American Historical Ephemera and Early Photography

"A Collection of Indian Photographs and Views with Photos of a Few White Employes [sic] Together with Some Indian Letters and Paintings. Made by W.W. Junkin, Fairfield, Iowa. U.S. Indian Inspector from April 9, 1889, to April 9, 1893." Custom album, 11 3/4 x 13 3/4 in., approx. 120pp in total constituting: 25 card stock leaves containing approx. 140 photographs of various sizes, most meticulously identified by Junkin; another 35 leaves on lightweight paper containing an assortment of ledger drawings (approx. 17 leaves), many by identified artists, as well as letters written and signed by Native American schoolchildren and others (approx. 18 leaves). Multiple Native American reservations and various bands of Indigenous Peoples are represented in the album including the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Ute, Crow, Apache, Zuni, Blackfeet, Yuma, Mojave, and Shoshone. Quarter bound, gilt lettered spine "Indian Photographs & Viwes" [sic] / “W.W. Junkin / Fairfield, Iowa.”

AN EXTRAORDINARY PICTORIAL AND DOCUMENTARY RECORD OF NATIVE AMERICAN LIFE UNDER THE RESERVATION SYSTEM, INCLUDING INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS

William Wallace Junkin entered the printers' trade at the age of twelve in his hometown of Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia). His parents and family removed to Iowa ca 1843, where he continued in the printers’ trade with various newspapers in the state until he returned to Virginia to assume a role in the state printing office. After two years there, he returned to Iowa in 1853 and purchased half interest in the Fairfield, Iowa, Ledger. The next year, he bought out his partner and became sole owner of the newspaper, a publication he would continue to publish and edit for fifty years. Junkin's politics were aligned with the Republican Party, and his editorials in the Ledger argued in support of the Homestead Act, abolition, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Politically active and likely well-connected, Junkin was appointed Inspector for Indian Services in 1889. In this role, Junkin was one of five Indian Inspectors, each with a specific geographical division, who was tasked with visiting each agency in his region at least once a year. As Inspector, Junkin investigated matters pertaining to conditions at the agency, reservation boundaries, use of reservation lands, the character and abilities of the agent and other employees, school conditions, and the extent to which white civilization was being adopted by the tribes. A veteran journalist of more than three decades at the time of his appointment, Junkin seems to have brought a unique journalistic sensibility and inquisitiveness to the Native American reservations he visited – qualities reflected in the stunning images and documents he preserved in his album.

Among the images captured in the album are studio portraits of Native American men, women, and children, including many tribal chiefs, family groups, and other portraits such as “Kate Richardson, Ute, Laundress at Grand Junction School,” “Printing Class, Santee Normal School, Neb.,” “Miss Mercy I. Conger, ¼ blood Sioux, Teacher, Yankton School.” 

Scenes of reservation life include the following: “Indians waiting for Rations at C. & A. Commissary, Ok”; “An Indian Dance in El Reno, Ok.”; “Miss Nora Allen, Teacher, and Group of Mojave School Children”; “Mescalero Apaches from Geronimo’s Tribe as They Arrived at the Ramona School”; “Group of Employees at Uintah Agency on White Rocks Creek”; “Agent Allen Receiving Hay, Colorado River Agency”; “San Carlos Apaches and their Children, Ramona School, N.M.”; “Manuelito Severano, School Girl, Santa Clara Pueblo, N.M.”; “Mrs. Swank, Seamstress, Maggie Martin, Lizzie Parker, Shoshones”; “Bear Dance at Uintah Agency, Utah”; and “Indian Ghost Dance near Ft. Reno, Oklahoma.”

Besides capturing the lives of Native inhabitants of the reservations, the photographs also capture the lives of a rarely seen group – the white women who served as teachers at the Indian Schools. These women, many single and possibly living far from home, were operating outside 1890 society’s expectations of a “woman’s sphere.” Among the many photographic highlights of the album is “Red Cloud, Ogalallah Sioux Chief, July 4, 1889,” possibly a previously unrecorded image. With printed captions providing details regarding almost all of the photographic subjects - a rarity in albums of this period - and with a mix of portraiture that includes both rare and highly desirable views, the photography is in and of itself a remarkable feature of Junkin's album.

Though ledger drawings had emerged as an art form decades prior, the ledger drawings preserved in this album are uniquely effective as a means for visual history and storytelling. Most notably, it appears that the drawings were created by young Native schoolchildren, and as such reflect their own unique cultures as well as their studies, their impressions of European-American culture, and their efforts to assimilate into that culture. Among the drawings are images of Native warriors, U.S. soldiers, animals, native plants, and maps.

Perhaps most evocative and illustrative of the forced assimilation underway at the agencies are the letters written by the Native school children to Inspector Junkin upon the occasion of his visit to the agency. Writing to Junkin on 27 November 1889, one Fort Hall, Idaho, girl writes: “… I am very glad you are here to inspect the school. I like my teachers all and will do all I can to please them. I like the white peoples’ ways better than the Indians. The white people can read and learn about God and know how to live right, but the poor ignorant Indian do not know how to live. I want to live as near like the whites as I can. I want to be a good Christian and reach a heavenly home. I wish the others would do the same….Your Indian Friend, Minnie Yandell.” A young Ute child, “Pay Many Washington,” writes a short, undated note from White Rock, Utah: “I will all the time good / indian. All the time.” Fourteen-year-old Frank Calac writes to Junkin from Rincon Indian Reservation in California, 19 November, 1890, in small part: “…we all come to school every day when we can and try to learn to be useful men. Mr. Junkin we all like this valley and can make us nice homes if we knew were going to have our land always now when we plant our fruit we don’t know that we will keep our land long enough to eat the fruit. The Government give us a good teacher and school and tools to work with and we are not lazy people….”

Junkin’s album documents Native American life and culture at a critical moment – just two years after the 1887 passage of the Dawes Act resulting in the division of tribal lands, and during the growing Ghost Dance movement which would culminate in the devastating massacre of ghost dancers in December 1890 at Wounded Knee. With its extraordinary mix of photographs, drawings, and letters, Junkin’s album captures the struggle – and the resilience - of our nation’s Indigenous Peoples as they endured the challenges associated with forced cultural assimilation into European-American society.

[With:] A second album, approx. 15 1/2 x 11 1/2 in., identified to “Henry F. McCollough / From Grandma Gibbon / Chariton, Iowa / August 9, 1906.” This album contains an assortment of items including a large number of photographs from “A Summer Outing in the Far West / 1905,” photographs which appear to show WWI-era soldiers, and a small number of photographs of family and friends engaged in leisure pursuits. Henry F. McCollough was the husband of Louise Junkin McCoullough, Inspector William W. Junkin’s granddaughter. This album was acquired at the same time and with Junkin’s album “A Collection of Indian Photographs….”