The People in the Pictures  🔗 **Source:** [The People in the Pictures](https://share.snipd.com/episode/bce65db9-518c-4794-af58-5093921a0a1c) ## Highlights - **Finding A Name Behind Anonymized Photo** - Emily Moazami found a labeled negative reading Sarah Grandmother's Knife after the catalog only said "woman in costume". - Discovering the name unlocked genealogical research that revealed Sarah's Crow name Looks at the Hawk and led to descendant outreach. Transcript: Emily Moazami Came across this photo, and it just made me laugh out loud. Lizzie Peabody Emily is the head archivist at the museum, so she's seen a lot of photos. But this one really stuck out. Emily Moazami It's an image of a girl standing outside in a field. It's a black and white image. And she's clearly dressed up for an occasion. And what's amazing about it is that she is grinning while also sticking her tongue out at the camera. I just love this moment so much because often you see historic photographs of Native peoples and they're very romanticized. Lizzie Peabody This photo was taken in the early 1900s. And most pictures from that period showed Native people dressed in ceremonial clothes, staring at the camera expressionless. They were formal, even staged. Not at all like this one. Emily Moazami This is like a very sweet, candid moment where a girl is acting like a typical girl and she's just being like, I don't want my photo taken or I'm going to tease you and I'm going to stick my Tongue out at you. Lizzie Peabody Emily was enthralled by this young girl. She wanted to know, who is she? So she went to the card catalog. Emily Moazami And all it said was woman in costume, and that it was shot circa 1903 to 1910 and depicting the Crow community. Lizzie Peabody How normal is it to have so little information with a photo in the archives? It is not that unusual, honestly. This is Rachel Menyuk. She's a processing archivist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. And she works closely with Emily. There might be descriptions like Indian man, Indian woman, or it could just say, you know, a first name. Or in this case, no name. Rachel and Emily weren't sure if they'd ever find a name for this young girl. Until a few years later. Rachel was preparing for a new exhibition at the museum featuring photos from the archives, and she wanted to include the picture of the girl sticking her tongue out. But to print it at large scale, she'd need the original negative. So off she went, down to cold storage, to pull it out. And when I was pulling it, I looked at the envelope on it. Rachel Menyuk And on that envelope, for the original negative, it said, Sarah Grandmother's Knife. Lizzie Peabody The, quote, woman in costume had a name, Sarah Grandmother's Knife. The card also said, age 10, wearing an elk tooth dress and sticking her tongue out playfully. Montana, 1910. Rachel Menyuk I had one of those moments where your heart just kind of skips a beat, right? Like, what? She slammed the door of cold storage and took off. I must have run down the hallway. I'm sure I was like, Emily, Emily, oh my gosh. I think we both started screaming. We were so excited. Because this is a photo we've been looking at. I mean, like, who is she? Who is she? ([Time 0:00:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ccd36f3-e6ce-46e9-b2f8-4daaaf7896e3)) - **Family Visit Turns Archives Into A Reunion** - The Harmon family visited NMAI after spotting relatives in archival photos posted online and brought personal family photos. - Their in-person consultation helped identify several people and connected museum images to family stories and names. Transcript: Lizzie Peabody Is welcoming the Harmon family to the National Museum of the American Indians Cultural Resources Center just outside of D.C. The Harmons are members of the Nanocoque Indian tribe, which historically settled the area that is now Delaware and Maryland's eastern shore. And they are here because of an Instagram post. See, Emily shared the picture of Sarah Grandmother's knife on Facebook, but her team had posted some other photos from the collection of Nanocoque community members taken back in The early 1900s. And then they got a reply. Rachel Menyuk Leonard Harmon had made a post on Instagram about having seen members of his family in these photos and how exciting it was. So the team reached out and asked if Leonard would be willing to come in and identify some of the relatives he'd recognized in the photos. Lizzie Peabody And maybe even look at some more photos while he's at it. Not only was Leonard like, absolutely, I am there, he even brought a photo of his own. Emily Moazami Now, was this in your house then? Harmon Family Members This was in my grandmother's house. So this is of my third great-grandfather. So the gentleman that you see in the photos, Lincoln Harmon, Chief Lincoln Harmon, this is his brother. Wow. So they both were chiefs within the community. Lizzie Peabody Leonard and his family are not the first to come to the Cultural Resource Center to look through archival stuff. Emily Moazami In fact, Emily has welcomed a lot of