Sep 24, 2020 - Sale 2546

Sale 2546 - Lot 16

Unsold
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(AMERICAN INDIANS--PHOTOGRAPHS.) [George E. Trager]. Pair of promenade cards of the Ghost Dance at Pine Ridge. Albumen prints, each about 4 x 7 inches, on original mounts, one with photographer's backmark, the other captioned in negative; one with punch holes in mount corners and moderate wear, the other with only minor wear. Chadron, NE: Northwestern Photographic Co., 25 December 1890
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Additional Details

These photographs were taken at the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, 10 days after the arrest of Sitting Bull pushed tensions near the breaking point, and just 4 days before the United States Cavalry killed hundreds of Lakota in the Wounded Knee Massacre. One of these photographs is captioned faintly in the negative "Rose Bud and Sioux Indian War Dance at Pine Ridge Agcy, Dec 25th 1890, S. Dak.," but has no photographer credit. The other was apparently taken on the same day--a man with the same white shirt and belt appears in the foreground of each. It bears the backmark of George Trager's Northwestern Photographic Company of Chadron, NE, offering views of "Wounded Knee Battle, Indian camps . . . everything of interest in the late Pine Ridge War." It also offers a quack epilepsy cure by the firm of Trager & Ford.