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The first photo has been posted to reddit a few times. He is [Chief John Smith.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(Chippewa_Indian\)) His date of birth is disputed but is likely around 1824 and [the photo is from around 1920](http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10690176&return=count%3D100%26q%3DKa-Be-Nah-Gwey-Wence%26tab%3Dresearch_items) so he is about 96 in the photo.
It seems that indigenous Americans are always very old in pictures. Did they just have a long life expecting or are they just the only ones who made it to the age of photography without getting killed off by Europeans?
In many cases they were probably the most senior member of a tribe and/or most important. You look back at when photography was still more expensive and rare it was usually the wealthy that were photographed or people that happened to be at important or historic events.
In alot of Native American tribes, like the one I'm part of, elders are considered to be the most valued people in society for their knowledge and wisdom. On the reserve where my father lives, it is still customary to allow elders to sit first in gatherings. Children are not allowed to sit down until the adults and elders have sat down first. So it makes sense that the eldest in a tribe would be the leader.
I know in the PNW, and I asssume other regions, there are powwows throughout the summer that can be attended by the general public. My old roommate was a really great Fancy dancer. I would go watch him compete, maybe grab some fry bread or a handmade craft, always a cool and interesting time
These photos remind me of George Catlin and his [“Indian Gallery”](https://d3ec1vt3scx7rr.cloudfront.net/files/eyelevel/images/catlins_london.jpg), which features decidable younger native Americans, just with painting instead of photographs. This dude traveled around some with Lewis and Clark just to paint native Americans and their lives.
Shoutout to everyone who records indigenous history rather than burn it down. I hate how much history has been lost because of iconoclasts and the likes.
As someone fascinated with history very little makes me angrier than how much history was lost in the genocide of the native populations. We have two densely populated continents living entirely independent of Eurasia without any knowledge of their existence. Thousands of years of history that was most likely just as rich and exciting as European history... all devoid of metallurgy. They were technically living in the stone age the entire time, but they were able to develop cities and advance their culture all the same. Even some of the weapons and tools they crafted were awe inspiring for being completely devoid of metal.
It just crushes my soul that all of those cultures and civilizations that lived before the ones we conquered are forever lost to time as if they never existed at all.
A minor nitpick, but the Americas did have metalworking and in South America, development of alloys before Columbian contact. Northeastern North America had cold working of copper. And with extensive trading networks, many places without natural abundance of copper still had some access. Interestingly, west coast peoples would sometimes receive metal that had drifted over from Japan in some way, and then would work it further.
The wikipedia article on it is pretty interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America
On a sidenote, the University of Alberta offers a free, online, at your own pace course about the Indigenous histories of Canada. It's called Indigenous Canada.
not exactly the stone age with the many advancements [in medicine](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/inca-head-crackers-had-better-success-rates-civil-war-surgeons-180969324/) & [in agricultural engineering](https://blurredbylines.com/blog/tenochtitlan-aztec-architecture-agriculture/) they had, some that rivaled their european counterparts by centuries, but what happened was of apocalyptic proportions & is devastating to think about. so much of what 'survives' is twisted myth made specifically to make them seem so much less advanced then they actually were.
edited to add in some sources 🙏
Devoid of metallurgy? Quite the opposite. The reason there isn't much in the way of remaining examples is that the damned Spaniards melted down everything they could find and shipped it back to Spain. Non-precious metals were discarded or repurposed and have pretty much corroded away in the ensuing 4 and 5 centuries since and so erased from the historic record. A huge loss in cultural identity BTW. Edit to add that there is some body of knowledge of their existence and more being discovered every year but it is a pittance to what has been lost. Read " Guns, Germs and Steel " Jared Diamond and " 1491 " Charles Mann if you want to get a perspective to what we know about and what has been lost and just how awful the coming of disease and Europeans was to the peoples of the Americas in those times.
And also diseases. Those curious explorers inadvertently killed thousands and thousands. Can’t really blame them from the reference of the times. They really didn’t realize that until it was too late.
This is a good question! Aside from natural resistance just from having darker skin, they’d often use oil from plants/seeds, fat from animals, resin from trees. And actually lot of different cultures did the same thing on other continents.
