Laton Alton Huffman

[grahamew]

Huffman was in the right place at the right time to record images of some of the northern Plains people during the twilight of the buffalo-hunting days, as Lakota and Cheyenne surrrendered and, in some cases, took up the offer of becoming scouts for the army. The following were, to the best of my knowledge, all taken between 1878 and 1881. Without wishing to pretend that this was exactly how these men and women were dressed as they entered his studio, within a few years, coats, hats and trousers would become de rigueur for the everyday wear of many of these Indians. Please feel free to add more images - or better versions of any that I've posted.


Spotted Eagle, Sans Arc


High Bear, Miniconjou or Oglala


Tall Bear


Hump and his warriors, Miniconjou


Spotted Eagle, Sans Arc


Spotted Bear, Hunkpapa


(Cheyenne?) women


Hump and his wives, Miniconjou


Hump and his head warriors


Scorched Lightning (Spotted Eagle's son?), Sans Arc


Rain in the Face, Hunkpapa


Man on the Hill and his wife, Lakota


Lakota women (though I've seen them identified as Crow)


Oglala village, Tongue River


Spotted Elk, Oglala(?)


Young Lakota


Spotted Eagle's village


Yanktonai village (?)


Sans Arc hunter and wife


Scorched Lightning/Young Spotted Eagle, Sans Arc


Lakota scouts


Lakota mother and child; Spotted Elk


Cheyenne men


Lakota children or possibly Two Moon's children, Cheyenne


Red Armed Panther, Cheyenne


White Bull, Cheyenne


Wolf Voice, Cheyenne/Gros Ventre


Northern Cheyenne girl


Pretty Nose, Cheyenne


Pretty Eyes, Cheyenne


White Hawk, Cheyenne


White Bull, Cheyenne


Wolf's Voice, Cheyenne/Gros Ventre


Two Moon, Cheyenne (credited to Morrow, although the backdrop is the same as in the photo of Wolf Voice, above)


Two Moon's daughters, Cheyenne


Running Antelope, Cheyenne


Sits Down Spotted, Crow


Crow scout


Little Crow and brother Crow


Lieutenant Bladwin and Cheyennes making a trail around Lionite Bluff


Little Big Man, Oglala

[grahamew]

Spotted Fawn and Pretty Nose, Cheyenne


Rain in the Face's Wives, Hunkpapa


Comenha, Dull Knife's daughter, Cheyenne


A better version of Man on the Hill and his wife, Lakota

[Dietmar]

Grahame,

thanks for posting these. I´d like to add some comments:

High Bear is most likely Oglala.

Spotted Elk is the son of Miniconjou chief Spotted Elk aka Big Foot.

In the following photo are: Hump, Tall Bear (holding a staff wrapped with otter skin), White Magpie, Wolf Voice (standing on right in back row), Big Road (aka Broad Trail) and Wolf Robe.

[Dietmar]

Spotted Bear (Hunkpapa) is seated in the center.

Huffman identified Spotted Bear as a Sioux, although he put in his notes that he lived among the Cheyenne. He was also known as "Old Spot".

Another quote from Brown/Felton´s "The Frontier Years" (page 116):
"Comenha, my partner´s [Eugene Lamphere] wife, 1880. Daughter of Dull Knife and now (1900) wife of Jules Seminole.".


Brown/Felton (page 203):
"Sioux mother and babe, Jan 1880. Mrs Hump, "Buffalo Humps´first wife, a very pretty woman in her youth.":

[Dietmar]

Two short biographies of L.A. Huffman:

www.coffrinsoldwestgallery.com/huffman.html

LatonAlton Huffman (1854-1931)



L. A. Huffman, about 25 years old and already a skilled photographer, traveled west from Iowa to Montana Territory to become post-photographer at Fort Keogh. The fort, established August of 1876 following the Custer Battle (Battle of the Little Big Horn) in June of that year, was General Nelson A. Miles' headquarters in the remaining campaigns against the Sioux, the Northern Cheyenne and Chief Joseph's Nez Perce Indians.

At Fort Keogh and in Miles City, which grew adjacent to the fort, Huffman did his work. He photographed the Indian warriors, the soldiers, the buffalo hunters, the bull-whackers, the colorful people of old Milestown and then the cattlemen. He photographed the ranches, the roundups, the cowboys in greater extent and detail than was ever done. With crude home-built cameras he made his early photographs on glass plates. From horseback or well chosen point of view he preserved the frontier heritage with great patience and skill.

