Utah's Indians and Popular Photography in the American West: A View from the Picture Post Card BY PATRICIA C ALBERS AND WILLIAM R. JAMES
1 HE AMERICAN INDIAN HAS BEEN A DOMINANT subject in western photography since the middle of the nineteenth century. Among the variety of media on which photographs of western Indians have been disseminated to the public, the picture post card has been one of the most popular. Even though post cards of Indians in Utah and neighboring states have been commonplace, they have received little attention in the popular visual arts. 1 Tracing the history and variety of photographic images that represent Utah's Indian peoples to the public is important for two reasons. First and foremost, it reveals the bias and subjectivity that have been inherent in the making and mass reproduction of Indian photographs over the past century. Second, it contributes to a critical understanding of the role that popular photography has played in fostering stereotypic images of the American Indian. T h e post card is well suited to illuminating this situation because of the volume and diversity of Indian photographs that have been printed on this medium and because the post card has been one of the major media from which the public has drawn its visual image of the American Indian. Dr. Albers is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. Dr. James, an anthropologist with a doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, teaches at the University of Utah. T h e authors acknowledge the continuing support of the University of Utah Research Committee. 1 Some of the better overviews of this subject include Robert Berkhofer, Jr., The Whiteman's Indian (New York: Random House, 1979); Gretchen M. Bataille and Charles P. Silet, eds. The Pretend Indians: Images of Native Amricans in the Movies (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1980); and Raymond Stedman, Shadows of the Indian: Stereotypes in American Culture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982). Works that have examined stereotyping in painting and still photography include J o h n Ewers, "An Anthropologist Looks at Early Pictures of American Indians,"AVu> York Historical Quarterly (1949): 223-34, and "The Emergence of the Plains Indians as the Symbol of the North American Indian," The Smithsonian Report (1964): 531-44; Joanna Scherer, "You Can't Believe Your Eyes: Inaccuracies in Photographs of North American Indians," Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communications (1975), 2: 67-79; Margaret Blackman, "Posing the American Indian," Natural History, January 1981, pp. 69-75; and Christopher Lyman, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions (New York: Pantheon Press, 1982).
