My job is assistant director for history and culture at the Smithsonians National museum of the American Indian. I lead the scholars, the historians and curators at the museum who are in charge of producing the exhibitions, and the books and a lot of the Educational Programs and symposiums and work with a collection of about 824,000 objects, but i have a real interest in photography, and we have also 500,000 photographs in the National Museums Archive Center and ive been working very hard in the year that ive been at this museum. I have a 30year career at the smithsonian and i just joined the museum in the last year and these photographs are of much interest to me at the Archive Center. So you wrote an article about the collection. Tell us why you wrote this article . A virtual tour of history . Thanks, richard. We have a great magazine. American indian magazine that is a members magazine for our museum and have become more and more familiar with it offer time so when i was asked for the opportunity to consider what photographs we had online for the public to see and for students to study online, it was a great opportunity because i was able to review and get really deep into all of the collections of photography that are online about 25,000 photographs of these 500,000. Were continuing to work all of the time, but for me to do a deep dive into everything we have now was just fantastic and thats what i love. I still love to do research and for me to understand the depth of collections from the beginning of photography in the 1840s here in america to presentday contemporary and digital. So i was asked to do a virtual an article about a virtual tour of photography online and it really got me uptodate with everything we have, while i cant physically get into that archive which i so want to do. So what i can do is bring to our readers a glimpse of what they have. So why dont we take a look and just jump right into the photographs and the first one that you reference in the article is gareth. Why dont you tell us about that . When i did join the museum and got a quick and early tour of the Archives Center i asked first about the earliest images because i really wanted to know how far the collection went back. I know that one of the earliest forms of photography invented by louie deger in france in 1839 was also very popular in the u. S. So by 1840 or so we were seeing these images and these images on the screen by dr. Peter wilson were from the early 1850s in the buffalo, new york, area and so when these incredible, expensivelooking cases with these 180yearold images opened up, its always exciting to me and first of all, if you dont look at them right theyre a mirror image and scanning them or reproducing them is difficult. So this is an excellent image by our staff photographers, but capturing the image of this American Indian man who went on to become a doctor so early on, and the nations history, but in a time when you would think few leaders in the native community would become accredited through university and become a doctor, but it shows you a window back into a point in time and you want to know about what dr. Wilson was and why he was dressed in western attire and why he looks the way he does and possibly, who did he give this image to . You know, was it something that he kept . Was it something that was shared with family or was it possibly meant for Something Else . But we spent a lot of promenade research which was learning about the creation or objective a photograph and who made it . Who is the sitter and trying to find out why it was made and i wanted to get back to the beginning and know that American Indians and our indigenous native populations in the western hemisphere, they were being photographed and what story does that tell . So it was a pleasure to find this image right away when i was searching online. In these pictures you have the back and thats unlocking history and thats when youre the history detective when you open up the case and you see Something Like this with Peter Wilsons name and his native name and his American Indian name is there which i will not try to pronounce because i dont want to do it injustice and it said gifted to his friend, p. E. Thomas and it was through tom a i believe, that this image was donated through the National Museum of indianamerican collection, our collection is a century old, but our museum was only founded in 1989. So all of the early Collection Items that come in come through the native American Indian created in new york city in particular. So we have so many collections that have come in over the course of a century and so its taken us decades and try to research and take the origins of the images that we have. So next in your article you have amber type . Amber type comes into being and a wet process on glass, and you can see theyre fragile. Part of what i want to show to viewers is that we do try to take the best care we can of our objects. We have conservation department. We take a lot of pride in taking the collection storage environment as possible. I work at the museums Cultural Resources center when were open in these covid times and all of the images are stored in the Archive Center and you can see over time an image from the midto late 1850s and goes through some wear and tear, and so the image is cracked, but weve tried to keep it in the best shape possible. So you see a man here in this image who is about a hundred years old and zooming in you can get the detail from these images and you see there could be a stain there at the top, obscuring some of the image, but for what its going through in this century and a