19 minute read
Setting the Ute Photographic Record Straight
Setting the Ute Photographic Record Straight through Google’s Picasa Face Recognition Tool
BY BETH SIMMONS
Historians want to include photographs of the people and places they write about, and digital databases across the world now make historic images readily available. The problem is making sure that the photographs are correctly identified. In years past, archivists had to depend on identifications supplied by either the photographer or someone familiar with the topic and collection. In many cases, catalogers read identifications from handwritten notes on the back of the photographs, which often provided only cursory information, such as “Group photo same as above” or “Ute Indians.” Now historians have tools that can help them accurately identify people in historical photographs—free face recognition programs, such as Picasa.
This article demonstrates the utility of this technology by applying it to photographs of the Ute Indians who once lived in Colorado and were relocated to Utah. In the late 1800s photographers would pay a small token to American Indians willing to sit for their photographs and then sell the photographs to tourists. Consequently, many photographs exist of the Utes. However, several digital image databases misidentify photographs of Ute Indians or simply do not label them at all. Some of these captions include the “Ute” names of the pictured individuals. However, some photographers even went so far as to create Indian-sounding names for their subjects. Those fabricated names do not appear in either census records or annuity lists for the same people. Further compounding matters, some photographs—such as the one chosen for this demonstration—even bear two different call numbers and two entirely different descriptions of who is in the picture.
As I have prepared a comprehensive family history of Northern Ute tribal members, these discrepancies have been a source of great frustration: putting faces on the story obviously requires correct identification of photographs.
During my research, I was introduced to a tool previously accessible only to law enforcement and government security agencies, face recognition. Now, such power is in the hands of the general public through such software as Google’s free program, Picasa. Picasa searches for faces in all of the photographs that are introduced to it; it then creates thumbnail photographs of these faces and asks the researcher to identify these unnamed individuals. Once the user tags one thumbnail, Picasa will analyze the other faces it has found and present the user with likely matches. If the user accepts this recommendation, the program quickly adds more faces to the assortment for consideration.
Through the use of Picasa’s face recognition tool, I have finally been able to correctly identify many Utes who were previously unidentified or misidentified in group and individual photographs. The use of this tool helps researchers to identify people in historic photographs with a new degree of accuracy. Because of their similar facial features, Picasa even groups family members together.
The first photograph I examined, one often seen in books and articles about the Utes (fig. 1), comes from a stereograph taken by Byron H. Gurnsey in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Gurnsey was in the photographic business in Colorado Springs from 1872 to 1880. He also had a studio in Pueblo from 1872 to 1875; in 1875 he was in a partnership with Eugene Brandt. 1 The test photograph, figure one, shows a group of Native Americans in front of a building in Colorado Springs, Colorado; this B. H. Gurnsey photograph underscores the role face recognition software can play in deciphering the past. 2 The Denver Public Library database lists this image under two numbers, X-30557 and Z-2727. The first item, X-30557, is one half of a stereograph image; the second, Z-2727, is the complete stereograph. When this project began, number X-30557 bore the caption “Chief Colorow, Captain Jack, Piah, and others.” The library provided this description of photograph:
This statement estimated the image’s date as 1875. 3 It also noted, “Hand-written on back of print ‘Ouray and others.’” 4 The photograph itself bears a faint label in its lower right corner: “Ouray.” The Library of Congress website provides a similar description of the Gurnsey group portrait that includes an additional line from the back of the photograph: “Ouray and others.” 5
The Denver Public Library lists this same photograph with the catalog number Z-2727 and the title “Ute Indians.” The caption reads, in part,
Chief Ouray sits and holds a felt hat and a rifle. Men have braids and wear sashes, choker necklaces, fur hair wraps, beaded bags with fringe, earrings, leather leggings, and moccasins and hold rifles or bows and arrows. Lettering in a window of a brick building reads: “B. H. Gurnsey Views.” 6
This entry dates the photograph between 1872 and 1880. 7 According to the caption of Z-2727, the photographer himself provided this description. Interestingly, the hand-written note “Ouray” in the bottom right corner is cut off from this image.
So who was who? Was the man with a felt hat on his knee Ouray or Colorow? Picasa has helped to answer that question.
