A visual pleasure and a unique insight into American history
For the first time ever, here is renowned photographer Gertrude Käsebier's haunting collection of photographs of Native American performers from Buffalo Bill's Wild West show at the turn of the century. One hundred years later, Käsebier's portraits remain significant visual records into the lives of these Sioux performers and their nation. Her striking photographs capture the strength and character of each individual, documenting the complexity of true warriors playing a staged version of themselves.
In 1898, Käsebier wrote to William F. Cody requesting to photograph Indians performing in his Wild West show at Madison Square Garden. Her photographs proved poignant. Her studio had no elaborate backdrops, and she removed Indian regalia to depict her subjects as "raw" individuals, with strong personalities and experiences that blurred the distinction between traditional life and contemporary times. Käsebier developed long relationships with several of the Indians, corresponding with a few for many years. Examples of these letters appear in the volume, as well as drawings done by Indians waiting in her studio, photographs of Dakota Sioux on their reservation, little-known historical background, and Wild West show memorabilia, including rare pages from Buffalo Bill's original route book. 
Käsebier's photographs are preserved at the National Museum of American History's Photographic History Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Warriors: A Photographic History by Gertrude Kasebier

Arts & Photography

Delaney, Michelle

Individual Artists

Smithsonian Books

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, star of the American West, began his journey to fame at age twenty-three, when he met writer Ned Buntline. The pulp novels Buntline later penned were loosely based on Cody’s scouting and bison-hunting adventures and sparked a national sensation. Other writers picked up the living legend of “Buffalo Bill” for their own pulp novels, and in 1872 Buntline produced a theatrical show starring Cody himself. In 1883, Cody opened his own show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which ultimately became the foundation for the world’s image of the American frontier. After the Civil War, new transcontinental railroads aided rapid westward expansion, fostering Americans’ long-held fascination with their western frontier. The railroads enabled traveling shows to move farther and faster, and improved printing technologies allowed those shows to print in large sizes and quantities lively color posters and advertisements. Cody’s show team partnered with printers, lithographers, photographers, and iconic western American artists, such as Frederic Remington and Charles Schreyvogel, to create posters and advertisements for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Circuses and other shows used similar techniques, but Cody’s team perfected them, creating unique posters that branded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West as the true Wild West experience. They helped attract patrons from across the nation and ultimately from around the world at every stop the traveling show made. In Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Michelle Delaney showcases these numerous posters in full color, many of which have never before been reproduced, pairing them with new research into previously inaccessible manuscript and photograph collections. Her study also includes Cody’s correspondence with his staff, revealing the showman’s friendships with notable American and European artists and his show’s complex, modern publicity model. Beautifully designed, Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presents a new perspective on the art, innovation, and advertising acumen that created the international frontier experience of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill's Wild West (Volume 6) (William F. Cody Series on the History and Culture of the American West)

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

University of Oklahoma Press

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Books by Delaney, Michelle