Huffman's career in Montana covered 50 years. The hardships on the frontier were replaced with a modest but fleeting prosperity. During his first year or two he engaged part time in buffalo hunting for meat and the money the hides would bring. Then his photography at Fort Keogh and Miles City went forward with some success for a while. He entered into business with a partner and invested in real estate in town. As photographer and guide for Eastern sportsmen and writers he ranged widely and added many fine pictures to his collection. As a well liked member of the community he was elected to the school board in 1885, later to the Custer County Board of Commissioners and in 1893 to the Montana House of Representatives.

But the photography business had its' ups and downs as did his investment in real estate. From time to time Huffman was forced to pursue his profession or other work in other localities. The hardships and years of hard work through most of his career seemed never to bring the financial reward he had hoped for himself and his family. But as the years passed his collection of photographs of frontier days drew more interest until the last six or eight years of his life sales of his pictures provided a modestly comfortable income.

Huffman's genius was not only in his artistry before there was the automatic camera or fast film or exposure meter. His great love for the spirit of the Old West and his sense of history drove him with seemingly small reward to record those chapters which were soon to close.

During Huffman's photographic career he owned a number of studios. This one was rather unique in that it was built from lumber salvaged from the wrecked steamboat F.Y. Batchelor—one of the boats used on the Yellowstone River in the early 1800s to carry buffalo hides down the river.

In later years L.A. Huffman said of his own work, "Fate had it I should be Post Photographer with the Army during the Indian Campaigns, following annihilation of Custer's command. Round-about us in this Yellowstone, Big Horn land, unpenned of wire, unspoiled by railway, dam or ditch, un-kodaked, hunters, Red and white, exterminated for robes and tongues, the last great herds of Buffalo on this continent. With a crude homemade Camera, from saddle and in log shack, I saved something—built better than I knew. From the cabin collection of the late Seventies, the Huffman Pictures now number thousands. Those of the Indian and Leather Lodges, Buffalo ranging the Big Open, and early-day Cattle Round-ups are now historic."

yellowstonestereoviews.com/publishers/huffman.html

Laton Alton Huffman (1854-1951) was born in Iowa and learned the craft of photography from his father. In the summer of 1878 he apprenticed at Moorhead, Minnesota with the later famous Yellowstone Park photographer F. Jay Haynes. By December 1878 Huffman obtained his first professional appointment as a civilian post photographer at Fort Keogh, Montana Territory, near Miles City. This position gave him his start on what turned out to be a lifetime project, that of photographing eastern Montana and northern Wyoming during the last two decades of the western frontier. Most of Huffman's pictures were taken out on the range, where he carried his cameras on horseback, along with the chemicals and glass plates needed to create permanent images. This mobility distinguished him from a mere studio photographer and enabled him to capture authentic action photographs. His studies of ranch life, cattle drives wild horse roundups, herds of sheep, and other facets of western ranching came to influence other photographers who followed in his footsteps.

Huffman became well acquainted with the Northern Plains Indians, and in particular with the Northern Cheyenne. Sometimes he managed to obtain portraits of Native Americans visiting at Fort Keogh and sometimes he traveled out to meet them at their villages. Prominent among his Cheyenne friends and acquaintances were Two Moons, American Horse, and Young Plenty Bird. As for his pictures of the ranchmen, his photographs of American Indians went beyond portraiture to include scenes of family life and traditional activities.
(...)

In the early 1880s Huffman left Fort Keogh and established his own business in Miles City in a studio he built from lumber salvaged from a steamboat. By 1885 he was using a single-lens glass-plate camera that he constructed from parts ordered from a catalog and built himself. He operated this first Miles City studio until 1890 For the next few years he traveled within the United States, then returned to Montana and was elected to the Montana House of Representatives for Custer County in 1893. In 1896 he opened a studio in Billings, ran it there for a few years, then closed it to reopen a new studio in Miles City. Huffman shifted his emphasis from new photography and largely concentrated on selling prints made from his stockpile of glass plate negatives after about 1905.

