1880 Crow Peace Delegation

Source: Wendy Red Star, Peelatchiwaaxpáash / Medicine Crow (Raven), artist-manipulated digitally reproduced photograph by C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, 2014, https://www.wendyredstar.com/1880-crow-peace-delegation.

Date: 2014

Text/Transcription:

Wendy Red Star (b. 1981), a member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation, has worked in various artistic disciplines to explore the impact of colonialism on indigenous ideologies by drawing from pop culture and traditional Apsáalooke art. In this series, she added her hand-written notations, containing historical context and personal comments, to portraits taken during ‘The First Crow Indian Delegation’ in 1873. Nine chiefs and three of their wives met with President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) to discuss their territorial boundaries in present-day Montana. The portraits were taken by Charles Milton Bell (1848-1893), a photographer for the Department of the Interior, as part of an effort to document the ‘vanishing Indian’ systematically. Ultimately, these meetings led to a forced cession of Apsáalooke land to the U.S. government.