Staged Tableau — 'Meyer Being Scalped'

A theatrical studio scene from the Omaha emporium of Julius Meyer, who identifies himself in pencil as the subject of the mock scalping. While the recto presents a dramatic fiction for the tourist trade, the card's verso reveals a ledger of the shop's actual commerce. Buffalo robes and beadwork are advertised alongside Union Pacific views and Chinese curiosities, collapsing the varied conceptions of the American West into a single commercial enterprise.