half, we are lucky to have it in the condition that it is. And so this is an individual who fought in wars, and probably in the war of 1812 and you know, has, you know, has lived a tough life potentially, but he was also part of some major decisions and treaties that were signed with the native americans and one in michigan, one treaty ceding millions of acres of land to the u. S. Government and he was a part of that. So recording the history and again, having this window into history to be able to recognize and identify some of the individuals in these early photographs all of the way up to today, really brings history full circle and you can understand that these are individuals who had exceptional lives sometimes or we learned a lot about day to day life in some of the photographs that we have. Theres also an extra thing with this photograph whats that . Sometimes well see these small clippings from news and newspaper articles about the individuals talking about chief akimas and the long life outlining his battles as he was, you know, involved in some of the wars. His life near lansing michigan and also outlined and sometimes he made the photographer who made the photograph, that was photographed by henry h. Smith in michigan in 1858 and again, there werent all that many photographers working that early. So to have it identified both the sitter and the photographer is quite extraordinary. The next thing you mention in your article chronologically is Alexander Gardner and there are a lot of photographs here, but what are we looking at here . Were looking at a group of crow indians who participated in the signing of the treaty of fort laramie in 1868. They were hoping for a reservation and land and rights to live in the black hills. Again, so many treaties have not come to fruition, but there was hope on this day and this collection is just, you know, expansive. Its about 200 images by Alexander Gardner. Gardner gained fame during the American Civil War and worked with the Matthew Brady studio out of washington, d. C. And many of the images that are memorable from the gettysburg aftermath of the soldiers the images of soldiers who died during the battle were gardners work, and little was known about these photographs for many years. I mentioned earlier that i spent 30 years studying photography at the smithsonian first at the National Museum of American History and now at the National Museum of the American Indian and this small collection and significant collection was unknown to many of us at the institution until thees is questi centennial in the last decade and as we were researching collections and i was chairing an Editorial Committee for a book of the civil war collections at the smithsonian, one of the archivists invited me over to the American Indian museum to see this collection that i did not know about, many of my fellow cure arators did n know about and it ended up that there was a retrospective of Alexander Gardners work of the portrait gallery and for the first time the American Indian museum loaned photographs it another museum. So that was just astounding to me and think about gardner being part of the civil war photography when we were the first time americans were seeing wartime photographs publiced in books and then in newspapers and illustrated monthly journals and then he travels with general sherman west as the indian wars began just after the civil war. So from 1866 to 1868 gardners traveling with the generals troops and visiting the various sites, meeting these individual, you know indians and visiting the tribal communities and being witness to treaty signings and the gatherings and documenting for history whats happening as the wars move again from east to west with the indian wars that would go right up to 1890 and for that twoyear period, gardner is photographing and these were the images that were kept by general sherman and then donated to the smithsonian. So just thinking about that journey that was happening and the hard moment in American History that continued going from the difficult times coming back together as the union and launching right into war in the American West with the Indian Tribes and trying to move through the treaty making. It was, again, a hard time, but gardners images capture it forever. You selected this particular image as the banner for the leadin to your article. What drew you to this one . It was at the screen of the different images and that are online for this collection. I wanted to show the specific group that was signing the treaty. We have an exhibition called nation to nation which i highly recommend people come to see when we are able to get open again and it goes through the history of the u. S. Government treaties with native American Communities across the u. S. , and a lot of times those treaties was not fully, executed and a couple of the images, and garnder garn gardner being present at that home and being there to sign with the u. S. Government was important for me to show within the article . What do you suppose gardners purpose was . Did he make money with these photographs . You know, he was a great wartime photojournalist in america and here in the u. S. And so he made his lively hood from photography, from the Matthew Brady studio and then publishing a sketchbook of the civil war and you can find those in the Smithsonian Library of congress and a couple of museums still have the twovolume sketch book that he produced and then his images would be sold for news periodicals and journals and lovely journals and newspapers and he was very successful in his work. The next photograph that you had in your article