Native American History Keystone View Company Stereoview of a Blackfeet Village near St. Mary Lake Montana Early 1900s

Native American Reservation

Photograph

Keystone View Company. The Village of Blackfoot Indians Near St. Mary’s Lake, Glacier Nat. Park Montana, early 1900s, records a Blackfeet encampment near St. Mary Lake in northern Montana. The view preserves the spatial relationship between the lodges, surrounding landscape, and mountain terrain associated with Blackfeet country, while its commercial production by Keystone also documents how Indigenous life in the American West was presented to the large national audience for educational and travel stereographs.

Keystone View Company. The Village of Blackfoot Indians Near St. Mary’s Lake, Glacier Nat. Park Montana. Montana, early 1900s. Sepia toned stereoview on gray mount, 7 x 3.5 inches. Tipis occupy the foreground with a mountain range rising behind the encampment. Printed descriptive text on the verso provides a brief history of the Blackfeet. The publisher’s historical wording is retained in the title; the photograph itself records a Blackfeet setting near St. Mary Lake rather than establishing the identities of individual people or the circumstances under which the camp was photographed.

The Blackfeet have longstanding cultural and geographic ties to the region east of the Continental Divide that became Glacier National Park, and St. Mary Lake lies within that historic landscape. Keystone’s circulation of this scene placed a Blackfeet encampment within its broader stereographic presentation of American landscapes and peoples, making the card evidence both of Blackfeet material life as photographed and of early twentieth century commercial representations of Indigenous communities. Mount and albumen photographs in excellent condition.

Item #11747

Price: $150.00