Please look also here for Huffman photos of Northern Cheyennes:

amertribes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=northern&action=display&thread=371

[grahamew]

Thanks, Dietmar.

I know we've gone over this before - more than once, probably, but the guy in the hat and officer's jacket labelled Big Foot/Spotted Elk is THE Big Foot, right? And, he's the same man with the feather, breastplate and white shirt in the stereocard, right?

Was Wolf Voice affiliated with the Cheyenne? He was Gros Ventre by birth, wasn't he? I'm sure there's a Morrow photo of him with another Gros Ventre man, so I'm not sure where the Cheyenne element is from or why he ends up photographed with Hump.

Which one is Big Road in the group photo?

I don't suppose anyone has a bigger and clearer image of the stereocards, especially the one of the Lakota scouts with Spotted Bear in the centre?

The problem with SOME of the later Indian photos credited to Huffman is that they're actually by Barthelmess, whose negative plates he acquired after the latter died.

Here's another early Huffman:

Spotted Fawn, Cheyenne

[Dietmar]

Grahame,

yes, the two Spotted Elks by Huffman are the same person, but he´s not Chief Spotted Elk/Big Foot but his son Richard or Dick Spotted Elk, who later settled at Pine Ridge and therefore was often rated as Oglala.

I have to look for details on Wolf Voice, but as you said, he was part Gros Ventre, but also Cheyenne. Barthelmess also took pictures of him. I try to look for more next week, also for the Spotted Bear picture.

I can´t see the Oglala chief Big Road in the Huffman photo, so I think he must be another Big Road... or the names are not correctly given by Huffman.

[grahamew]

Thanks, again. So he is the same man painted by Sharp?





And Burbank?



And at the right of this photo?



And in these photos by Bell's studio?

[grahamew]

Here's a better version of the photo of White Hawk:



I wonder if the '76' is the photo's number, because he seems to have started working at Fort Keogh in 1878; furthermore, isn't this is the Cheyenne White Hawk who took his band to join Lame Deer rather than surrender with the other Lakota who he had allied himself with (or, indeed, the other Cheyennes who had surrendered earlier)?

[charlie]

Great images, Grahamew!
My info about WHITE HAWK: Norther Cheyenne, he belonged to "Elkhorn Scraper" warrior society. He fought at Little Big Horn. Still alive in 1908.
I think he was a great warrior. Other info, please?

[grahamew]

I'm sure I've read that White Hawk was the son of the old man chief Black Moccasin. In the John Stands in Timber book, he implies that White Hawk 'went in' with Two Moons. Unless he's mistaken (or it's a different White Hawk), he must have left Fort Keogh pretty promptly because as Crazy Horse and others surrender, he goes to join Lame Deer. When Miles attacks Lame Deer's camp (with White Bull and Hump as scouts), White Hawk is camped just above the Lakota village with about 15 lodges and he escapes. I don't know when exactly he surrenders.

Either he or another man of that name, had been a captain of the police at the agency, but by 1890 was one of the Cheyenne leaders of the Ghost Dance.

This is a 1905 portrait by Richard Throssel; pretty sure it's the same man:

[Dietmar]

Grahame,

yes, the Spotted Elk portraits you posted all show Richard/Dick Spotted Elk, son of Chief Spotted Elk/Big Foot.

The original photo of Wolf Voice (standing with pistol) was not taken by Huffman, but Stanley J. Morrow. It´s one in a series of photographs Morrow took in the summer of 1878.
The Two Moon photo is from the same series.

Wolf Voice was a Gros Ventre who married Elk Woman, a Northern Cheyenne woman. He surrendered with the Cheyenne at Fort Keogh and afterwards scouted for General Miles in 1878/1879. Christan Barthelmess later took pictures of him when he was a member of Lt. Casey´s Indian Scout force.

[grahamew]

Thanks, Dietmar.

Has anyone got a bigger print of the photo of the three Lakota scouts?

I wonder if the man at the left is Horse Road?

Meanwhile, here's Buffalo Hump (Dull Knife's son) and Bobtail Horse by Huffman at Fort Keogh, where they were employed as scouts (or Morrow...?):

[grahamew]

Okay. Found a better version and think I can answer my own question. Doesn't look like Horse Road after all:

[Dietmar]

Great scan, thanks Grahame.

Here are two more Huffman photos, unfortunately without identifications: