By Jeremy Dibbell

One of the MHS digital collections currently being highlighted on our homepage is Photographs of Native Americans, a compilation of portraits and other photos collected by four Bostonians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “Charles W. Jenks and Francis Parkman collected carte de visite and tintype portraits of American Indians during the 1860s as historical records of tribal groups and their role in contemporary American politics. After a visit to southern California, Boston collector Kingsmill Marrs brought home platinotypes of southwestern Indians taken by Adam Clark Vroman in the late 1890s. An anonymous donor was inspired to collect Joseph Kossuth Dixon’s photogravures from the Wanamaker Indian expeditions of the early 1900s after hearing Dixon lecture in 1912.”

The fellow at left is a Chippewa man, photographed in Washington, D.C. in 1862 by Charles D. Fredericks & Co. The carte de visite is from the Charles W. Jenks collection.

You can find background text and links to many more photographs here.