families. We always start the visits with a welcome and introducing ourselves and getting the visitors' names and just kind of starting off in a friendly manner. Welcome, everyone. I'm so excited to have you here. And we kind of give them an orientation of the building because the building is really spectacular and it has a lot of symbolism built into it. Harmon Family Members This building, the rotunda, was supposed to represent a lot of different indigenous dwellings to different people. Lizzie Peabody Nathan Sowery is a referencing archivist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. And he's the third of our archivist trifecta. He joined Rachel and Emily to welcome the visitors from the Nanakote community. Harmon Family Members So some people see the top as more of a teepee structure. Some people see it more as a wigwam. Lizzie Peabody After a brief tour of the building, everyone gathers into a conference room to look at photos together. People grab coffee, maybe a donut, and they sit around a big table. Rachel explains the process. Rachel Menyuk One of the first things that I do is ask, what are you interested in looking at? Do people have things that they are the most excited to see? I mean, I guess it's a little bit of a consultation, but also just a visit with the photographs. And the first is just to hear a little bit more about you all, you know, your background and what you would like to get out of today. So what kinds of images are you most excited to look at? And then everyone introduces themselves. Harmon Family Members So my name is Leonard Harmon. I'm Nana Koch and Lenape from Indian River 100. Lizzie Peabody There's also Leonard's mom. So I'm Pam Pierce Harmon Johnston. Leonard's cousin. My name is Matthew Harmon. And Leonard's uncle. Harmon Family Members I'm Mike Harmon and it's exciting to see my grandmother's picture there. Lizzie Peabody Rachel has a photo of Mike's grandmother projected onto a large screen in the dark room. Then she clicks her mouse and shows some photos that an anthropologist took of Nanocoque community members back in the early 1900s. Rachel Menyuk These ones are not online. Everything else that you're going to look at. Harmon Family Members Oh, I've never seen these. Rachel Menyuk Yeah. The rest of them that you're going to look at. ([Time 0:08:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c6b04ac5-3c87-4124-a22a-44baa8be789d)) - **Use Community Consultations To Fill Catalog Gaps** - During consultations, archivists ask visitors what they want to see and listen as families identify people, names, and stories from photographs. - This participatory process fills catalog gaps, recovers women's names, and passes knowledge between generations. Transcript: Rachel Menyuk One of the first things that I do is ask, what are you interested in looking at? Do people have things that they are the most excited to see? I mean, I guess it's a little bit of a consultation, but also just a visit with the photographs. And the first is just to hear a little bit more about you all, you know, your background and what you would like to get out of today. So what kinds of images are you most excited to look at? And then everyone introduces themselves. Harmon Family Members So my name is Leonard Harmon. I'm Nana Koch and Lenape from Indian River 100. Lizzie Peabody There's also Leonard's mom. So I'm Pam Pierce Harmon Johnston. Leonard's cousin. My name is Matthew Harmon. And Leonard's uncle. Harmon Family Members I'm Mike Harmon and it's exciting to see my grandmother's picture there. Lizzie Peabody Rachel has a photo of Mike's grandmother projected onto a large screen in the dark room. Then she clicks her mouse and shows some photos that an anthropologist took of Nanocoque community members back in the early 1900s. Rachel Menyuk These ones are not online. Everything else that you're going to look at. Harmon Family Members Oh, I've never seen these. Rachel Menyuk Yeah. The rest of them that you're going to look at. Lizzie Peabody But why does the collection have so many photos taken by anthropologists in the early 1900s? And why is there so little information about the people in the photos? Harmon Family Members That's a great question, and unfortunately, I can't give a nice answer. It's going to be a darker, more problematic answer. Lizzie Peabody We're okay with those. Harmon Family Members Okay, good. Lizzie Peabody Nathan says back in the late 1800s, many non-Native people were thinking the same thing. Harmon Family Members That Native peoples were disappearing, that they were either dying off through disease or they were assimilating to Euro-American culture. Lizzie Peabody There was even a name for this, the quote, vanishing Indian. Harmon Family Members And so anthropologists, in kind of a good and bad way, they wanted to document Native cultures before they were gone. Lizzie Peabody So in the late 1800s, people descended on Native communities in droves, documenting everything they could, taking notes, collecting objects, and of course, snapping lots and lots Emily Moazami Of pictures. So there was this