"Frightened Delight:" Making Indigenous Celebrities from the Dakota War of 1862

Following the Dakota War of 1862, photographers in Minnesota created dozens of cartes de visite from pictures they took of non-combatants and participants in the war. These include Taoyateduta (Little Crow), Tatanka Najin (Standing Buffalo), Marpiya Okinajin (Cut Nose), Shakopee (Little Six), and Wakan Ozanzan (Medicine Bottle). Thanks to newspaper articles following the conflict, these men were well known to the white American public which, combined with the newly widespread attainability and sale of cartes de visite, propelled them into the status of celebrity. Their positions as celebrities in whitestream media encouraged the myth of the “noble, vanishing Indian,” whom the Union was slowly colonizing and would soon disappear to the benefit of white Americans.