Photographer Robert Morrison’s Montana
The artist’s eye for the off-kilter and unusual offers a distinctive portrait of the West at the turn of the 20th century
- By Donna M. Lucey
- Smithsonian.com, October 05, 2009
(Montana Historical Society Research Center Photograph Archives, Helena, MT)
At first glance this photo seems like a cruel joke: sober-faced Native Americans standing beneath the jaunty hand-painted “SAVAGES” sign, each letter created out of a caricatured Indian’s contorted pose. But irony—even a refutation of racial stereotypes—might have been the point. Morrison was both the photographer and the painter of the sign, which advertised a booth in front of the W.E. Savage building on Miles City’s Main Street. The booth was part of a September 1906 town-wide carnival called Y-Tic-Se-Lim. (An Indian name? No, just “Miles City” spelled backward.)
Morrison’s great-grandson, John Hamilton, a retired United States Forest Service archaeologist, says the image was not intended as a put-down, that the photographer enjoyed a relationship of trust and respect with the native people he knew. Morrison married a woman with Assiniboine blood, he traded with Native Americans regularly (his family still has some of the trade items, including tomahawks and rifles) and he sought out encampments to photograph them.
After arriving in Miles City in 1878, Morrison watched as Native Americans mounted a determined, if doomed, insurgency to hang onto their traditional lives on the northern Great Plains. Within five years after their victory at the Little Bighorn in 1876, most of Sitting Bull’s followers had surrendered to troops at Fort Keogh. Their guns confiscated, their ponies sold, they were given farm implements to begin an agrarian life. In June of 1881, their crops half-grown, more than 2,000 Native Americans were gathered and dispatched to a distant Indian agency by government order—even though the fort’s commander, General Nelson A. Miles, reported that they were in a “peaceable, contented and industrious” state.
The local newspaper, the Yellowstone Journal, painted a poignant scene as “the poor, friendless and homeless” Natives departed on steamboats: “A look of moroseness is visible on all their faces at the outrageous manner in which faith has been broken with them.” In this photo, Morrison has captured that same morose quality, but also a stoic dignity. As if he were asking: So who exactly were the “savages”?
Comments (23)
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I am quite exited to find this information that you have presented. I have a small collection of glass photographs of WWI era. I was also born in Missoula, Mt. May 1937. I find all of this very exciting. Thank you!
Posted by Robert Hadley Morrison on November 29,2009 | 05:31 PM
Timothy--
How serendipitous. I'm reading E. Annie Proulx at the moment, so it was especially timely (and lovely)to read your comments about Morrison's wonderfully evocative photographs.
I've greatly enjoyed thinking and writing about these images, and I to continue to explore the mysteries therein.
Posted by Donna Lucey on November 10,2009 | 08:51 PM
Looking at these remarkable photographs, and the "thousand words" they immediately evoke, puts me in mind of the Wyoming Stories by E. Annie Proulx. Both artists capture long disappeared lives and events and everyday strangeness that are too often misrepresented or unexplored. More, please!
Posted by Timothy Cage on November 7,2009 | 07:28 PM
These photographs are exquisite and utterly fascinating, especially with your insightful commentary! There couldn't be a more appropriate author for a future book which, I hope, will not be long in coming!
Posted by Carol Haythorne on November 2,2009 | 09:46 AM
People are too judgemental about the past. Old pictures are great because they tell it like it was and allow people to come to their own conclusions. It seems hard for people to understand how different things were then, socially speaking espeically. All over the country & world there are photography enthusiast who have never heard of these photographers and their pictures. Plelase have more!!
Posted by Clyde Shokes Jr. on October 28,2009 | 01:06 AM
Donna - this is fascinating. I want to know so much more about Morrison. Hope a book will be forthcoming.
Posted by Garnet Tennyson Hadley on October 25,2009 | 06:32 PM
This strikes me as exceptional photography for its era. Almost surreal in feeling. I want to know more about Morrison and see more images!
Posted by Felicity Blundon on October 19,2009 | 06:49 PM
In the late 40s I worked in a local grocery story in Ely, Nevada, bagging (or, rather, boxing) for customers, and stocking shelves. One day an attractive young woman came into the store and began to order, what turned out to be, a two month supply of grub. It turned out that she was a bounty hunter going after mountain lions and coyotes. Sorry, no photo to provide for proof.
Posted by Dave Shaver Sr on October 19,2009 | 01:28 PM
Donna: Thank you so much for this article about R.C.Morrison. I really enjoyed your viewpoint and background information on the photo's. Wish you could have included a photograph of him.
Posted by Danial Morrison on October 16,2009 | 03:48 PM
Donna: What an exciting treasure trove. Thank you and Lory and staff for bringing these fascinating images to light. And thank you for describing them in such a piquant way. I, too, am looking forward to the book.
Posted by Clem Work on October 15,2009 | 07:00 PM
Donna -
What a gold mine of content that transcends history to become art! I do hope that this will be your next book project. These photographs are an important part of our quirky heritage as Americans. Morrison should definately be included in the canon of photography and you're the one who could do him justice. You're interpretation of the images are as fascinating as the photographs.
Posted by Mary Motley Kalergis on October 15,2009 | 06:12 PM
Your interpretations of these images are far more than photo captions. Each is an insight into the artistic eye of Robert Morrison with your relish for history and a dash of humor. I only wish that you and Robert and Evelyn Cameron could have sat down for a chat back then. So instead please continue to keep us all inthralled and point out those subtle nuances in the photos that we might have missed. Three Cheers!
Posted by Kate Davis on October 10,2009 | 06:40 PM
Thank you for these. I love the attention you paid to the details of each photograph and to the historical background. The "Savages" print, in particular, was at once heartbreaking and not cliched in the way I had at first expected. The ironies you point out are haunting.
Posted by Brendan Wolfe on October 10,2009 | 09:17 AM
Donna - Does this portend another book? As a born-in-eastern Montana guy, I hope so. Your gift of narrative - with history, humor and pithy quotes - illuminates these images. These are the people Evelyn Cameron didn't photograph - and they are the flip side of her legacy. Montana history (western history) is only complete with both sides of the coin. Thank you for your fine work to help us know whence we come.
Posted by William Marcus on October 9,2009 | 06:29 PM
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