The Indian Farewell
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Book and pictures courtesy of Dick Blacher. Comments by Paul Jackson.
The Indian Farewell
by Elbert Hubbard, 1923
This book measures 8" x 6 1/4" and has
16 pages. It was printed on machine made paper and bound is suede leather.
Between 1908 and 1913, Rodman Wanamaker, the son of a Philadelphia department
store owner, sponsored three expeditions to the American Indians. These were
photographic expeditions intended to document a passing way of life and make the
Indian "first-class citizens" to save them from extinction. Joseph K. Dixon was
the photographer. On the first expedition, he made many portraits and captured
scenes of Indian life. The expedition climaxed on the Crow Reservation with the
filming of a motion picture about Hiawatha. The second expedition in 1909
involved a motion filming a reenactment of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In
1913, Wanamaker sponsored the groundbreaking for a National Memorial to the
First Americans on Staten Island. The monument was never built.
The first public proposal for this monument by Mr. Wannamaker was given to
Colonel William Frederick Cody on May 12th, 1909 at a dinner at Sherry's in New
York City. Many famous people were in attendance, including Major-General Nelson
A. Miles, Major-General Leonard A. Wood, General Horace Porter, The Honorable
James M. Beck, Robert C. Ogden, Frederick Remington, Homer Davenport and other
notables. The book The First American
printed in 1909 by The Roycroft in honour of this event.
The third expedition, the "Expedition of Citizenship," also took place in 1913.
For it, the American flag was carried to many tribes, and their members were
invited to sign a declaration of allegiance to the United States. The large
bromide prints or these events were presentation photographs, such collections
having been placed in several museums. Mostly, the subjects are Blackfeet,
Cheyennes, Crows, Dakotas, and other northern plains tribes. Dixon's negatives
are at the Mathers Museum of Indiana University.