Three portraits of Strigi-La-Sapa "Joe Black Fox" by Gertrude Käsebier, circa 1898-1900

Strigi-La-Sapa, known as Joe Black Fox or, simply, Black Fox (circa 1844 (that early of a date seems highly unlikely) - circa 1928), was an Oglala Lakota, a nephew to Sitting Bull and a cousin of Crazy Horse. Little is known about his life beyond the fact that he was recruited in 1889, along with other members of his extended family, to be performers in William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's traveling Wild West shows. Joe Black Fox left Cody's show in 1907 and is said sadly to have died blind and destitute at Pine Ridge circa 1928.

 Photographs credited to John F. Byrnes & Co., 1901. (Three images.)

With Siŋté Máza "Iron Tail."

With Samuel Lone Bear, carte de visite, unknown photographer and date.
The note on the reverse reads: "Samuel Lone Bear Joseph Black Fox are good Friend Till the die for ever.  From your Friend Luke L. Hawk." 

Cody's circus-like attraction was founded in 1883 and toured the United States and Europe for more than three decades, even performing for Queen Victoria. Over the years, hundreds of Native Americans would perform with Buffalo Bill's Wild West, later billed as Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. They were contracted, hired and paid by the season, the best known performers being treated as celebrities by the public and in the press. Cody primarily employed members of the Lakota Nation from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and with the great fame of the shows, both nationally and internationally, the culture of the Lakota came to be seen by many as representative of that of Native Americans in general. The performers participated in equestrian acts, demonstrations of skill with bow and arrow, dance, and historical reenactment. The most memorable performances - and those most perplexing to a modern consciousness - were those in which participants recreated events from the very recent past. They included mock attacks on settler cabins, stagecoaches and wagon trains. And with Buffalo Bill's show, between 1885 and 1898, they even re-enacted the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Custer. 

Unknown photographer and date.

Almost from the beginning, though, government reformers, intent on Native assimilation, had begun trying to restrict the participation of "Show Indians" in Wild West shows such as Cody's. (Native performers referred to themselves as oskate wicasa, or "show man.") But it doesn't appear that it had anything to do with the content of the shows or concern that the performers were being ill-treated, but only that they were being allowed to "act like Indians" rather than being forced to assimilate. By all accounts, Cody had great respect for his Native American performers and their culture. And in 1890 Joe Black Fox was one of several who testified before the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, strongly defending Cody's treatment of his performers. Vine Deloria, Jr. has written that the first generation of "Show Indians" spent their time performing "cowboys and Indian" as a form of refusal to abandon their culture, a way to continue participation in cultural practices deemed illegal on the reservations: "Perhaps they realized in the deepest sense, that even a caricature of their youth was preferable to a complete surrender to the homogenization that was overtaking American society." It was also a way for performers and their families to escape their degrading internment on reservations for six months of the year, to be paid and fed, their accommodation and expenses provided for, to be allowed to wear their now forbidden traditional clothing, and to be free of the harassment of  missionaries, teachers, politicians, and others determined on their "improvement."

Vintage print with Kasëbier's monogram.

Beginning in 1898, many of the Native Americans who performed in Cody's Wild West shows were photographed by Gertrude Kasëbier. The celebrated photographer had developed a lifelong affection for Native American culture during her youth in the Colorado Territory, and from her studio in Manhattan, she created hundreds of portraits as Cody's performers traveled through New York. Käsebier's project was meant to be a purely artistic endeavor, not intended for commercial purposes, and her photographs were never used in Buffalo Bill's Wild West program booklets or promotional posters.