Historic Indian Portraits: 1898 Peace Jubilee Collection in Color

Issued in 1974 as a Limited First Edition by Historic Indian Publishers of Salt Lake City, this oversized volume gathers color portraits drawn from the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition and Peace Jubilee in Omaha, one of the great gatherings of Plains, Southwestern, and Western tribal leaders at the close of the nineteenth century. Compiled by William M. and Verla P. Rieske, it reproduces the early hand-tinted photographs through a special blue-tone color process, presenting Kiowa, Cheyenne, and other figures such as Chief White Man, Touch the Cloud, and Chief Wolf Robe against dramatic skies.

The book pairs each plate with statements from the leaders themselves, including Satanta of the Kiowa, lending the dignified faces a documentary weight. The jacket carries the spare, devastating quotation attributed to an anonymous Indian about promises made and broken. A complete copy retaining its original dust jacket, as here, preserves both the rare colorized images and the period design that make this a sought-after record of Native portraiture.