From the early 1850s the Smithsonian Institution (among others) had financed Dr Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden's explorations from the Missouri River westward to the Rockies. Hayden, a professor of geology at the University of Pennsylvania's Medical School, spent his summers surveying for the government and collecting fossils for the Smithsonian Institution Museum. The Plains Indians got to know him well. The Sioux named him Man-Who-Picks-Up-Stones-Running.**
In 1868, while conducting fieldwork in Wyoming, Hayden attended the Fort Laramie peace conference, where he met William Blackmore, an English entrepreneur. Blackmore was serving on the President's Commission investigating the railroad surveys. He was also speculating for substantial land holdings in the American West, and he hired Hayden for his private surveys. In the coming years, Blackmore was to give Hayden considerable sums of money to augment Congressional funds allocated for his government surveys.**
While surveying in Wyoming in the summer of 1869, Hayden met William Henry Jackson taking photographs along the railroad lines. The next year he went to Jackson's studio in Omaha to obtain pictures of rock formations along the Green River and to see his portraits of Indians. Hayden had worked with photographers on the early surveys by the Topographical Engineers. He knew the impact of images that conveyed the wonders of the West. Hayden was so impressed with Jackson's work that he invited him to be part of his forthcoming survey to the Great Basin. Hayden's budget did not cover a photographer, so Jackson volunteered his services in exchange for traveling expenses and the right to retain his negatives for commercial sales. He promised to produce prints for official reports, and when he became a permanent survey member, to donate his 10,000 railroad stereographs to Hayden.
The survey left Cheyenne on August 7, 1870 and traveled along the
Oregon Trail for four months. James Stevenson, who had accompanied Hayden on surveys since the 1856 Warren Expedition to Yellowstone, served as executive officer. Jackson was assigned to Stevenson's party.
Jackson's photographic equipment consisted of a stereo camera, a 6j x 8j camera, and 400 glass negative plates. His pack mule. Hypo (Hyposulphite of Soda), had the burden of carrying the 300 pounds of equipment up and down mountains. Two army ambulances served for darkroom and storage facilities. Hayden wanted to be the first survey leader back to Washington with developed images, so he persuaded Jackson to take all his printing material into the field. Jackson used local studios to produce prints, such as those of Charles R. Savage in Salt Lake City and J. Crissman in Montana.
On September 20, the Stevenson party reached Fort Stambaugh. A party of Shoshoni on a buffalo hunt were camping along the Sweetwater River nearby. Due to the willingness of their leader to be photographed, Jackson obtained several images of Chief Washakie and his village (plates 5.21, 5 •22). These are often misdated to later surveys.’® At Fort Laramie, with Blackmore's support, Hayden hired Jackson as his official photographer.
On June 11, 1871 Hayden led his first expedition to the Yellowstone area. Near the head of Medicine Lodge Creek, Idaho, Jackson accidentally discovered a shy family of the Bannock tribe, belonging to the Sheep-eater band, hidden in a grove of willows. They were wandering free but were near starvation. 'The present of a handful of sugar and some coffee reconciled them to having their photographs taken' (plate 5.20).
During the summer, Jackson photographed Mammoth Hot Springs and Yellowstone Canyon; landscape artist Thomas Moran sketched nearby. Jackson and Moran remained friends for over fifty-five years and greatly influenced each other's work.
On the way home at the end of the field season, Jackson took some classic photographs of the Pawnee (plate 5.23). (These are often misdated to later surveys.) 'The Pawnee village series were made by myself in 1871 on my return from the first Yellowstone expedition of the survey.'®’ It seems probable that Jackson had witnessed a naming ceremony - the ceremony for a warrior whose valor had won him an honored name. The Pawnee earth lodges were located at Loup Fork, Nebraska, a hundred miles west of Omaha; Indeed, Hayden had made a trip to the Pawnee and Omaha Reservations especially to have Jackson take photographs. These negatives started the North American Photographic Collection made by Blackmore and Hayden for the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1871 the Pawnee were the last people living traditionally on the upper Missouri River. Five years later, their earth lodges were plowed under and they were removed from their ancient homeland forever.
The field season of 1872 had a tragic beginning for Jackson. In February his wife Mollie died in childbirth, along with his newborn daughter. Jackson, burying his grief, headed out with the Stevenson party of the Hayden Survey on the second expedition to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton. Jackson carried a new 11 x 14 camera which he used exclusively to capture some of his most breathtaking landscape views of the West.
During the summer, there were several uprisings of Bannocks and some of the survey members were nearly killed. However, Jackson managed to take pictures of a Bannock group which had camped along the Snake River near Fort Hall, Idaho. They were his only ethnographic photographs on record that year.
The Indians of Montana and Wyoming were on the warpath in 1873, so Jackson could not return to Yellowstone and the Tetons. Instead, the Hayden survey divided into three large divisions and headed for the Rocky
Mountains in Colorado. For the first time, Jackson worked without a staff artist. He led his own photographic unit and covered the entire field by linking up with the different parties. He reported, 'This was my expedition.'
At the end of the field season Jackson went to the Omaha Reservation at Blair, Nebraska, to take photographs. He had met the agent's daughter there before the survey started. Emilie Painter, a Quaker from Baltimore, was to become his wife. According to Jackson, Emilie took photographs at the reservation between 1870—73.’°
The 1874 survey of the Rocky Mountains included Ernest Ingersoll,“a New York Tribune journalist, and Edward Anthony, one of the family that owned the Photographic Supply Company. Anthony was Jackson's assistant on the trip. Jackson had a new folding box-darkroom and took with him both a 5 x 8 and a stereo camera.