INDIVIDUAL 1: OURAY
Figure 1. Gurnsey’s photograph, with the author’s identification, using face recognition. Front row: Powatch (d), Quenche (c), Ouray (a). Backrow: Colorow’s son (e), Colorow (b), Pooppe? ( f ), Charley Alhandra (g), unidentified man, unidentified woman.
denver public library
The note in the lower right hand corner of Gurnsey’s photograph (fig. 1a) clearly identifies the man in the right of the front row as Ouray, one of the most photographed Utes of all time. Using Picasa, I compared photographs of Ouray taken during approximately the same time period (fig. 2). 8 A Picasa examination of accurately labeled photographs demonstrates that the man on the right in the front row of Gurnsey’s stereograph is indeed Chief Ouray, not Colorow, as numerous books and articles have stated. 9 Authors are not necessarily to blame for such mistakes; when a photograph in a widely used database is mislabeled, a single error will ripple through the subsequent literature. One caption stated, “His rifle is in a “fine buckskin case.” 10 Such descriptions of personal items add an additional layer of identifying elements beyond facial recognition to verify identification. Ouray died in 1880, after having gone to Washington to meet with American leaders about negotiating a treaty and setting aside a reservation. He died as the final signing, which sent the Utes to Utah, occurred at the Southern Ute Agency at Ignacio, Colorado. 11
INDIVIDUAL 2: COLOROW
Figure 2. Ouray and Chipeta.
library of congress
Using the face recognition technique, I identified a separate person in Gurnsey’s photograph—the tall man in the back row, second left, wearing a flat-topped hat—as Colorow, a famous chief of the Northern Utes (fig. 1b). Personal effects provided another set of clues for this effort: a photograph taken by B. A. Hawkins in Denver in 1874 shows Colorow with a similar flat-topped hat (fig. 3). 12 He holds a “new, or almost new, Maynard rifle” and a long-barreled piston, in comparison to Ouray’s gun in the photograph. 13 The Hawkins photograph, which I used as a control, finally surfaced after I searched for a year in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) collection; Hawkins had labeled it “Coloron Ute.” 14 This photograph evidently served as the model for a sketch that appeared in an 1879 issue of Harper’s Weekly and in Jacob Dunn’s 1886 Massacres of the Mountains. 15 After a hunting fracas in northwestern Colorado in the early fall of 1887, Colorow and his band finally moved onto the reservation in Utah where they were living when he died on December 11, 1888. 16
INDIVIDUAL 3: QUENCHE
Figure 3. Colorow, from one half of a stereograph made by B. A. Hawkins in 1874.
national anthropological archives
The man sitting to the left of Ouray in Gurnsey’s stereograph (fig. 1c) has been often identified as Piah (Peah or Black-tailed Deer), the “Napoleon” chief of the Yampa Utes and possibly Colorow’s brother-in-law. 17 However, in many tests, the Picasa program always pairs the Gurnsey photograph of this man with a sketch and photograph of Ouray’s brother, Quenche, made in 1869 (fig. 4). 18 Genealogical research supports the hypothesis that the man in the picture was in fact Ouray’s brother. 19 Unfortunately, an exhaustive study of other photographs of Utes, either by themselves or in group portraits, has not revealed Quenche in any other picture.
INDIVIDUAL 4: POWATCH OR MOSE
Figure 4. Quenche, from an 1868 illustration entitled “Yulé et Quincy, chefs des Yutes.”
denver public library
In Gurnsey’s photograph (fig. 1d), the man seated on the left in the front row with a handful of arrows and quiver at his feet is Powatch, also known as Mose (fig. 5). 20 When analyzed with face recognition software, three photographs— one by William Henry Jackson labeled Powatch and a pair of photographs by William G. Chamberlain that label the same person as Mose— suggest that Powatch was given two names. Mose also appears with Kwakonut in a number of photographs taken by Jackson on July 4, 1873, one with the famous Muache Ute chief, Curecanti. 21 Powatch, signing as Mose, was one of the subchiefs who signed the 1878 treaty that relinquished the rights of the Muache, Capota, and Weiminuche Utes to the lands of the Confederated Ute Reservation and placed them on the San Juan River on what is now the Southern Ute Reservation. 22
INDIVIDUAL 5: COLOROW’S SON
Figure 5. Powatch, photographed by William Henry Jackson, circa 1882–1900.
history colorado
Some researchers have identified the man on the far left of the back row (fig. 1e) as Nicaagat or Captain Jack. 23 The man moved when the picture was taken, so the photograph is slightly out of focus. Despite the focus issue, Picasa did not match this photograph with any other images of Nicaagat. Rather, it paired the thumbnail with pictures of one of Chief Colorow’s sons (fig. 6c). 24
This handsome son of Colorow appears in a number of single and group photographs of Northern Utes as well as in images of Colorow’s family. 25 Who was he? Colorow and two of his wives had many sons: Pooppe bore Jim, Daniel, and Robert; Siah bore Chequito (Chick), Waperatz (Enie or Enny), Frank, Tabernash, Uncapahgugunt (Brock), and Waratza. 26 Because of his knowledge of English, Waperatz often accompanied Colorow and served as an interpreter for Colorow throughout his life. 27 Perhaps, then, the young man in Gurnsey’s group photograph was Waperatz.
