David Francis Barry [1854-1934] biography

[Californian]

David Francis Barry was a 19th century photographer of the American West. Barry was born in Honeoye Falls, New York, son of Irish immigrants Edmund Barry, shoemaker and of Bridgett, née Brophy. In 1861, his family moved west to Otsego, Wisconsin and the following year to nearby Columbus. While growing up in Columbus, Wisconsin David F. Barry landed odd jobs assisting an itinerant photographer named Orlando Scott Goff who had maintained a small gallery in that city. In 1871, Orlando Scott Goff moved to Yankton, Dakota Territory opening up the first photographer’s studio in that settlement and two years later relocated to Bismarck. Soon thereafter Goff sent for Barry, his former young helper, taking him under his wings as an apprentice to assist him at his new Bismarck gallery. Over time their friendship grew prompting Goff to make Barry his business partner. Between 1878 and 1883, utilizing a portable photographic studio, Barry traveled throughout the Plains, to Fort Buford and Fort Yates in the Dakotas and Fort Assiniboine in Montana taking photographs as he went. Having taken over Goff’s business interests he eventually set up his own studio at Fort Yates and later in Bismarck. Barry made his name photographing Lakota people notables such as Sitting Bull, Rain-in-the-Face, Gall (Phizi), John Grass and others. The Lakota people would nickname him “Little Shadow Catcher”. Barry returned in 1890 to Wisconsin where he operated a successful gallery in the city of Superior until his death in 1934. Barry was married in Chicago on March 27, 1884 to Margaret “Patty” Young of Quincy, Illinois. The marriage remained childless. She died on August 20, 1932. The following year, in 1933 Barry sustained a serious leg injury while stepping off a street car in Duluth, Minnesota from which he would never entirely recover. He died on his 80th birthday at his Superior, Wisconsin home on March 6, 1934.

Article courtesy of Wikipedia - authored by me.

[Californian]

David F. Barry was one of the pioneer photographers among the Lakota at Standing Rock Reservation to whom the world owes gratitude for the numerous iconic photographs dating from the early reservation period. He did not only take portraits of the Lakota people, but also of members of other tribes as well as the soldiers garrisoned at Forts Abraham Lincoln and Yates.

It must be noted, however, that Barry was a very opinionated individual, with strong personal views and rather derogatory attitudes towards Native Americans. He was also beholden to agent James McLaughlin who pursued an agenda to discredit and belittle the standing of leaders such as Sitting Bull and the latter’s supporters and by inflating collaborators such as Gall, Rain-in-the-Face and John Grass. Barry went as far as stating that his protégé Gall was the true leader and mastermind of the outcome of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and also grossly exaggerated the role of Rain-in-the-Face.

In Barry’s catalogue of his images (ca. 1900, while at his new location in West Superior, Wisconsin) he features no less than 20 portraits of Gall and several more of Gall’s immediate family and gives a 19-line paragraph about Gall’s achievements. Whereas on Sitting Bull, by all accounts the most famous Lakota leader, he merely gives a two-sentence comment with just 8 portraits:

"Sitting Bull was the last of the Sioux to come in and surrender. He surrendered at Fort Buford to Maj. Brotherton the summer of 1881."

Upon Sitting Bull’s death, it was not beyond Barry to capitalize on this tragic event by staging a re-enactment of Sitting Bull’s arrest as well as subjecting the latter’s traumatized surviving family to be photographed at the site. One can literally see in the expressions on their faces how they felt about this treatment. A trauma that sadly would end up getting perpetuated down for several generations of Sitting Bull’s descendants.

see attached: David F Barry catalogue - ca. 1900 [courtesy of the Denver Public Library]

DF_Barry_Catalogue.pdf (2.7 MB)