From the Archive: Frontier Life in the West

"Between 1887 and 1892, John C.H. Grabill sent 188 photographs to the Library of Congress for copyright protection. Grabill is known as a western photographer, documenting many aspects of frontier life – hunting, mining, western town landscapes and white settlers’ relationships with Native Americans. Most of his work is centered on Deadwood in the late 1880s and 1890s. He is most often sited for his photographs in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation."

Villa of Brule A Lakota tipi camp near Pine Ridge, in background; horses at White Clay Creek watering hole, in the foreground. 1891.