American Indian Portraits from the Wanamaker Expedition of 1913

123 pp. 12 x 9 1/2. "(Lewis) Rodman Wanamaker (February 13, 1863 – March 9, 1928, Atlantic City, New Jersey) was the second son of Philadelphia department store founder John Wanamaker and Mary Brown. He was a Republican and was a Presidential Elector for Pennsylvania in 1916. Wanamaker created aviation history by financing a two plane experimental seaplane class (the Curtiss Model H) in response to a prize contest announcement by London's The Daily Mail newspaper in 1913 — the Flying boat designs which resulted became very important in military and commercial aviation until well after the advent of the Jet Airliner, forming the basis for thirty plus years of international commercial air travel before there were widespread airports. In many parts of the world today, the Flying Boat, a legacy of his patriotism, is still very important... Between 1908 and 1913, Wanamaker sponsored three photographic expeditions to the American Indians intended to document a vanishing way of life and make the Indian "first-class citizens" to save them from extinction. At that time, Indians were viewed as a "Vanishing Race," and efforts were made to bring them increasingly into the mainstream of American life, often at the expense of their culture and traditions. Joseph K. Dixon was the photographer. On the first expedition, he made many portraits and captured scenes of Indian life. Dixon published them in a book, "The Vanishing Race." Sadly, original copies of the book is becoming scarce as people break it up to sell the photographs individually. The expedition climaxed on the Crow Indian Reservation with the filming of a motion picture about Hiawatha. The second expedition in 1909 involved a motion filming a reenactment of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In 1913, Wanamaker sponsored the groundbreaking for a National Memorial to the First Americans on Staten Island. The monument was never built. The third expedition, the "Expedition of Citizenship," took place in 1913. For it, the American flag was carried to many tribes, and their members were invited to sign a declaration of allegiance to the United States. The resulting large bromide prints were presentation photographs, such collections having been placed in several museums. Mostly, the subjects are Blackfeet, Cheyennes, Crows, Dakotas, and other northern plains tribes. Dixon's negatives are at the Mathers Museum of Indiana University. The Wanamaker photographic expeditions are fictionally treated in the novel "Shadow Catcher" by Charles Fergus." - Wikipedia