Forgotten ghosts of Wild West

WITH their traditional feather headdresses, moccasins and toma-hawks, they totally fulfilled the sideshow role created for them of "the noble savage".

But even now, almost a century after these photographs were taken in a London park, the look in the eyes of the Arapahoe Indians is unmistakable - it is resignation.

And it is easily explained. By 1921, when photographer Paul Shillabeer took the solemn portraits, the Arapahoes had lost nearly everything.

The buffalo upon which they had based their whole civilisation had been wiped out, their people had been massacred and their nomadic lifestyle was no more than a memory. Instead, as the white man’s march westwards carried on unabated, the Arapahoes had been divided and penned into reservations hundreds of miles apart in Wyoming and Oklahoma.

By the time these pictures were taken, the tribe had had 40 years to come to terms with the new world order. And the stoicism that had seen them travel hundreds of thousands of miles, criss-crossing the American Plains in search of buffalo, served them well in their new roles, acting out their old way of life for an ignorant public in Britain.

The overwhelming irony of Native American Indians being paraded as proud warriors for a gawping European audience when they had, in fact, been shepherded like sheep on to reservations, may have been lost on the people who paid their penny, but it cannot have been far from the minds of the Arapahoes themselves.

Whether they were willing participants in the mawkish spectacle is not, and probably never will be, known.

But what can be said for sure is that this once-forgotten part of the Arapahoes history, as inglorious as it may be, is one that they are pleasantly surprised to have back.

And thanks to the interest of an Edinburgh archivist who stumbled upon the pictures and then pursued the matter rather than let it drop, the Arapahoes are reclaiming this part of their heritage for themselves.

Linda Cairns, an information officer for the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust, was perplexed when she first came across the photos in a forgotten folder in a file cabinet in the trust’s Charlotte Square headquarters. They had no identifying marks on them except "London, 1921, Arapahoes", and bore Shillabeer’s name.

The first piece of the jigsaw was to identify why the pictures were in Edinburgh at all. She soon established that Shillabeer had been a well-known photographer in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, making his name as a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society through portraits of actors of the time.

But his son, who bore the same name, was also a photographer and lived in one of Edinburgh’s best-known houses, Rock House on Calton Hill. Paul Shillabeer junior carried on the family tradition, and was from 1948 to 1973 the official photographer for the Edinburgh International Festival, and for many years the unofficial photographer in residence at Edinburgh Zoo.

When he passed away about 20 years ago, his family gave some of his extensive archive to the National Library of Scotland and some to the Edinburgh Old Town Renewal Trust, the forerunner of the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust.

Among the photos the trust received were the pictures of the Arapahoes. They were filed away and forgotten about for at least ten years, until a few weeks ago when Linda Cairns was in the middle of re-cataloguing the complete archive.

"I came across them and immediately thought: ‘What is this?’" she says. "They were so out of context. The trust is concerned with Edinburgh’s built environment and these were just completely unexpected. There was no explanation as to what they were, apart from the brief description on the back, and I was intrigued. The photos themselves were superb, so I did a little bit of research.

"It turned out that Paul Shillabeer junior had been a very accomplished man in his own right, and these had been pictures his father had taken. Because the son had Rock House, in which the trust had an interest, the photos may have been given by his family when he died.

"The answer to the question over why the father took the pictures is still not clear, though. I am not sure if he was there to record the visit, but if you look at the group photograph you will see that there is a man who looks like some kind of entrepreneur at the front.

"I don’t know if it was perhaps one of these Wild Bill Hickok travelling shows, but I imagine so. Which is not very PC these days."

Instead of putting the photos away again, she typed the word "Arapahoe" into the internet and traced the northern branch of the tribe to Wyoming. Through the internet link, she got in touch with Joseph Henry, who runs an education programme for pre-school age children of the Arapahoe tribe in Wyoming.

He says the discovery of the photographs was welcomed by the 7000 Arapahoe people who live on the Wind River Reservation.

"Linda sent us the pictures after she got in touch with us. They are in a delicate state, so I have had them scanned on to a computer disk and reprinted. Now we have the pictures here, we are keen to get one of the older ladies to have a look.

"One woman in particular, a 92-year-old lady called Margaret Spoonhunter, was certainly alive at the time they were taken, and should know some of the folks in them. She may even be in them herself, who knows?

"There are not a great number of pictures from this period of the Arapahoe, so we are delighted to have them. It is important for us to have this resource to pass on to future generations so that the language, culture and traditions of the Arapahoes survive."

As to why the Arapahoes were in a London park, he is unsure. "There are no conclusive facts about what they were doing, but it is very possible it was some form of travelling show. By that period the Arapahoes had laid down their arms and were living on reservations.

"They would have made the trip willingly, but only to the extent that there were few other options for them. I imagine they would have been paid, and that was at a time when they were literally surviving on food rations. It would have been an incentive to go."

Linda, meanwhile, is satisfied with the outcome. She says: "I am looking forward to meeting Joseph when he comes over to Edinburgh next year to visit some friends he has here. I am just glad that he received the pictures safely. It is better than them sitting in a filing cabinet in Edinburgh."