Pawnee Mother and Child

A Pawnee woman in profile carries a small child who meets the camera's gaze in this studio portrait from the Jackson Brothers' Omaha gallery. It is an unusually well documented example from their early series of Indigenous subjects, bearing both a printed tribal designation on the verso and a specific date, June 23, 1869, inscribed by a contemporary hand. The portrait was made just a few years before the Pawnee Nation's forced removal from Nebraska to Indian Territory.