It started with this picture, which I ran across from a Native page on Facebook. According to the caption, it showed a Cherokee family being driven from their home by American soldiers during the Trail of Tears (1838). My interest peaked immediately because my great-grandmother walked the Trail with her three daughters and is listed on the Dawes Roll. I was even more intrigued because I had only seen paintings and drawings from that period, never a photograph. But, that's where doubt crept in. Although there were photographic concept inventions in the works in 1838, they weren't in widespread use. It wasn't until the Crimean War (1853-56) and the Civil War (1861-1864), that cameras and their equipment were portable enough to follow troops into battle. And the uniforms on the soldiers looked Yankee to me, but they did not look 1830's, where the army was still issuing a short jacket style. Nope, these guys had to be Civil War or later. I began searching around for the Cherokee story in Oklahoma. Many Cherokee were Confederate sympathizers and fought in the Southern Army. After the war, there were reprisals and some Cherokee were arrested or forced off their land. Could this be from that time period. Still curious about the uniforms, I sent the photo to a Civil War group and asked if they were Civil War era uniforms. The consensus was that they were 1870's or 80's uniforms and weaponry. Then one group member mentioned the Nez Perce. I looked again at the Natives and compared them to the most bona fide Nez Perce I could think of-Chief Joseph. The long rows of beads, the hair gathered to a crown and either braided or worn flowing. Yep! Those were Nez Perce people. Further research indicated that in the 1870's, the Nez Perce rebelled against government control and lost some of their land. There were removals, so the circumstance of a Nez Perce family being driven off their land by soldiers in 1870's-ish uniforms fit the Nez Perce War of Chief Joseph and not the Cherokee Trail of Tears. I sent the photo to some Cherokee groups with my findings in the comments.
The reply: these aren't the only fake Cherokee photographs out there. The moderator of a Cherokee Heritage group sent me several more. This set of photographs shows Natives wrapped up in blankets over their faces and identifies them as Cherokee. The exact same three men pose with the exact same props and background, without blankets, also identified as Cherokee. The only problem is that it's obvious they're from a Plains tribe. Cherokee did not wear multiple feathers stuck upright in their hair, if they wore feathers, the feathers hung from the scalp lock. That is, in the eighteenth century before the Cherokee adopted White styles of dress. They never wore two wrapped braids with a stiffened pompadour or crown of hair. By the time photography was in vogue, the Cherokee were wearing White clothing styles, not vests, breech cloths, leggings and blankets. These men, whoever they were, were not Cherokee. The moderator of the Cherokee site believes they are Kiowa. Regardless of which tribe they were from, it's obvious that these photos are a staged prank of some kind.
There are two others. This photograph of a chief in a war bonnet identifies him as Chief Lazy Boy of the Cherokee. The only problem is that there was never a Cherokee chief by that name. He was a Blackfoot chief, as is his war bonnet and wrapped blanket. While some Cherokee in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries may have adopted war bonnets for pictures because that's what photographers requested them to wear or because White consumers expected chiefs to wear bonnets, it wasn't a widespread practice. Chances are, if a picture identifies a person in a war bonnet as a Cherokee, it likely isn't. The same goes for the picture below of two Navajo girls often misidentified as Cherokee. Anyone who has lived around the Four Corners area of the United States has seen Navajo women and girls with their distinctive velveteen or satin skirts and blouses, with the almost trademark squash blossom necklace.
Then the picture of the Kiowas under the blankets came back around, with a captured that read that Cherokee often covered their faces when confronted with cameras because they were afraid that having their picture taken would rob their spirit. Huh? I've heard that old legend with various indigenous people, but never seen evidence of it in reality. Many Cherokee leaders, including John Ross, Stand Watie and Nimrod Smith all had their pictures taken. Further, while some individual Natives of whatever tribe may have had a personal bias against photographs (Crazy Horse, for example), the work of Edward S. Curtis and dozens of other photographers, taking thousands of photographs of Natives, both posed and candid shots, belies the idea that the Cherokee or any tribe in general held such a belief.
My point: when somebody puts a picture on a page claiming that it depicts a Native person or people, they take an awesome responsibility into their hands. Believe me, I think hard and source a picture several different ways before I put it on this blog or my page. Native people have been taken advantage of, belittled and stereotyped enough with more burden being added. To label a picture as the Cherokee Trail of Tears when it might actually depict a Nez Perce family suffering the same fate in the 1870's disrespects both tribes. To post a picture and assert that it shows Natives betraying fear of a camera and labeling that picture Cherokee or even Kiowa or whatever other tribe one can name, adds to the myths and stereotypes of Native Americans. Who knows why the Native men in that picture were behaving that way. Maybe they personally feared the camera? That doesn't mean that Cherokees or Natives in general had widespread superstitions about being photographed.
Most people aren't lifelong history buffs who've made the study of the minute details of uniforms, weapons and Native dress a passion. Most people who run across these pictures on Facebook or wherever see the photographs, see that it comes from a page labeled as Native and take it for granted that it is what it purports to be. That's where the responsibilities lie on those of us who know better to source these photographs and be sure that the depiction therein is accurate, both out of respect for the person or tribe depicted, and for the general public who already holds many different misconceptions about Natives and their history. Enough said.
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