was this. Tell us what were seeing here. Okay. This is an image from the franklin ar collection. A photograph from the Buffalo Bills wild west show and i have done a lot of research from william f. Cody and buffalo bill, my ph. D sder tagz is on Buffalo Bills wild west and this started from one collection of the American History museum and gertrude photographed those images that i started out with, and the American Indian images that are represented in the lennar collection have behind the scenes photos which i like to see. I like to see what were the performers doing when they were in the arena . A different element of what was happening. Instead of the performers in the arena reenacting things like, you know, the battle of little big horn or horse races or other types of program acts that would happen during a visit to the wild west. Heres cody sitting with a cup y couple of the perform aers and i think its chief iron tail at codys left who performed more than 20 years on the show circuit with cody traveling nationally and internationally with the show. Many of the performers were sioux indians from pine ridge reservation. I had the opportunity with another smithsonian colleague to visit pine ridge just two years ago, and to learn more about those who chose to leave the reservation and a lot of Different Reasons why an individual would choose to contract with the wild west show, and i wanted to be able to show one of these images that highlighted that there was a relationship between cody and the indians, that he was hoping that this opportunity was not just a stereo typical look at indian life and it was an education for the public and some chose to join him and y sometimes they were reenacting scenes that they had lived and they were also being paid and they were seeing the country and seeing the world, at least europe at times when the show would go there and there were many personal reasons for the American Indian manner or woman to join the show and the families could also travel with the show so women would be behind the scenes and taking care in the camp, teepees and were able to travel and live like and also Wear Clothing as they would and they werent always allowed to do that when they were on the reservations in the u. S. So i wanted to highlight that one collection and also show that intimate moment behind the scenes and the friendship that did trance pieb between a lspir performers. This category of photograph i think you call silver gelatin. What is that . Silver gelatin photographs have become popular from the late 1880s and what we know right up until the 1990s. You dont see too much photographic film on sale these day, but the silver gelatin and the salts that coat the photographic paper make the beautiful black and white images that we work through time and much of the history of the wild west show were documentsed in the silver gelatin photographs from the 1890s to 1960, at least when cody was traveling with the show. Until color becomes popular in the 1930s. The silver gelatin is primary and it remains today a favorite of some artistic photographs and at the American Indian museum, there are many distinctive silver gelatin collections. In your article and the next category going on the history of photography is stereo. What are we seeing here . Another popular type of image from the 1850s to the 1940s to the world war ii era and what we are seeing is a president ial inaugural parade from the time of theodore roosevelt. From 1905 here in the parade we have at least six American Indian chiefs coming down pennsylvania avenue and were very familiar today with potentially seeing this on television or here in d. C. And many folks make it a tradition to go and watch that parade after the inauguration and again, seeing ever present in American Life are native and indigenous communities and thats really at the heart of what we want to do at the National Museum of the American Indian is to make sure that our public, our visitors and students and teachers understand the rich history of American Indians preu. S. , all of the way through u. S. History through today and being part of a president ial inauguration is is about as american as it gets, i think. Is there a way for people to see these in stereo or is that something thats hard to do . You know, some stereo enthusiasts do have that and its an opportunity lieu alltime viewers, handheld viewers and i think there are some programs online and im sure you can search stereo photography and learn how you can do it with your laptop at home and do searching to see how you can really see the threedimensional reality of what those images side by side can bring and its really fun to see them as the photographer hoped you would see them. This is another category that you address in your article. Tell us about this. You know, there are some subjects that i would think you needs to investigate and research more and bring on to our exhibition floors and online expectitions and thats it is history of indianamerican boarding schools in the u. S. This postcard was from the 19 teens, 1914, and it shows nurses at the Carlisle School in carlisle, pennsylvania, inoculating students. Of course, just after this time would be another worldwide epidemic of the flu in 1918 and here at the dispensary at the hospital you can see that the health and welfare of the students, you know, was being taken care of and there is a long history of the 1970s to the 1960s and some schools today outside the reservation system for educating American Indians and theres a tough history there, a complicated history and these postcards again, attest to that history a