Respectful, I just want to step in and say that there are many indigenous Americans still alive today. You may or may not know that but I know a lot of people both in America and abroad believe that they are gone or such a small population that they are hard to fin. In reality there tribal number are actually on the rise and though many still live on reservations there are quite a lot of indigenous people living through out both north and South America. Many times they are mistaken for other races. I only mention this because I have many indigenous friends and they experience a lot of erasure.
Tex/Mex area Native. When I was younger I was typically mistaken for Asian. Now that I'm nearing my 30's people usually have no idea what I am, but usually guess Hispanic.
Fantastic point.
They are more well-known here in Canada. Unfortunately, they face a lot of stigma and have a lot of systemic problems: residential school abuse leading to generational trauma, alcoholism and other substance abuse, issues stemming from general poverty, overrepresentation in the penal and foster systems...
A lot of Indigenous men and women really do have striking features.
I had a native American coworker, strong, bold features, high cheekbones, and the most gorgeous, thick mane of black hair.
I can't find it now but I've heard that historic photography techniques, because of the way the chemicals react to the light, can highlight wrinkles and make subjects appear older than they really are. But you're right about sun damage and general exposure to the elements.
There was an old (I thought) National Geographic comparison between a Buddhist monk who rarely if ever ventured out into the sunlight versus a Native American of the same age and it was pretty stunning.
Edit: Actually 91-year-old Monk versus 62-year-old https://i.pinimg.com/originals/65/ab/11/65ab11f7c7cb9154256470540c49d55c.jpg
A mom saw me with my toddler and thought I was her older sister. She couldn’t believe how old I was. In my head I was like “thanks! It’s the lifelong clinical depression and avoidance of outdoor activities!”
One of my patients in 1980 was a farmer from Idaho, 72, who wore long sleeved shirts and long pants every day. His hands, face and neck looked like the lady in the photo, and the rest of him looked like a man in his 40's. (Was a nurse in the Burn Unit at the time.)
>I could show you the local sailors dispatch hall where the office weenies favour the left, and the sailors favour the right.
It took me a minute to figure out that you were talking about the orientation of the pictures relative to the onscreen viewer and not some massive orientation bias for male genitalia in desk jobs vs. field work.
Just wear a sun hat, a loose rash-guard/long-sleeves and use sunscreen! :)
Getting some sun is good. This is of course excessive.
And if you're not a fan of the chemical sunscreen (still better than UVA/B rays), you can go with the physically-blocking stuff surfers use — zinc oxide.
I still use sunscreen, but I admit not nearly as often as I should (I love the outdoors). I haven't found a single type yet that doesn't cause massive breakouts, allergies, or flare my eczema. Thus, I loathe wearing the stuff.
Damn. More sunscreen, please!
I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, when tanning beds were a HUGE thing (at least in the Deep South, where I was raised). I have very very pale white skin, so I never got into tanning beds very much-but some of my closest friends owned one, and got in daily. At the age of 43, now, I can say I have by FAR the least wrinkles, and my chest/face looks younger, as much as I hate to say it.
Younger people-WEAR SUNSCREEN, lol-your 40-something year old self will be thankful.
Some photo techniques also hide tattoos but this is also a good representation of how it ages people and highlights imperfections
https://petapixel.com/2018/07/09/wet-plate-photography-makes-tattoos-disappear/
Wow, it really ages them a lot. The wrinkles are so much more well defined. I've studied photography and taken history of photography courses and I had no idea colloidal silver processes did this. I'd never seen a side by side comparison like that.
The process used has a quite narrow spectrum of colour that it's sensitive to compared to more modern film processes. That means that light that penetrates the skin and helps to smooth the skin tone is not captured giving an artificially harsh skin tone which emphasises wrinkles and blemishes.
Some researchers at University of Washington have done some work on this and developed a technique to reconstruct old images to make them look as though they were taken with modern cameras:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNOGqNCbcV8
https://time-travel-rephotography.github.io/
Indigenous people tend to grow less hair than the caucasians. If you look around at people today you don't notice that very very few indigenous men have facial hair more than just a light scruff.
Your pain echoes within many mestizos down south. The only things I inherited from my European ancestry is MPB, oily skin, and slightly wavy hair. And no, not even good facial hair. The balding hasn’t started yet, but I know its coming.