INDIVIDUALS 6 AND 9: TWO WOMEN
Figure 6. Colorow family, with labels. The labeled indivuduals are Colorow (a), Siah Colorow (b), Waperatz Colorow? (c) and Pooppe? (d).
history colorado
Two women appear in figure one but according to Picasa tests neither of them are the two most photographed Ute women of the time: Chipeta, Ouray’s spouse (fig. 2), and Siah Colorow (fig. 6b), one of Chief Colorow’s wives, who raised at least seven of his children. 28 The women may be the wives of the men they stand next to. If that is the case, the woman standing next to Colorow (fig. 1f ) could be his second wife, Siah’s older sister, Pooppe (fig. 6d), who raised five of Colorow’s children. 29 However, Ute women are rarely identified in photographs if indeed they even appear. It will take much more research to determine Pooppe’s presence in other photographs of the Colorow clan and Ute Indians. 30
INDIVIDUAL 7: CHARLEY ALHANDRA
Figure 7. Charley Alhandra, from a group photograph taken in 1880.
uintah county heritage museum
One description of Gurnsey’s group photograph identifies the man fourth from the left as Piah (fig. 1g). 31 The Picasa analysis shows that the man is not Piah but most likely Charley Alhandra, a Ute subchief nicknamed “Ignacio’s lieutenant” (referring to his position on the Indian police force) who signed many of the treaties between the Utes and the American government. 32 In 1900, he earned two hundred dollars per year as an interpreter for the Ouray Agency, the center of the Uncompahgre Ute reservation in Utah at that time. 33 The photograph of Charley Alhandra (fig. 7) that Picasa matched with the man in Gurnsey’s photograph was taken in 1880 by Matthew Brady in Washington, D.C.; Ute chiefs had traveled to the nation’s capital to sign a treaty that sent them to Utah as “virtual prisoners.” 34
INDIVIDUAL 8: UNKNOWN MALE, ONE OF PIAH’S SUBCHIEFS
In figure one, the man on Alhandra’s right wearing a bandolier (or sash) has yet to be identified. However, Picasa paired his image with a photograph of Piah and his subchiefs taken by William Henry Jackson at the Los Pinos Agency in August 1874. 35 The Denver Indian agent, James B. Thompson, regularly mentioned Guero, Yamanah, John, and Ungapias as some of Piah’s petty chiefs. 36 Other photos exist of Guero and John (Yellow Flower) and this photo does not match those, leaving Yamanah and Ugapias as possibilities. The unique bandolier worn by this man in figure one, which could provide a clue for his identification, does not appear in any other photographs of the Utes I have studied.
Do newspaper reports and other historical records provide supporting evidence that these Utes could have been in Colorado Springs at the time B. H. Gurnsey took his photograph? Both the Denver Tribune and Colorado Springs Gazette reported that Ouray and his associates came through Colorado Springs and Denver around October 16, 1874, with the Indian agent H. F. Bond, the interpreter E. R. Harris, and Otto Mears. The Utes were on their way to the plains for a buffalo hunt. 37 Ouray’s group then wintered in High Park, south of the village of Florissant during the winter of 1874–1875, about one hundred miles east of the eastern boundary of the Ute reservation. 38 In August 1874, Ouray’s supporters and those of his subchiefs had been at the Los Pinos Agency, on the reservation, where William Henry Jackson photographed Chipeta for the first time on August 19, 1874. 39
After greeting tourists and hunters in Middle Park during the late summer of 1874, Colorow and his followers joined Ouray’s group for the October buffalo hunt. 40 Thus, the photograph analyzed in this article (fig. 1) appears to have been taken during the first two weeks of October of 1874. Perhaps it earned the Utes some extra cash for their stay in Colorado Springs and Denver.