Throughout the month of August, Jackson met large bands of traveling Utes who were moving their reservation from Clear Creek near Denver to Sagauche. At the Los Pinos Reservation, he photographed the Ute Chief Ouray and Chipeta, his wife. The chief had served as an interpreter on delegations to Washington and lived in an adobe house at the reservation on a pension of $1,000 a year. Both house and pension were given to him by the government in exchange for most of his tribe's homeland. Jackson also took pictures of Tush-A-Qui-Not ('Peah'), a Ute sub-chief (plate 5.24). He then photographed Peah's infant who had been left in a cradleboard on the agent's porch. Peah threw a blanket over the camera and accused Jackson of 'Making all Indians sick... all die... OK for groups of men but not women and children... not whole village'. Two other chiefs, Shavano and Guerro, started talking against Jackson. They had been on delegations to Washington where their photographs had been taken; they had learned to distrust government representatives who used pictures against them. Jackson's friend. Chief Billy, warned him to leave before he was used as target practice.
Jackson headed for the Southwest and at the end of the month visited Canyon de Chelly. He met an old Omaha acquaintance, Tom Cooper, driving a supply train to Captain John Moss's mining camp. Moss had made his own treaties with the Utes and knew their language and their country. He told Jackson that he had discovered some ruins when he had been in the area in 1856 and would take Jackson to see them. The Utes called them Moki (Hopi) towns. Jackson believed they were Aztec. At the time he did not realize that he was taking the first pictures of Anasazi ruins (the ancient pueblo culture dating from 600 to 1300 ad) in Mancos Canyon, Colorado (plate 5.25). They returned to camp through Montezuma Valley, all the while encircling the Anasazi ruins (now more famous) at Mesa Verde.
When the field season ended in October, Jackson went with Stevenson and his wife, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, to a site seven miles from Denver. There were 'Indians camped around town that the doctor [Hayden] desired to be taken'. Jackson made four negatives of the 'old fellows', including Chief Douglass, and Stevenson paid them $8.00 (plate 5.26).
The next month, Jackson and Ingersoll left their party and went on a trip to the Southwest. John Moss again served as guide. On November 3, they finally discovered the Mesa Verde ruins. Hayden immediately recognized the significance of the find. Jackson wrote, 'Before he had glanced at half a dozen photographs, my work for the following season was determined in his mind.' Jackson returned in 1875 and 1876 to photograph the ruins (plate 5.27). His images had such an impact on Congress that the 50,000 acres of Mesa Verde were made a national park in 1906.
Before the field season of 1875, Jackson headed for Okmulgee, Indian Territory. The Grand Council was in session and all nations living in the territory were represented. Jackson took pictures of the various groups, as did another survey photographer, John K. Hillers. In October 1876, Jackson visited seven Hopi towns - Shongopovi, Mishongovi, Shipaulovi, Sich-omovi, Tewa (Hano) and Walpi Pueblos (plate 5.27) - with his new 20 x 24 view camera. At Tewa, he photographed the famous potter, Nampeyo (Serpent That Has No Tooth), who was then eighteen years old (plate 5.28). Fifty-one years later, he was to meet her once again.
In 1876, Jackson represented the US Geological Survey at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The exhibition of models of the Southwest cliff dwellings, along with Jackson's photographs, won him a bronze medal. At the Exposition, new panoramic cameras were shown, and the new dry-plate process demonstrated. Jackson had made dry plates back in September 1869 but had thought the process 'too risky'.
In midsummer in Montana, the Battle of the Little Bighorn took place (see chapter three) and the area was unstable. Jackson decided to make a short winter trip to the pueblos. He returned again in 1877 on an independent visit. He had limited time available, and without the survey's packers, he had to carry his own photographic equipment; so to minimize the weight he took only his 8 x 10 camera and new sensitive negative tissue bands for 400 exposures to try the new dry process. Jackson waited at Santa Fe for the film to arrive. Because of the delay, he had time to test only one negative.
Jackson photographed Acoma, Laguna, Taos and Zuni Pueblos. He took pictures of the Navaho at Fort Defiance and obtained images of Chaco Canyon. While there, he discovered the 'Chaco Skull' in a fourteen-foot-deep wash. These were the first human remains ever unearthed to testify to the existence of the vanished peoples of the canyon. Jackson rushed back to Washington to develop his prints. All 400 negatives had failed.
The 1878 expedition to Yellowstone was Jackson's last as a government photographer. It started from Cheyenne, as had the expedition eight years before. At Mammoth Springs, an army escort joined the survey party: the previous summer a group of Nez Perce of Chief Joseph's band, fleeing General Howard, had killed two tourists in the Yellowstone area.
On the journey home, Jackson stopped at Camp Brown to see Chief Washakie, whom he had first photographed in 1870. The Shoshoni were out hunting. Jackson was ready to depart when he discovered a group of Bannock prisoners. Among them was someone he recognized. Jackson's last photograph on the survey was of his old guide on the first expedition to Yellowstone, Beaver Dick Leigh.
When the survey party disbanded at Fort Steele in Rawlings, Wyoming, Jackson took the train back to Washington. Before departing, he sold his photographic equipment for $200 to his friend, James Stevenson.'*'
World History