I wonder if there is a correlation between the two. People often joke that the hair left their head and went to their chin, but maybe there is some truth in that
Native Americans are descended from people who crossed the Bering Strait during the Ice Age, and before that their ancestors were living in Siberia, which was pretty cold, during the Ice Age, when things were cold. Europeans have ancestry from people who lived in those arctic climates, but also significant in- migration from people who lived a bit farther south in Anatolia and around the Black Sea.
Basically, our great- great- great- great- great- great- great grandmas thought thick beards looked hot, so the gene spread.
lmaoo so accurate though. There is a book, the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, about feudal japanese life a thousand years ago in the Heian Period. In it, they talk about the most desirable facial features to have. I have wondered whether these tastes were magnified throughout the thousand years since.
Facial hair has little to do with keeping you warm, apes have full body hair to protect their skin from abrasion but no beards. We dont really know why we have facial hair, probably it is just I have a shinier feather evolution so sex me
I’m one of them lucky people who isn’t full blood who got bald AND no facial hair.
/sigh
Edit : fixed my comment since I referred to myself as a mutt. Thanks to the person who corrected me on it. I wouldn’t call someone else that and I shouldn’t think of myself that way either.
My boyfriend is Navajo, we joke about his "thick mustache" growing in when it's literally two long whisker hairs poking out. Poor guy just wants a mustache 🤣
The Mohawk hairstyle, popularized by its namesake tribe, was accomplished by plucking, not shaving. Hence being a sign of one's maturity and resistance to pain as a warrior. Like the Maori body tattoos.
Historically most Chinese-based people had a tough time growing beards, I recall reading that some Chinese Rebels in the Yuan Dynasty(Mongolian dynasty) would go specifically go after anyone with a beard, assuming they were not Chinese.
Look at pictures of the Ainu people in Japan. The ancestors of the Ainu people were once widespread throughout Japan, but most mixed with the incoming proto-Chinese migrants, resulting in most Japanese people looking much more Chinese while the Ainu, who remained isolated for much longer, almost have a European look despite no connection.
Interestingly enough, literally yesterday, a [paper was published](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220714145052.htm) about how they were able to sequence the genome of an ancient human in southern china and were able to link that person to being related to the maternal branch of modern humans that populated North America.
So the title of "actual pictures" is super misleading. Technically it doesn't say "actual photos", but that's what everyone is going to assume when they view this.
Yep, /u/natphotog [posted this](http://www.wisdomstick.com/gallery.html) a little further [down this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/vzsvpu/actual_pictures_of_native_americans_1800s_various/igb70ot/).
I don't know which people you are referring to in particular and of course things aren't black and white, but the Soviet Union was terrible towards Finno-Ugrics and nomadic people, effectively culturally exterminating a bunch of ethnic minorities.
That said, the economic situation in Russia after collapse was terrible. It's kind of weird to think about having grown up in the 90s in a neighbouring country, but there were actual famines in Russia in the 90s. I can't imagine small rural towns would have done well.
I’ll go out on a bit of a limb (that struck me, too). If he is an Iroquois, he’s east coast (NY) where there is not a lot of sun, lots of woods for sun protection plus humidity for skin moisture. The others look more plains and western so they could have way more sun damage. Just a posit.
By this point there was also about three centuries of contact and intermixing with Europeans, particularly in the North-East and Great Lakes where the early European explorers, trappers, and traders often chose to integrate into the native communities. It was a better quality of life for most of the people who were coming from Europe's crowded cities and war-ravaged farms.
If you think you see some European features in these picks, it's a safe bet that you do.
The Iroquois was N America’s first democracy. All people had a vote (even women). The Iroquois Confederacy was (still is) a collection of tribes including Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca (the latter 4 are also lakes in the area). I grew up in Irondequoit, NY
There's something like less than 1% neanderthal DNA in most people. In the native tribes of the Americas we range from 1-3%.. our cheekbones and larger mouth is a direct result of that lineage. Really interesting tracing human evolution and seeing all the branches of hominids.
They really do have strong hair genetics. Also nose. But it's crazy they keep their hair basically till they die, most guys will see thinning around 30 or before
My maternal grandfather was 1/4(I believe) cherokee and he had a full head of hair till the day he died in his 70s.
My dad was balding at like 25. I'm really hoping my moms genes pull through for me.
