Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Indian Maiden



Good Wednesday Morning to you all. Today we feature this photograph of an Indian Maiden. The picture was taken in 1904. I have no information on the photograph, other than it is captioned, "Minnehaha". 
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18 comments:

  1. Minnehaha is a fictional Native American woman documented in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. She is the lover of the titular protagonist Hiawatha. The name is often incorrectly said to mean "laughing water", though in reality it translates to "waterfall" or "rapid water" in Dakota.[1] She is the subject of the poem, and later song, cantata, and painting, The Death of Minnehaha.

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  2. But other than the name being a fictional person, this is a photo of a real woman that is a strikingly beautiful Indian woman.

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  3. There is such wonderful detail in her dress. Interesting photo. That tipi is awfully close to the river, however. Good grief, if you had to step out at night, you'd go right in.

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  4. Is this a photograph? I'm thinking great painting. Color in 1904

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  5. I didn't realize they had color photographs in 1904. Was this digitally re-touched? It looks too crisp.

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  6. Love that photo. Beautiful young maiden.
    Blessings

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  7. It is quite possible that this woman was indeed known as Minnehaha, and had nothing to do with the poem. Water related names are common enough. That said, she is a very beautiful young maiden.

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  8. I love the gorgeous beadwork on her clothing!

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  9. Wonderful! I love this blog so much :)

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  10. This photo seems to have originated with the Detroit Photographic Company, from the searching I've done. DPC's main trade was in photography that was expertly tinted (or printed via a multi-step multi-color printing process they developed) by hand and used to produce postcards.

    I suspect this was one such a colorized B&W photo.

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  11. Wow. 1904 and in color?

    I'll trust Downtown Indy's post, seems legit.

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  12. Wonderful young woman.

    But this looks soooo posed. And isn't that a Plains Indian teepee parked in what I would think would be a more Eastern Indian environment based on the beading of the garment?

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  13. Based on the interest in last week's and this week's topics, I think we all need to meet at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. What a fine, fine museum, and a living museum too. The building is gorgeous, the approach to the entrance gives you a feel for the reverance for nature that embued the lives of our indigenous brothers and sisters.

    And the food in the museum is absolutely fabulous!!! It's all based on regional cuisines. Best food of all the National Museums, hands down.

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  14. The photo does have that colorized look you get with older postcards. I, too, couldn't figure out if color would have been used in photography at that time. Still, there was something about the style that was familiar to me. Thank you, Downtown Indy, for reminding me what it was.

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  15. Weird, I thought I had posted a source for this postcard but the comment is not there. This is a postcard as Downtown Indy noted, and it has been scanned in with the rest of the series (it is 8020 in the 8000 series) by the Detroit Publishing Company. You can see it and others in that series at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery online.

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  16. I believe this is either a hand colorized B&W photograph or one that was printed with printing processes. Most photographs like this were done as field photography and the plates were developed in the field in a wagon or tent. They did not have the equipment to do color images under these conditions. This type of photography was very popular as mementos in the Victorian era.

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  17. My great grandmother lived in Minnehaha, South Dakota.

    But I found that in 1897 a photo of Indian Maiden "Minnehaha"--was named after the character in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha"

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  18. It could be Ah Weh Eyu, aka-Goldie Jamison Conklin, a Seneca of the Heron Clan, from the Allegany Reservation, in Western New York. Records indicate that she was born in Salamanca, New York on November 30, 1892 and died in 1974.

    For some undetermined period of time she worked as a model for the Cattaraugus Cutlery Co. of Little Valley, New York, as some of the postcards are advertisements for the company’s line of “Indian Brand” knives.

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