It is hoped that publishing the proper identity of the people in Gurnsey’s 1874 photograph will correct the inaccurate identification of the man in the front row as Colorow, as well as other errors found throughout the historical literature. This was my first attempt to use Picasa’s face recognition software to identify images of previously unrecognized or misidentified Northern Utes, with the goal of making the history of the Ute tribe more complete. The Picasa tool results in much more accurate face identification than previous methods. I encourage archivists and researchers at all levels to incorporate similar techniques in their protocols to properly identify photographs in their collections. The use of the Picasa face recognition tool—the application of technology to historical research—has opened many doors to understanding who was who among the Ute people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Beth Simmons, who teaches at local Denver colleges, earned a Ph.D. in 2008, focusing on Colorado family history. She has authored and co-authored several books about Colorado history. She wishes to thank Janet Cuch, Harlan Unrau, Charles A. Billey, Coi Drummond, Melissa VanOtterloo, Gina Rappaport, and Heather Shannon.
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WEB EXTRA
See history.utah.gov/ute-images for additional early Utah photographs and available identifying information.
NOTES
1 Opal Harbar, “Directory of Early Photographers: 1853 through 1900” in Terry William Mangan, Colorado on Glass: Colorado’s First Half Century As Seen by the Camera (Denver: Sundance, 1975), 394; see also Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, Colorado, El Paso County, Colorado Springs, p. 40, 41, ED43, lines 488-50, 1–5.
2 X-30557, Denver Public Library Digital Collections (hereafter DPL), accessed March 24, 2014, http:// cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/ collection/p15330coll22/id/20506/rec/6.
3 Since I made the results of my research known to the Denver Public Library, the description of X-30557 has been changed to read, in part, “Group of Native American men (Ute) including Chief Ouray.” Ibid.
4 Ute Indians, Z-2727, DPL, accessed March 25, 2014, http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/ collection/p15330coll22/id/67575/rec/84.
5 Chief Colorow, Captain Jack, Piah and Others, “History of the American West, 1860–1920: Photographs from the Collection of the Denver Public Library,” Library of Congress, accessed March 27, 2014, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ query/r?ammem/AMALL:@field%28NUMBER+@ band%28codhawp+10030557%29%29.
6 Ute Indians, Z-2727, DPL.
7 Ibid.
8 Ouray and Wife, Z-2726, DPL, accessed June 25, 2014, http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/ collection/p15330coll22/id/67541/rec/101.
9 Arlene Appah and Janet Cuch, “Gutsy Ute Woman: Sarah Mountain,” Outlaw Trail Journal 37 (Summer 2009): 57; Richard Davis, “Bloody Siege at Milk Creek,” True West Magazine 60, no. 7 (July 2013): 34; Jan Pettit, Utes: The Mountain People (Boulder, CO: Johnson Printing, 1990), 36. P. David Smith, Ouray, Chief of the Utes (Ridgeway, CO: Wayfinder, 1990), 78.
10 Smith, Ouray, 78.
11 Clifford Duncan, “The Northern Utes of Utah” in A History of Utah’s American Indians, ed. Forrest S. Cuch (Salt Lake City: Utah State Division of Indian Affairs / Utah State Division of History, 2000), 196; Robert Silbernagel, Troubled Trails: The Meeker Affair and the Expulsion of the Utes from Colorado (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011), 157–59. Congress ratified the treaty on June 15, 1880, after Utes had signed it in Washington on March 6, 1880. It took many months before it was considered signed by the commission and the Utes because the Indian Commission officers had to make the rounds to the many camps and agencies. They were at Ignacio at the Southern Ute Agency when Ouray died. Acts of 46th Cong., 2nd Sess., ch. 223 (1880), 183, 186.
12 B. A. Hawkins, Colorow, Ute Chief, stereograph, Photo Lot 90-1, number 112, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, MD.
13 Smith, Ouray, 78.
14 NAA has since corrected the misspelling in its database to “Hawkins, Colorow, Ute Chief.” The name Coloran appears in the testimony given by Josephine Meeker on November 4, 1879, which was submitted as part of the White River Ute Commission Investigation of the Meeker incident of September 1879. Joseph Brady, the miller at the Los Pinos Indian Agency, used the name Colorado to refer to Colorow in the same investigation. See White River Ute Commission Investigation, 46th Cong., 2d Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 83 (1880), 28, 41. For more on the Meeker affair, see Silbernagel, Troubled Trails.
15 Harper’s Weekly, October 25, 1897, 845; Jacob Piatt Dunn Jr., Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian Wars of the Far West (New York: Archer House, 1886), 700.
