20 Beautiful Color Photos of Native Americans in the Late 19th & Early 20th Centuries

Paul Ratner a filmmaker compiled this fascinating photo collection of Native Americans  while  working on his project Moses on the Mesa, a film about a German-Jewish immigrant who fell in love with a Native-American woman and became governor of her tribe of Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico in the late 1800s.

“As a filmmaker, I am drawn to images. My first love of film came from old black and white movies by world cinema auteurs like the jarring works of Bergman, Eisenstein, Bunuel, Lang, Dreyer, Ozu and other great masters I will stop name-dropping. For a while in college, it felt almost like cheating to watch a film made in color. As I grew older, I accepted color and now find it hard to stick to a monochrome diet. Life seems too resplendent for just one tone.” he writes on Huffington Post.

Take a look at the mesmerizing photos below.

A Crow dancer. Early 1900s. Photo by Richard Throssel. Source – University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center. A medicine man with patient. Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. 1905. Photo by Carl Moon. Source – Huntington Digital Library. Acoma pueblo. New Mexico. Early 1900s. Photo by Chicago Transparency Company. Source – Palace of the Governors Archives. New Mexico History Museum. Amos Two Bulls. Lakota. Photo by Gertrude Käsebier. 1900. Source – Library of Congress.

Arrowmaker, an Ojibwe man. 1903. Photochrom print by the Detroit Photographic Co. Source – Library of Congress.

Blackfeet tribal camp with grazing horses. Montana. Early 1900s. Glass lantern slide by Walter McClintock. Source -Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Bone Necklace. Oglala Lakota Chief. 1899. Photo by Heyn Photo. Source – Library of Congress.

Charles American Horse (the son of Chief American Horse). Oglala Lakota. 1901. Photo by William Herman Rau. Source – Princeton Digital Library.

Cheyenne Chief Wolf Robe. Color halftone reproduction of a painting from a F. A. Rinehart photograph. 1898. Source – Denver Public Library Digital Collections.

Chief James A. Garfield. Jicarilla Apache. 1899. Photo by William Henry Jackson. Source – Montana State University Library.

Chief Little Wound and family. Oglala Lakota. 1899. Photo by Heyn Photo. Source – Denver Public Library Digital Collections.

Eagle Arrow. A Siksika man. Montana. Early 1900s. Glass lantern slide by Walter McClintock. Source -Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Handpainted print of a young woman by the river. Early 1900s. Photo by Roland W. Reed. Source – Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

In Summer. Kiowa. 1898. Photo by F.A. Rinehart. Source – Boston Public Library.

Minnehaha. 1904. Photochrom print by the Detroit Photographic Co. Source – Library of Congress. Northern Plains man on an overlook. Montana. Early 1900s. Hand-colored photo by Roland W. Reed. Source – Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Old Coyote (aka Yellow Dog). Crow. Original photo circa 1879 (color tinted circa 1910). Source – Denver Public Library Digital Collections. Piegan men giving prayer to the Thunderbird near a river in Montana. 1912. Photo by Roland W. Reed. Source – Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Thunder Tipi of Brings-Down-The-Sun. Blackfoot camp. Early 1900s. Glass lantern slide by Walter McClintock. Source -Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.