American Historical Ephemera & Photography, Featuring Property from the James Milgram, M.D., Collection of Broadsides, Ephemeral Americana & Historical Documents

2 3/4 x 4 1/8 in. albumen photograph on 3 1/2 x 6 in. cardstock mount (light toning to print). Period notation in lower margin, "Peau-Rouge (1883)."

Standing in an open park amid trees of the Bois de Boulogne, Standing Bear holds a pipe-tomahawk and leans against a borrowed Parisian carriage horse with docked tail. Note the beaded hand design on the upper flap of his left legging, a symbolic indication that he had touched a live enemy in battle.

Grandnephew of the deposed Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Roland Bonaparte was a member and patron of the Académie française whose special interests were world geology, ethnology and anthropology. He was an early supporter of photography of tribal cultures. When an exhibition of world cultures was held in the Jardin Zoologique d’Acclamtation, Bois de Boulogne near Paris in 1883, the Prince hired Pierre Petit to make a series of 18 photographic portraits of a delegation of Omaha Indians who attended. These are among the earliest photographs of Omaha people, as well as some of the earliest photos of Indian travelers to Europe. For further information see Fleming and Luskey 1986: Figs. 9.17-9.19; Fleming and Luskey 1993: 78-80.