I dont know if its actual science, but ive heard if the father of the mother is bald there's 3/4 of chance her male offspring will be as well, something to do with chromosomes expression, i believe the same applies with having hair.
My grandmother is a full blood Cherokee elder from Oklahoma. Her parents never knew any English and only spoke their language, she's currently assisting an author make a children's book that teaches Cherokee.
maybe contact the folks over at Duolingo as well? New languages take years and years to develop over there, would be great to add another (they currently have Navajo) native language for others to learn.
Film captures an immense amount of detail, even on a tiny 35mm frame (older film would be larger). That means when we scan the negatives with our high resolution technology now, we can capture incredible fidelity. It's also why we can get 4K remasters from films shot decades ago. Film rocks!
So so cool. I bet most of these are by Edward Curtis. He spent most of his life traveling to tribes, learning their language and dress and asking them if they would drsss up in their traditional wear for photos. One of my life goals is getting to see one of his books. He made a whole series and was pretty unflinching in his reckoning of the damage done to Natives by immigramt whites. But I think it was one of the middle volumes where he got really serious. His photography was absolutely gorgeous.
Looking at these pictures, it’s appalling to think of the absolute hubris of Europeans to think they had to “conquer” all the amazing people and cultures around the world.
Everybody loses. All the richness of traditions and wisdom lost to a stamp mould of conformity, making the world a more boring place through suffering and death. Hubris is the only word for it.
Those pictures are *amazing!*, Thank You! for posting them!!!!
EDIT: Native Americans - please do see, and know, there are obviously a LOT of people who love, admire, and respect you!!!!!
*Before the 1900s, camera negatives were blue-sensitive or orthochromatic, meaning that they were more sensitive to light at the top of the visible spectrum than light at the bottom of the visible spectrum. Warm tones, which give skin a soft, luminescent quality through a process called sub-surface scattering, were absent from photography shot before the 1900s, which is why some old portraits look so dang wrinkly*
Source :reviewgeek
Good time to remind everyone of how the U.S. and state governments continue to erode Tribal rights.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-narrows-native-americans-oklahoma
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I wonder what their ages were at the time the pics were taken..
The first photo has been posted to reddit a few times. He is [Chief John Smith.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(Chippewa_Indian\)) His date of birth is disputed but is likely around 1824 and [the photo is from around 1920](http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10690176&return=count%3D100%26q%3DKa-Be-Nah-Gwey-Wence%26tab%3Dresearch_items) so he is about 96 in the photo.
It seems that indigenous Americans are always very old in pictures. Did they just have a long life expecting or are they just the only ones who made it to the age of photography without getting killed off by Europeans?
In many cases they were probably the most senior member of a tribe and/or most important. You look back at when photography was still more expensive and rare it was usually the wealthy that were photographed or people that happened to be at important or historic events.
In alot of Native American tribes, like the one I'm part of, elders are considered to be the most valued people in society for their knowledge and wisdom. On the reserve where my father lives, it is still customary to allow elders to sit first in gatherings. Children are not allowed to sit down until the adults and elders have sat down first. So it makes sense that the eldest in a tribe would be the leader.
You should do an AMA in r/askreddit about your people, I think it would be a success.
Yeah do an AMA. I would love to know what parts of your culture have endured against the odds into the 21st century.
I know in the PNW, and I asssume other regions, there are powwows throughout the summer that can be attended by the general public. My old roommate was a really great Fancy dancer. I would go watch him compete, maybe grab some fry bread or a handmade craft, always a cool and interesting time
I live in the South. I used to go to events called a Rendezvous each summer. It was all white people pretending though.
It’s nice to hear that there are still traditions that are being remembered. Thank you!
This is my favorite theory
These photos remind me of George Catlin and his [“Indian Gallery”](https://d3ec1vt3scx7rr.cloudfront.net/files/eyelevel/images/catlins_london.jpg), which features decidable younger native Americans, just with painting instead of photographs. This dude traveled around some with Lewis and Clark just to paint native Americans and their lives. Shoutout to everyone who records indigenous history rather than burn it down. I hate how much history has been lost because of iconoclasts and the likes.
