Click on the image for a high-resolution version that can be displayed for your class.

Questions

How would you describe the people in this photograph?
What kind of clothing are they wearing?
What is in the background of the image? How does that contrast with the clothing?
What do you think these people are feeling? What evidence do you have for that?
What other interesting details are in the image?
What kind of information does this source give you about the effect of Westward Expansion on indigenous peoples?
What questions does this photograph raise?

Background

The Dakota people are the Oceti Ŝakowiŋ, also known as the Sioux, a name that is is considered by many to be derogatory. The Dakota are divided into three main groups: the Dakota (Santee), the Yankton or Yanktona (Nakota), and the Lakota (Teton). They lived throughout the northern Great Plains in territory that is now Canada and the United States.

Located in southeast Wyoming where the Laramie and Platte Rivers meet, Fort Laramie was the largest military post in the northern Great Plains. It started its life as a fur trading post called Fort William in 1834 and the local Lakota people traded buffalo hides there. In 1849 the U.S. military bought the fort. By the 1860s it had become the largest and best known military post on the Northern Plains and was the site of the signing of the 1851 Horse Creek Treaty and the 1868 treaty with the Lakota (Sioux). The 1868 treaty established the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. The government confiscated the Black Hills in 1877 after its defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The fort was finally abandoned in 1890 and became part of the National Parks in 1938.

Additional Resources:

More Gardener photographs of the West can be found in the Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection at the Newberry
https://publications.newberry.org/ayer/#/

Original scan of the 1868 treaty
https://www.archives.gov/files/education/lessons/sioux-treaty/images/sioux-treaty-1.jpg

Biography of photographer Alexander Gardener
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Gardner

Information on Gardener’s time photographing the West https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/alexander-gardner-1821-1882-the-way-west/

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