16 “Chief Colorow Dead.” Leadville (CO) Daily and Evening Chronicle, December 13, 1888.
17 X-30557, DPL.
18 Yulé et Quincy, X-30707, DPL, accessed March 27, 2014, http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/ collection/p15330coll22/id/20030/rec/918.
19 Quenche, Quinche, Quincy, or Cinche, was born in 1832 in Taos, New Mexico. According to legend, Ouray and Quenche’s mother died giving birth to Quenche. In a letter written on July 20, 1864, from Santa Fe, J. M. Collins, superintendent of Indians in New Mexico, described that in negotiations in 1864, Lafayette Head’s contingent consisted of Shawano (Shavano) and two brothers, “Ulah or Ule & Quinche; both speak Spanish.” Colorado Superintendency records, roll 197, NARA.
20 William H. Jackson, Powatch, CHS.J1029, History Colorado (hereafter HC), accessed March 27, 2014, http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/ collection/p15330coll21/id/7258/rec/1.
21 William G. Chamberlain, Group of Seven, Princeton University Digital Library, accessed March 27, 2014, http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/b5644s26c.
22 “Agreement with the Capote, Muache, and Weeminuche Utes,” Pagosa Springs, Colorado, November 9, 1878, “Mose, his x mark,” Office of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Year 1879 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1879), p. 178.
23 Davis, “Bloody Siege,” 34.
24 William G. Chamberlain, Colorow Family, Scan 10039013, F-6671, HC.
25 Lena M. Urquhart, Colorow, the Angry Chieftain (Denver: Golden Bell Press, 1968), 32.
26 Allotment and probate records, “Si-ah Colorow,” Allotment 414, 1905; “Jim Colorow (Wit-cha),” p. 183, Allotment 400, 1924; “Bob Colorow (Ar-mon-tabbywatz),” p. 184, Allotment 403-404, 1914; “Wap-er-atz (Enie),” p. 295, Allotment 470; Si-bel-lo (Colorow’s son-in-law), p. 180, Allotment 390- 391, 1911, Janet Cuch collection.
27 “Stories of Colorado, Notorious Ute Chief,” Steamboat Pilot, January 18, 1929, 6. Waperatz and his three wives raised a large family of at least fourteen children, some of whom were their wards. One of his daughters, Patchowseratz, attended college. Waperatz died in 1907. White River Ute Indians, Ouray Agency, 1895 Indian Census, p. 596, entry 24, roll 608, Indian Census Rolls, 1885–1940, M595, NARA; Mrs. W. G. King, “Our Ute Indians,” Colorado Magazine 37, no. 2 (April 1960): 128.
28 William Henry Jackson, Chipeta (July 1874), CHS- 40201, DPL-30679, DPL; Chamberlain, Colorow Family, HC.
29 Pooppe allotment records, #397, died April 15, 1910, Janet Cuch collection.
30 Janet Cuch to Elizabeth Simmons, March 25, 2014, in the author’s possession.
31 X-30557, DPL.
32 Robert Athearn, “Major Hough’s March into Southern Ute Country,” Colorado Magazine 25, no. 3 (May 1948): 104.
33 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the Year 1900 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), 697; see also “Indian Agency Employees, Part 2,” Chipeta: Ute Peacemaker, accessed June 26, 2014, http://chipeta.wordpress.com/2013/0520/indianagency-employees-part 2/.
34 Pettit, Mountain People, 128, 129 (quotation); Matthew Brady, Ute Delegation to Washington, 1880, panel 3, Uintah County Heritage Museum, Vernal, Utah; Duncan, “Northern Utes,” 195–97; Silbernagel, Troubled Trails, 157–58.
35 Pettit, Mountain People, 78.
36 J. B. Thompson to F. A. Walker, January 2, 1872 and March 4, 1872, Colorado Superintendency records, roll 202, NARA.
37 “Two Great Chiefs,” Colorado Springs Gazette via the Denver Tribune, October 18, 1874.
38 Atlanta Georgia Thompson, Daughter of a Pioneer (Portland, OR: Binford and Mort, 1990), 18.
39 Cynthia S. Becker, Chipeta, Ute Peacemaker (Palmer Lake, CO: Filter Press, 2008), 28. On that same visit Jackson took the photograph of Piah and his subchiefs in front of a teepee, from which the thumbnail for individual 8 was created.
40 Pueblo Colorado Daily Chieftain via Denver Tribune, August 20, 1872; Denver Daily Times, October 10, 1874.
