This important, Card Mount Photo is one of 8 taken on the same day by Anderson and is titled in the negative “No.7, Sioux Indians prepared for a dance”. The Photo itself measures approx. 7 1/4” by 4 1/2” and is mounted on its original, photographer’s Card Mount (overall size of the mount is 8 1/2” by 5 1/4").

    This Image pictures a group of Sioux Dancers seated on the ground wearing the tradition costume of the Grass Dancer. The Dancers carry various items including a simply wonderful, bead decorated Tobacco / Pipe Bag, bows, pipes, staffs, etc. In the left foreground a group of four older Sioux men sit together apparently in deep conversation and other older Brule men can be seen seated on the porch of a sod house at the left. Behind the dancers there is a crown of Sioux warriors there to observe the Dance. No white men or women are present and it appears that those present are all Sioux man.

    The back of the mount carries the mark of the photographer – John A. Anderson of Fort Niobrara, Nebraska. In his diary entry dated June 2, 1889 (the day this Photograph was taken) Anderson writes "Made 8 negatives all together" in commentating upon the days efforts.

    In the late 1880s, John A. Anderson, a young Swedish-born settler near Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, bought a camera with earnings from carpentry work. He soon became a full-fledged photographer, and in 1889 General George Crook asked him to serve as official photographer to the Crook Treaty Commission on its visit to the Brulé Sioux Indians on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Anderson agreed--and thereby moved into a poignant and oftentimes tragic era in the history of the Sioux. From 1891 until his death in 1948, Anderson lived on the Rosebud, recording the painful adjustment of the proud Brulés to life on the reservation. This was a particularly hard time for the Brulés. Nomadic warriors by nature, they had been subjugated following their greatest triumph at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 and were living like captives on what had once been their buffalo hunting grounds. The buffaloes were dead, and the Indians had been forced to accept white men's ways and white men's provender. To help feed themselves, they were compelled to farm--to "scratch the ground," as they scornfully expressed it - a way of life they regarded as shameful. Anderson became a sincere friend of the Indian, who learned to trust him and allowed him to record their daily lives and their ceremonies. Anderson photographed Sioux camps, villages, and day schools; recorded councils between whites and Indians; and portrayed the Indians as they received their beef rations and annuity payments. When Buffalo Bill Cody and Charles P. Jordan organized their wild-west shows, he photographed the Sioux who joined the shows. Anderson was afforded the rare privilege of attending and photographing the White Buffalo, Sun Dance, and Omaha Dance ceremonies. Anderson gave many of the photographs to his Sioux friends, who proudly displayed them in their cabins on the Rosebud.

    Two hundred of Anderson’s photographs of the Rosebud Sioux were published in 1971 in a volume titled “The Sioux of the Rosebud” by Henry and Jean Hamilton (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma). The Image offered here can be found on page 167 with a description of the circumstances of the taking of the Photo.

    We have been told that this Photograph was from the Brig. General Timothy Willcox (Army Medical Doctor) Collection. Timothy E. Wilcox was a graduate of Union College as an MD in 1861. He served as an assistant surgeon from New York in 1865 and continued his entire career with the Army in a very distinguished manner. In July 1887 he was transferred to Fort Niobrara in Nebraska as Assistant Surgeon, where he remained through about 1891, at which time he was transferred to Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

    This exceptionally rare and wonderful, 1889 Oversize Cabinet Card Photograph is in excellent condition. The Photograph itself is clean and crisp and exhibits sharp focus, strong contrast and rich, warm tonality. The Card Mount is clean and crisp and equally well preserved.

    An exceptionally rare and historically important, original 1889 Oversize Cabinet Card Photograph of a group of Native American Brule Sioux Indian Braves at the Rosebud Agency dressed in full traditional regalia about to perform the Omaha Dance (also known as the Grass Dance) and worthy of a place at the very center of even the most advanced, museum quality, Native American Photograph collection!!

    Be sure to check out this seller’s other auctions for a number of other 19th and early 20th century Native American Indian Items and Photographs (including another Anderson Cabinet Card Photo of the Brule Sioux at the Rosebud Agency) which are also being offered for sale this week on eBay!!

    About the Omaha / Grass Dance:

Although altered by government and religious sanctions since the establishment of reservations in 1878, the Omaha dance still serves as an obtrusive demonstration of tribal identity and cohesion for the Oglala and Sicangu Sioux. The dance achieved a high level of prominence as a successful celebration for petitioning supernatural protection in warfare just before reservations were established when warfare activities ceased. The dance's popularity heightened as it became a means for breaking reservation monotony. Audiences enjoyed the Omaha dance when it was incorporated into the growing number of wild west shows, including Buffalo Bill's. The international travel and adventure attracted many Native Americans to employment in those shows. These shows brought about dance innovations and changes. Missionaries and reformers condemned the Omaha dance as superstitious, immoral and counter to civilizing efforts. In 1883, the federal government issued "Indian Offenses" codes targeted at war dances. Wild west shows and further dance-suppressing acts and lobbyists often came into conflict. In 1922 a further increase in restrictions met with an outcry from many tribes and their supporters, including the American Indian Defense Association, and efforts to solve this crisis led to a compromise which sanctioned federal regulation of ritual while acknowledging native religious freedom. Dance regulations continued to 1934. Now significantly altered and often abbreviated for non-Indian audiences, Omaha dancing remains important for cultural identity.