Native People of North America

Roan Horse, also known as Comanche Jack and Blue Knife’s Son (Comanche, captured and raised by Apaches), circa 1885. He was photographed while visiting the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

Buffalo Meat was one of 72 Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and Caddo warriors held as prisoners for three years in Florida. Not a traditional incarceration, these warriors were allowed to fish, hunt, sail in the ocean and were offered drawing paper and colored pencils.

The Otoes refer to themselves as Jiwere (jee-Weh-ray) and inhabited initially the lands in the Great Lakes region. Repeatedly moved from their lands by European immigrants, the Otoe moved to Oklahoma in 1881.

This photo was taken in Baxter Springs, Kansas, less than 5 miles from Ottawa County, Oklahoma, where Kah-dah-ska-hun-ka (also known as Harrison Quapaw) lived.

These girls are wearing dresses ornamented with elk canines. Each elk has two canines, which indicates how many elk were needed to decorate these dresses.

Tattooing was a prevalent practice in North America. Most people took them throughout their lives as indicators of maturity, societal membership, strength, and social rank.

Jackson Sundown was a member of the Nez Perce Tribe and a famous bull riding and rodeo champion. In 1916, he became the first Native American Bronco Buster of the World at the Pendleton Round-Up.

Son of Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah Parker was the last war chief of the Quahada Comanche Tribe. He was born on Elk Creek, south of the Wichita Mountains, in what is today Oklahoma.