year they were permanently settled at the Pine Ridge Agency in southeastern Dakota Territory. This photograph has been attributed to Bell, whose studio was located down the block from the Executive Mansion, based on the fake rocks in the background. Bell photographed individual members of the delegation as well as a group photograph. The early misattribution on this photograph to American Horse is due to the fact that both Little Wound and American Horse wore the same war bonnet and beaded shirt in their photographs by Bell. The shirt, it should be noted, is located in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and was authenticated in part by detailed study of this and other photographs.

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