Portrait of Three Native American Men

Picture postcards became a part of the U.S. postal system in the 1870s and are one of the most common formats for the imaging of reservation-era American Indians. As portraits, they vary in content and function. Many were mass-produced as souvenirs for visitors to reservations or Wild West shows. A purely commercial enterprise, these postcards repeat the tropes of early frontier photography that capitalized on stereotypes of the “Lone Warrior” or the “Vanishing Race.”