[Photo Album Depicting Native Americans at the Rosebud Indian Agency]

South Dakota, 1893. Very good. 6¾" x 11¼". Steel post binder with contemporary semiwraparound enclosure made of thick wood boards, held together with a calf backstrip. 25 thick card leaves, most of which are interleaved with typing paper with a total of 50 albumen photographs glued down, one per page. Photos measure 4 3/8" x 7 5/8" and 39 are captioned in the negative, though a few are hard to read. Album very good: moderate wear, leaves a bit wavy; photos generally near fine or better.

This is an album of large photographs depicting the Sioux at the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation (RSIR, also known as the "Rosebud Agency") in South Dakota. The album also features some of the early work of an important photographer who dedicated his life to documenting the Rosebud Sioux, John Alvin Anderson.

According to an article by Claes H. Jacobson, Anderson emigrated from Sweden at the age of one in 1870, and his family eventually settled, in 1883, in Sparks, Nebraska, close to the border of South Dakota and near RSIR. ("John Anderson: A Swedish Immigrant and Pioneer Photographer among the Rosebud Sioux Indians" (Swedish-American Historical Quarterly, v. 60, no. 2: Swedish-American Historical Society (April 2009)). John became a carpenter as a teenager and purchased his first camera in the mid-1880s. Per Jacobson, "At this time . . . John became an apprentice to [a local photographer]. Unfortunately, no exact date has been found to confirm exactly when John took his first photographs, but it was probably around 1885." Anderson also started collecting Lakota artifacts around this time and ultimately spent forty-five years on the reservation. Over that period Anderson built a collection that led to his becoming a museum curator for its exhibition, though he sold the collection to the BIA in 1938. Per Jacobsen, Anderson's

"interest in photography on Rosebud Reservation was an important part of his life . . . there he met daily with tribal members in the store, learned to speak the Lakota language, became close friends with many of them, and developed opportunities to photograph them in his small studio or in outdoor settings. His photographs, taken between the mid-1880s and the late 1920s show not only the Sioux of the past but also what he witnessed of their daily activities in the transitional years."

Anderson ultimately issued two photobooks on the Sioux, 1896's "Among the Sioux," and "Sioux Memory Gems," published in 1929 and including poems from Anderson's wife, Myrtle.

With a few exceptions, all of the photos here depict Sioux and/or their living conditions. Per Jacobsen, Anderson recorded visiting Rosebud in May and June 1889 when the Sioux Land Commission visited for a "Great Council" with General George Crook. Crook then hired Anderson to take photos of Sioux for $20, thereby establishing him as a professional photographer. The few dated photos here show either 1889 or 1893. Jacobson pointed out that Anderson's existing notebooks mention that he was hanging around the reservation's corral and witnessed a slaughter of cattle in June 1889 and that in July he witnessed "Indians . . . dancing all day in spite of the hot weather," allowing for the inference that some of the undated dancing and allotment photos mentioned below were taken as early as 1889.

According to Jacobson,
"The Rosebud Sioux, or Sicangu Lakota Oyate (Burnt Thigh People), or Brule Sioux, as they are also known, are part of the larger Teton Sioux group who once lived as nomads and hunters on the prairies of central North America from about the 1750s until the mid-nineteenth century . . . by the beginning of the 1880s, the buffalo had been virtually wiped out. The last buffalo hunt of the Sioux took place in 1882 and thereafter a lifestyle and livelihood disappeared. As part of peace treaties between the Sioux and the United States government, the Sioux were forced onto a number of reservations, including the one at Rosebud in south central South Dakota, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs became responsible for providing the Sioux with meat to prevent mass starvation. Large herds of cattle were driven from Texas to the reservations in South Dakota to be slaughtered in corrals . . . Between 1890 and 1915, the Rosebud Reservation was home to some 5,000 Sioux."

Approximately 15 photos relate to cattle and/or allotments. More than one shows huge crowds of hundreds, if not thousands, of Sioux on horses and with covered wagons awaiting receipt of supplies. One shows several men butchering a steer and there's a great shot of a lone woman with her horse, surrounded by dogs, with the caption, "Sioux Squaw on way home from beef issue." Another shows a series of tipis in the foreground with the slaughter and issue house in the background, while several show men working with cattle in the corrals themselves.

At least ten show Sioux around their homes. These include a great shot of a woman tanning a hide, while another shows two women preparing a meal. Another amazing shot shows a family sitting outside their tipi with much of their belongings off to one side and what appears to be hides drying on wooden poles.

At least 12 photos depict dances/religious ceremonies. Two of these are captioned "Squaw Dance." One shows a large crowd watching a single dancer with the caption "War Dance," another with the same caption shows several dancers. One captions reads "Sioux Indians Dancing the Omaha," another reads "Scalp Dance," a third reads "White Buffalo Dance." There's also a shot of a log and mud structure captioned "Sioux Indian Dance House."

Other images include the Sioux mounted police force and a great birdseye view of a large swath of the reservation. One, with a caption, "Modern Indian Village," shows several buildings made of cut logs alongside a few tipis.

The Nebraska State Historical Society has a collection of Anderson Rosebud photographs but they are otherwise institutionally rare and a collection of 22 photos sold at Cowan's in 2020. Exceptional images documenting the Sioux during a significant time of transition at Rosebud and taken by a photographer who spent much of his life preserving their culture.