page_title: Gertrude Käsebier
section_title: Gertrude Käsebier and the Sioux
hierarchical_section_title: Gertrude Käsebier / Life / Gertrude Käsebier and the Sioux
caption_attribution_description: English: A photo portrait of Chief Flying Hawk.
context_page_description: Gertrude Käsebier was an American photographer. She was known for her images of motherhood, her portraits of Native Americans, and her promotion of photography as a career for women.
context_section_description: In 1898, Käsebier watched Buffalo Bill's Wild West troupe parade past her Fifth Avenue studio in New York City, New York, toward Madison Square Garden.  Her memories of affection and respect for the Lakota people inspired her to send a letter to William “Buffalo Bill” Cody requesting permission to photograph in her studio members of the Sioux tribe traveling with the show. Cody and Käsebier were similar in their abiding respect for Native American culture and maintained friendships with the Sioux. Cody quickly approved Käsebier's request and she began her project on Sunday morning, April 14, 1898. Käsebier's project was purely artistic and her images were not made for commercial purposes and were never used in Buffalo Bill's Wild West program booklets or promotional posters.  Käsebier took classic photographs of the Sioux while they were relaxed. Chief Iron Tail and Chief Flying Hawk were among Käsebier's most challenging and revealing portraits. Käsebier's photographs are preserved at the National Museum of American History's Photographic History Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.
  Käsebier's session with Iron Tail was her only recorded story:  “Preparing for their visit to Käsebier’s photography studio, the Sioux at Buffalo Bill's Wild West Camp met to distribute their finest clothing and accessories to those chosen to be photographed.” Käsebier admired their efforts, but desired to, in her own words, photograph a “real raw Indian, the kind I used to see when I was a child’, referring to her early years in Colorado and on the Great Plains.  Käsebier selected one Indian, Iron Tail, to approach for a photograph without regalia.  "He did not object.  The resulting photograph was exactly what Käsebier had envisioned: a relaxed, intimate, quiet, and beautiful portrait of the man, devoid of decoration and finery, presenting himself to her and the camera without barriers." Several days later, Chief Iron Tail was given the photograph and he immediately tore it up, stating that it was too dark. Käsebier rephotographed him, this time in his full regalia. Iron Tail was an international celebrity.  He appeared with his fine regalia as the lead with Buffalo Bill at the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, France, and the Colosseum of Rome. Iron Tail was a superb showman and chaffed at the photo of him relaxed, but Käsebier chose it as the frontispiece for a 1901 Everybody’s Magazine article. Käsebier believed all the portraits were a "revelation of Indian character," showing the strength and individual character of the Native Americans in "new phases for the Sioux."
  Chief Flying Hawk’s glare is the most startling of Käsebier’s portraits. Other Indians were able to relax, smile, or do a “noble pose”. Flying Hawk was a combatant in nearly all of the fights with United States troops during the Great Sioux War of 1876. He fought along with his cousin Crazy Horse and his brothers Kicking Bear and Black Fox II in the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, and was present at the death of Crazy Horse in 1877 and the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. In 1898, Flying Hawk was new to show business and unable to hide his anger and frustration imitating battle scenes and from the Great Plains Wars with Buffalo Bill's Wild West to escape the constraints and poverty of the Indian reservation. Soon, Flying Hawk learned to appreciate the benefits of a Show Indian with Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Flying Hawk regularly circulated show grounds in full regalia and sold his “cast card” picture postcards for a penny to promote the show and supplement his meager income. After Iron Tail's death on May 28, 1916, Flying Hawk was chosen as successor by all of the braves of Buffalo Bill's Wild West and led the gala processions as the head Chief of the Indians.
caption: Chief Flying Hawk, Gertrude Kasebier, 1898, U.S. Library of Congress
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