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Reviews
PEOPLES OF THE PLATEAU: THE INDIAN PHOTOGRAPHS OF LEE MOORHOUSE, 1898–1915
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by Steven Grafe
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University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2006.
Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 234 pages. $39.95 cloth. $29.95 paper. |
| Many readers of this journal are familiar with the Columbia River Plateau and its Indian occupants. But in other parts of the nation, that region and its people are virtually unknown. Happily, the University of Oklahoma Press' decision to publish this volume's striking photographs will do much to educate a broader readership about the Plateau's rich history and gorgeous landscapes. Editor Steve Grafe, trained as an anthropologist and currently curator of Native American Collections at Oklahoma City's National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, provides an excellent introduction to the book and helpful captions to its over one hundred images, most taken by amateur photographer Lee Moorhouse between 1898 and 1915. |
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Moorhouse moved to the Pacific Northwest as a child in 1861, settling with his family near Walla Walla, Washington. His various adult occupations spanned the entire spectrum of frontier life — mining prospector, railroad survey crew member, horse breaker, cowhand, merchant, and Indian agent. He also received a commission as a major from the Oregon State Militia during the 1878 Bannock–Pauite War, a title he maintained for the duration of his life. By the 1880s Moorhouse had become a partner in a Pendleton, Oregon, general store and served as mayor of the town. An active participant in Republican Party affairs, he eventually snared an appointment as agent at the Umatilla Reservation and held that position for two years. During his tenure, he oversaw land allotment and the sale of surplus lands. Moorhouse apparently supported the forced acculturation policy of his time, but he also worked to protect Indians' interests by seeking redress from the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company when their trains occasionally struck and killed Indians' livestock or when sparks from locomotives' smokestacks caught fire and destroyed their buildings. |
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More germane to the book, he appreciated the beauty and richness of Plateau Indian cultures. For about twenty years, Moorhouse took hundreds of photos of Walla Walla, Umatilla, Cayuse, Nez Perce, Wishxam, and Crow people in an effort to capture, for posterity, at least a glimpse of their lives. The selection of photographs that Grafe includes begins with portraits Moorhouse took in his Pendleton backyard of Cayuse men and women wearing costumes and holding props from the photographer's extensive collection of Indian items. Shooting his subjects against a plain background, but with trees and a street clearly visible, Moorhouse conveys a sense of these people as objects, although objects with names and quite attractive faces. Happily, he ventured out of his studio to photograph others in their own homes, usually on the Umatilla Reservation, and with their own accoutrements. The primacy of the Columbia River Plateau peoples as equestrians, exporters of culture, and importers of trade goods is brilliantly conveyed in these images. Especially impressive are the locally produced, finely beaded horse ornaments, including head masks, head stalls, and collars. But the Indian subjects also display Navajo saddle blankets (some overlain with mountain lion skins), shells, and other trade goods brought in from the Pacific Ocean and the Southwest. They also display Pendleton Woolen Mill blankets. Several of Moorhouse's photographs of Umatilla people wrapped in Pendleton blankets, in fact, appeared in the company's advertisements. |
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Moorhouse's motivations for taking these photos blended the commercial with the historic. He made money from their sale, but he also wanted to document cultures that he, like so many of his generation, believed were disappearing. Still, there is no sense of doom or despair in these images. The men and women look secure, proud, and healthy. Moreover, he shows them interacting and surviving contact with the dominant society by, for example, participating in the Pendleton Round-Up parades and rodeos, celebrating the Fourth of July by engaging in activities that annoyed Washington-based Bureau of Indian Affairs officials, and continuing to live in tule mat and canvas lodges even as the railroad bisected the Umatilla Reservation. Moorhouse also photographed the reservation boarding school and the children enrolled there, but otherwise he avoided markers of change such as Indians farming or living in the wooden houses that were becoming more typical in the twentieth century. Clearly, he found more picturesque the settings, objects, and clothes that harkened to the past. |
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Several times, Grafe reminds readers that Moorhouse was an amateur. His images do not have the control and artistry of his better-known and professional contemporary, Edward Curtis. But Moorhouse's photos have a certain charm. In many of the images a child or horse moves, creating a blurry spot which some might consider a flaw. To me, those mistakes give the photographs vitality. These subjects are still very much alive. In addition, Moorhouse almost always identified the people in his photographs by name, giving them added value, particularly to descendants who research the images for glimpses of their ancestors. By publishing this handsome volume, Grafe and the University of Oklahoma Press have made Moorhouse's wonderful photographic archive more readily available to those descendants and to all of us. |
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| SHERRY L. SMITH
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| Southern Methodist University, Dallas |
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