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A feather headdress from one of the Cowichan First Nations

A glass negative portrait dated 1894 of a man from the Mandan First Nation wearing a two-feather headdress and holding a feather fan.
The Mandan are a Great Plains tribe whose traditional territory includes the banks of the Missouri River and two of its tributaries: the Knife River and the Heart River. The Mandan suffered greatly from Small Pox and Whooping Cough epidemics which reduced their numbers to 125 by the turn of the 19th century, resulting in their banding with two neighboring tribes: the Arikara and Hidatsa.

Photo by Charles Milton Bell. Collected by the Bureau of American Ethnology, now in the U.S. National Anthropological Archives.


Another glass negative, taken in 1893 on the Eastern Plains and depicting members of the Arapaho (Cow) Nation in a Crow Ceremony.

Photo by James Moody. Collected by the Bureau of American Ethnology, now in the U.S. National Anthropological Archives.