abundance of photographers of all skill levels, amateur, professional, anthropologists, going to Native communities to document Native peoples because they Were, in their minds, a dying race. Lizzie Peabody But these anthropologists and photographers weren't interested in documenting family lines or specific individuals. Emily Moazami The photographers often saw the people as archetypical Indians. Harmon Family Members This pure idea of an individual who best represents this community or that community. So to those anthropologists and those photographers, it wouldn't make sense to write down somebody's name. Lizzie Peabody Right. The point is that you're not an individual. You're a representative. Harmon Family Members That's exactly right. Lizzie Peabody Of an entire culture, an entire kind of people. So a name is almost antithetical to the mission of the photograph. Many of these photos showed a stereotypical or one-dimensional view of Native communities, depicting them as people who exist outside of modernity in the wild corners of America. This was not true, of course, but it didn't stop some photographers from getting very famous spreading this idea. People like Edward Curtis. Harmon Family Members He's like the most infamous problematic of those photographers, decorating Native peoples in certain headdresses and carrying community items that aren't even from their community. Lizzie Peabody Edward Curtis was a photographer and ethnographer who focused on the American West. And yeah, he was literally shoving random things from another tribe into someone's hand and saying, hold this and stand there. Thank you. See, the point wasn't documentary accuracy. It was selling an illusion. Harmon Family Members He really romanticized. There's the idea of, again, this was the language of the time, the quote-unquote noble savage. Lizzie Peabody And you could argue that many photos present a distorted or manicured image of real life. Just look at what people put on social media. But Curtis really stretched those boundaries. Harmon Family Members The most famous photos are one of two elderly men inside a teepee, and between them is an alarm clock. Lizzie Peabody But Curtis didn't realize there was an alarm clock in the background when he took the photo. So he was like, concern it, I can't have an image of a native man in a teepee with an alarm clock. That's technology. So he got a little crafty. Harmon Family Members I jokingly refer to it as like the first Photoshop, where he goes in and alters it and manipulates the image to meet what he thinks it should represent. So instead of that alarm clock appearing, that alarm clock is like brushed out and replaced by a pot. Lizzie Peabody And this wasn't a one-off thing for Curtis. In another photo, you can see an older Native man and woman standing outside. Harmon Family Members And behind them is a, I forget what kind of Ford automobile, but, you know, early 1900s. So a Ford automobile is there. And again, Curtis is like, that can't exist. Native peoples exist in this, you know, primordial past. They can't exist now with, you know, that doesn't sell his romanticized image. So he drew a big bush over, like, colored it in over. And of course it looks pretty hacky anyway if you take a close look. Lizzie Peabody That's kind of insulting on two levels. It's like no one will notice this, but also, I mean, it's doctoring the photo and then it's like I'm getting a like Harold and the Purple Crayon vibe almost. It's just like, yeah, yeah, we'll put a bush here. So what was the result of all these doctored portraits? Well, between 1907 and 1930, Curtis published a 20-volume set of books that are filled with photos of Native people. And these are large, coffee table-sized books that were sold around the world. And this had a massive influence on how people everywhere saw Native Americans. It's an image that still persists today. Harmon Family Members We do have visitors who will come into the museum and say, oh, I didn't know Native people still existed. Lizzie Peabody Now, NMAI is trying to correct this image. It's also working to right the wrongs of salvage anthropology. Because many of the photos and objects collected by salvage anthropologists ended up in museums across the globe. Rachel Menyuk And now a lot of the work is to sort of piece together where these things have ended up so that communities can find them again and bring them home. Lizzie Peabody When a New York Museum of Native American History went bankrupt in 1989, Congress passed legislation that transferred that collection of 800,000 objects to the Smithsonian, creating The National Museum of the American Indian. That's how the Smithsonian became home to these objects and photos. And ([Time 0:10:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f817672-7747-4ba7-bf86-f438f6f7932f)) - **Salvage Anthropology Erased Individual Names** - Late 19th–early 20th century anthropologists photographed Native people as representatives of a "vanishing" race, often omitting personal names. - That practice prioritized stereotype and ethnographic type over individual