JULIAN VANNERSON Passing Hail 1858 salt print

JULIAN VANNERSON. Wa-sa-hi-ya-hi-dan. [The Passing Hail], Traveling Hail - A Chief Of The Mdewakanton Sioux, 1858. 7.7X6" salt print on 8.5x6.5" paper. ASG# JV/1011. James McClees Studio, Julian Vannerson and Samuel Cohner operators.

Extremely rich early salt print portrait of a Sioux chief.

Herman Viola, p. 180, writing about this delegation as the earliest to be photographed in Washington (though Anthony Hamber, in Collecting the American West, the Rise and Fall of William Blackmore, p. 174 notes delegates being photographed in Washington as early as 1851) notes that in late 1857 James McClees of Philadelphia with Julian Vannerson as his operator opened a studio and an early project was photographing 60 Indians who came in the winter of 1857-58 and selling them in albums. In 1860, (Hamber, p.175) McClees went bankrupt and sold the negatives and studio to Addis who then sold 30 negatives to William Blackmore about 1863.

Herman Viola P. 160-61, Diplomats in Buckskin 1981, Smithsonian, illustrates this image with the caption, "Passing Hail, Santee Sioux delegate who became ill with dropsy rut refused to be left behind when his delegation departed from Washington in April 1867 [9 years after this image was made]. He died the day after reaching home. Photograph by McClees Studio, January 1858."

In his text Viola writing about ailments such as smallpox, pneumonia and other diseases afflicting and killing Delegates on their trips to Washington or in Washington, and the preference to go home rather than be left behind to die, states, "This was the argument of Passing Hail, a Yankton Sioux chief who visited Washington in 1867. He was so ill with dropsy that his agent wanted to leave him behind when the delegation left for home. Passing Hail knew he was about to die, but he promised the commissioner he would remain alive until reaching home if permitted to leave. The old man pleaded so earnestly that the commissioner not only allowed him to leave but also authorized him to go by steamboat instead of making him travel overland with the rest of the delegation. True to his word, Passing Hail died the day after reaching the Nebraska reservation." (fn 27: H.B. Denman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, June 15, 1867, enclosing S.D. Hinman to Denman May 31, 1867, IA LR, St Peters Agency (D-359)
https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/vannerson.html

Taken when tribal delegations came to sign treaties in Washington DC, in the winter of 1857-58, these are among the earliest photographic portraits of Native American people. The portraits displayed here are of delegates from Yankton Nakota, Sisseton, Mdewakanton and Wahpekute Dakota Sioux, Pawnee, Potawatomi, and Sauk and Fox tribes. Most of the treaties they signed ceded territory to the US Government. The Yankton Treaty for instance, signed in April 1858 between the United States government and the Yankton Sioux (Nakota), ceded most of eastern South Dakota to the United States government, and created a 400,000-acre reservation for native people.

The photographers were Julian Vannerson (1827-1875) and Samuel Cohner (1826-1869) of the James E. McClees Studio, which opened in late 1857. They are known to have taken around 60 portraits of visiting Indian delegates, which were then published by the McClees Studio as an 'Indian Gallery', either as a bound volume or individual prints. When the McClees Studio closed around 1860 another photographer, Robert W. Addis, acquired the photographic stock. Soon afterwards the British businessman and collector William Blackmore purchased the negatives from Addis, during his first visit to the USA in 1863.
Condition Report: Very Good. Very rich print with minor wear and abrasions and has a light fold lower left.