Images of Zitkala-Sa

In the last years of the nineteenth century, photographer Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934) began photographing members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in New York City. Although Käsebier had grown up in Iowa and Colorado, she made her career in New York City, where opportunities for photographers seemed greater. Perhaps to recapture fond memories of Native Americans she had known in the West, Käsebier sought out Native American models in the East.
A series of these photographs of members of Buffalo Bill's troupe survive, many in the collections of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While Käsebier was only one of many Euro-American photographers who produced portraits of Native Americans during this period, her images stand out in part because she asked her models to choose their poses and dress rather than assigning them her preconceived notion of "what an Indian should look like." In addition, although she strove to produce beautiful images of Indians, she avoided the traps common among her colleagues; these included presenting models as "types" rather than individuals, providing romanticized or essentializing titles for portraits of individuals, and abstracting images of individuals through pose or "faraway" dreamy facial expressions.
Joseph T. Keiley, ZITKALA-SA, 1898
A comparison between Joseph Keiley's 1898 portrait of Zitkala-Sa (right) and Käsebier's several portraits of Zitkala-Sa (below) illustrates the distinctiveness of Käsebier's style. Käsebier had met Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938) in New York in the last years of the nineteenth century. Zitkala-Sa was becoming well-known as a performer, writer, musician, and more recently, as an advocate on behalf of Native Americans. She was included in Harper's Bazaar's 1900 list of "Persons Who Interest Us." But in 1898, when she sat for both Käsebier and Keiley, she was on the cusp of her fame.
In Keiley's portrait of her, he presents Zitkala-Sa as a dreamy, unfocused representative of Indian womanhood. Among the several portraits Keiley took of Zitkala-Sa are four photographs of her in Chinese dress; these represent Keiley's view of her as an exotic "type" without regard to her individual identity or her Lakota origins.
In contrast, Käsebier's portraits of Zitkala-Sa reflect Zitkala-Sa's complicated multiple identities. Zitkala-Sa (or "Red Bird") used her Lakota name as an artist and writer and when appearing in public; she used her English name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, in legal matters and in letters to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Käsebier's portraits present these multiple identities, capturing Zitkala-Sa in Lakota dress as well as Americanized dress, and sometimes with representations of both identities simultaneously present.
Gertrude Kasebier, ZITKALA-SA, 1898
Even in her most "traditional" Indian portrait (left), Käsebier preserves Zitkala-Sa's individuality and identity, asking Zitkala-Sa -- who had become a friend, and who socialized with Käsebier's son Frederick, who was her own age -- to choose her own pose and costume. The size of the portrait preserves and therefore individuates Zitkala-Sa in her entirety, rather than as an abstracted, essentialized face, as she appears in the Keiley portrait.
In several of the portraits of Zitkala-Sa that Käsebier produced (as below, left), Zitkala-Sa appears in European-style dress, in poses which would have been standard for middle-class white women to adopt; in these, she holds books to represent her literary aspirations, or her violin, to represent her musical artistry. In these images, her Indian identity is not underscored, but instead the emphasis is placed on her identity as a writer and artist.
Käsebier's last portrait (below, right) seems the most personal and representative of Zitkala-Sa's experience as a Lakota woman far away from her home. In this portrait, shot in profile, Zitkala-Sa appears in European-style dress, but clutches an Indian basket to her chest. Her facial expression is neither dreamy nor faraway; instead her face could be read as angry, worried, stoic, or even defiant. This is a far cry from the dreamy expression captured in Keiley's image, taken the same year, in which Zitkala-Sa appears much older, and passive, eyes downcast. In Käsebier's portrait, Zitkala-Sa faces the future with her chin up.
Gertrude Kasebier, ZITKALA-SA, 1898

Recommended reading: Barbara L. Michaels, Gertrude Käsebier: The Photographer and Her Photographs (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1992), especially pp. 25-44.

Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for HSS 502 (Honors Seminar--American Frontiers and Borderlands), The Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York. Send email to lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu
Last modified: Wednesday 13 September 2000.