identity, leaving many archives nameless. Transcript: Lizzie Peabody Says back in the late 1800s, many non-Native people were thinking the same thing. Harmon Family Members That Native peoples were disappearing, that they were either dying off through disease or they were assimilating to Euro-American culture. Lizzie Peabody There was even a name for this, the quote, vanishing Indian. Harmon Family Members And so anthropologists, in kind of a good and bad way, they wanted to document Native cultures before they were gone. Lizzie Peabody So in the late 1800s, people descended on Native communities in droves, documenting everything they could, taking notes, collecting objects, and of course, snapping lots and lots Emily Moazami Of pictures. So there was this abundance of photographers of all skill levels, amateur, professional, anthropologists, going to Native communities to document Native peoples because they Were, in their minds, a dying race. Lizzie Peabody But these anthropologists and photographers weren't interested in documenting family lines or specific individuals. Emily Moazami The photographers often saw the people as archetypical Indians. Harmon Family Members This pure idea of an individual who best represents this community or that community. So to those anthropologists and those photographers, it wouldn't make sense to write down somebody's name. Lizzie Peabody Right. The point is that you're not an individual. You're a representative. Harmon Family Members That's exactly right. Lizzie Peabody Of an entire culture, an entire kind of people. ([Time 0:12:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ca25e949-e55a-471b-b313-31b37a2a6e9b)) - **Famous Photographers Shaped A False Image** - Edward Curtis and others manipulated and staged images to sell a romanticized "noble savage" narrative, sometimes altering photos to remove modern objects. - Those doctored images shaped global perceptions and still cause visitors to assume Native peoples "no longer exist." Transcript: Lizzie Peabody People like Edward Curtis. Harmon Family Members He's like the most infamous problematic of those photographers, decorating Native peoples in certain headdresses and carrying community items that aren't even from their community. Lizzie Peabody Edward Curtis was a photographer and ethnographer who focused on the American West. And yeah, he was literally shoving random things from another tribe into someone's hand and saying, hold this and stand there. Thank you. See, the point wasn't documentary accuracy. It was selling an illusion. Harmon Family Members He really romanticized. There's the idea of, again, this was the language of the time, the quote-unquote noble savage. Lizzie Peabody And you could argue that many photos present a distorted or manicured image of real life. Just look at what people put on social media. But Curtis really stretched those boundaries. Harmon Family Members The most famous photos are one of two elderly men inside a teepee, and between them is an alarm clock. Lizzie Peabody But Curtis didn't realize there was an alarm clock in the background when he took the photo. So he was like, concern it, I can't have an image of a native man in a teepee with an alarm clock. That's technology. So he got a little crafty. Harmon Family Members I jokingly refer to it as like the first Photoshop, where he goes in and alters it and manipulates the image to meet what he thinks it should represent. So instead of that alarm clock appearing, that alarm clock is like brushed out and replaced by a pot. Lizzie Peabody And this wasn't a one-off thing for Curtis. In another photo, you can see an older Native man and woman standing outside. Harmon Family Members And behind them is a, I forget what kind of Ford automobile, but, you know, early 1900s. So a Ford automobile is there. And again, Curtis is like, that can't exist. Native peoples exist in this, you know, primordial past. They can't exist now with, you know, that doesn't sell his romanticized image. So he drew a big bush over, like, colored it in over. And of course it looks pretty hacky anyway if you take a close look. Lizzie Peabody That's kind of insulting on two levels. It's like no one will notice this, but also, I mean, it's doctoring the photo and then it's like I'm getting a like Harold and the Purple Crayon vibe almost. It's just like, yeah, yeah, we'll put a bush here. So what was the result of all these doctored portraits? Well, between 1907 and 1930, Curtis published a 20-volume set of books that are filled with photos of Native people. And these are large, coffee table-sized books that were sold around the world. And this had a massive influence on how people everywhere saw Native Americans. It's an image that still persists today. Harmon Family Members We do have visitors who will come into the museum and say, oh, I didn't know Native people still existed. ([Time 0:13:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/09587433-1b4f-49c7-bbfe-de921a5904a7)) - **Work With Communities To Recontextualize Collections** - Museums should collaborate with Native communities and treat