Daguerreotype of Bum-bemsue, a Sac and Fox chieftain, ca 1847

Easterly, Thomas M. · 1851-1852

A half-length daguerreotype portrait of Bumbemsue, Sauk and Fox elder, wearing hat with feathers, necklace of bones, holding a bow and arrow and an ax. His face is painnted with stripes and his shirt is hand-tinted pink. This photograph is one of a series a of portrait daguerreotypes made of Native American chiefs while they crossed the country to meet with US Government officials in Washington, DC. When passing through St. Louis, Missouri, in 1847 these chiefs were photographed by photographers Thomas Easterly and John Fitzgibbons. Each portrait was a unique image. Daguerreotypes had no negatives; each photograph was exposed on a silver-nitrate covered copper plate. Daguerreotypes remained a popular method of capturing portraits from 1840 to 1860 when it was replaced with easier and less hazardous methods of negative-positive based photography like wet-plate collodion and albumen. Matted, not cased.