them as experts to correctly interpret and steward collections. - NMAI aims for shared stewardship and ethical returns while keeping archives to reflect community wishes about what stories to tell. Transcript: Rachel Menyuk Know that we have this new collaboration. So it's not just about today. It's about tomorrow and next week and how we're going to move forward and continue to do this work together. Lizzie Peabody Emily, Nathan, and Rachel say that's the biggest goal, building relationships between the museum and Native communities. It's a relationship that's been strained because of salvage anthropology practices of the past. But trust is slowly being rebuilt, one community at a time. And Matthew Harmon says he's happy to restart that relationship on the right foot. Harmon Family Members You hear so many times where Native people, when they go to these places where these items are kept, and in senses, it makes them, you know, oh, that should be home, that's ours. And maybe because of some things, how things were treated, even in our own state, they put our bones, our ancestors' bones out on display. And then our tribal council and chief at the time went and had them close that. But how things were handled in the past are different from how they're handled today and it's been shown today. So if we go back and we talk to our own people and say, listen, they're not here to just, you know, make money off of us or, you know, put us out like we're nobody, we're like, we're not here Anymore. But they actually treated us with dignity and respect they actually want to make sure that these things are carried on and passed on not only for our seven generations but theirs as well Emily Moazami All of ours collectively NMAI is not a museum where we're just collecting to show the mass public this is what Indians are about. We don't see ourselves as the experts. Lizzie Peabody We see the communities as the experts of their own cultural heritage. Is the goal to sort of identify the objects in the collections of NMAI and the people in these photographs so that you can then return everything to the Native communities where everything Originated? Yes, and. Rachel Menyuk I'll say yes, and. Because, you know, the archives exist to continue to tell these stories, but it is up to Native community members which stories they want to be told. Harmon Family Members We want to be the best stewards that we can. And the way we do that is collaborating with Native peoples. It's their culture. We're just the stewards of it. For now. ([Time 0:24:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0856dbdf-3f55-4994-80e1-e3854d739879)) - **Descendant Confirms Portrait Matches Family Memory** - A Montana descendant, Sarah Morrison, recognized the girl sticking out her tongue and commented that the photo matched family stories about her great-grandmother's wit. - That identification connected a candid early-1900s portrait to living descendants and ongoing research. Transcript: Lizzie Peabody Of missing pieces of the puzzle, remember Sarah's grandmother's knife? The photo Emily posted of the girl with her tongue sticking out? Well, just the other day, a woman in Montana named Sarah Morrison was on Facebook. I was just scrolling. When she saw the photo of a 10-year crow girl sticking out her tongue. And so I thought, oh, that's so cool. And I commented, this is my great-grandmother. And yeah, I thought that was so neat. Sarah had seen this photo when she was younger and knew it well. She'd never met Sarah Grandmother's Knife, but from what she'd heard, it was a pretty great depiction of her personality. They said she was very funny. She was a very witty, quick-witted person. And it made me laugh to see that because most photos from those days, they didn't smile. Harmon Family Members And for her to do that, that just makes me happy. Lizzie Peabody Sarah's grandmother's knife may not have known it at the time, but she was blowing a raspberry at convention. The photographer, a man named Fred Meyer, was likely expecting the same stoic expression you often get in these photos, an image that was representative of people who were different. But what she showed was your average 10-year girl, defiant, funny, and strong-willed. Emily, Nathan, and Rachel are working with Sarah and her brother right now to learn more about Sarah Grandmother's Knife. To find out who this young girl became, where she lived and traveled, who she married, who were her children and grandchildren. And to connect the past to the present. Because even though Sarah Grandmother's Knife is no longer alive, her descendants are. The idea of the vanishing Indian was always a lie. And the more we can learn about the people in these photos from the past, the more we can connect them to the people who are alive today. Harmon Family Members Because then that shows the continuity, right? And that I'm still here, right? We're still here. That we're still here, right? That this descendant, this bloodline is still here today. ([Time 0:27:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d5d33e37-e162-434a-895d-09d7093b525d))