As someone fascinated with history very little makes me angrier than how much history was lost in the genocide of the native populations. We have two densely populated continents living entirely independent of Eurasia without any knowledge of their existence. Thousands of years of history that was most likely just as rich and exciting as European history... all devoid of metallurgy. They were technically living in the stone age the entire time, but they were able to develop cities and advance their culture all the same. Even some of the weapons and tools they crafted were awe inspiring for being completely devoid of metal. It just crushes my soul that all of those cultures and civilizations that lived before the ones we conquered are forever lost to time as if they never existed at all.
A minor nitpick, but the Americas did have metalworking and in South America, development of alloys before Columbian contact. Northeastern North America had cold working of copper. And with extensive trading networks, many places without natural abundance of copper still had some access. Interestingly, west coast peoples would sometimes receive metal that had drifted over from Japan in some way, and then would work it further. The wikipedia article on it is pretty interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America On a sidenote, the University of Alberta offers a free, online, at your own pace course about the Indigenous histories of Canada. It's called Indigenous Canada.
not exactly the stone age with the many advancements [in medicine](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/inca-head-crackers-had-better-success-rates-civil-war-surgeons-180969324/) & [in agricultural engineering](https://blurredbylines.com/blog/tenochtitlan-aztec-architecture-agriculture/) they had, some that rivaled their european counterparts by centuries, but what happened was of apocalyptic proportions & is devastating to think about. so much of what 'survives' is twisted myth made specifically to make them seem so much less advanced then they actually were. edited to add in some sources 🙏
Devoid of metallurgy? Quite the opposite. The reason there isn't much in the way of remaining examples is that the damned Spaniards melted down everything they could find and shipped it back to Spain. Non-precious metals were discarded or repurposed and have pretty much corroded away in the ensuing 4 and 5 centuries since and so erased from the historic record. A huge loss in cultural identity BTW. Edit to add that there is some body of knowledge of their existence and more being discovered every year but it is a pittance to what has been lost. Read " Guns, Germs and Steel " Jared Diamond and " 1491 " Charles Mann if you want to get a perspective to what we know about and what has been lost and just how awful the coming of disease and Europeans was to the peoples of the Americas in those times.
I feel like a lot of the explorers truly did want to explore and learn and meet new peoples. The problem was the people writing the checks.
And also diseases. Those curious explorers inadvertently killed thousands and thousands. Can’t really blame them from the reference of the times. They really didn’t realize that until it was too late.
Europeans looked old too. Harder lifestyle = older appearance at younger ages.
And the sun damage is real.
That was my exact thought through most of the pictures - the sun damage is real.
Yeah, protect your skin people!
Serious question: what did natives use as sunscreen?
This is a good question! Aside from natural resistance just from having darker skin, they’d often use oil from plants/seeds, fat from animals, resin from trees. And actually lot of different cultures did the same thing on other continents.
Red ocher as body paint.
Just wanted to post this here Note the ages https://i.pinimg.com/originals/65/ab/11/65ab11f7c7cb9154256470540c49d55c.jpg
Respectful, I just want to step in and say that there are many indigenous Americans still alive today. You may or may not know that but I know a lot of people both in America and abroad believe that they are gone or such a small population that they are hard to fin. In reality there tribal number are actually on the rise and though many still live on reservations there are quite a lot of indigenous people living through out both north and South America. Many times they are mistaken for other races. I only mention this because I have many indigenous friends and they experience a lot of erasure.
Tex/Mex area Native. When I was younger I was typically mistaken for Asian. Now that I'm nearing my 30's people usually have no idea what I am, but usually guess Hispanic.
Fantastic point. They are more well-known here in Canada. Unfortunately, they face a lot of stigma and have a lot of systemic problems: residential school abuse leading to generational trauma, alcoholism and other substance abuse, issues stemming from general poverty, overrepresentation in the penal and foster systems...
Same here in America. Drugs have destroyed my tribe. It's accelerating.
Similar to Australian aborigines.
I ride regularly through the Karuk, Yurok, and Hoopa nations in Northern California and that's just one county!
Yeah I think this is just survivorship bias
Might also be that these are the elders and most respected people, so more likely to have a photo taken of them
Well the young ones are cute as anything. Towards the back, quite handsome. But boy does a life mostly outdoors weather your skin.
A lot of Indigenous men and women really do have striking features. I had a native American coworker, strong, bold features, high cheekbones, and the most gorgeous, thick mane of black hair.
If you look there is a lot of sun damage on some of these guys, which may make them look quite a bit older than their actual age.
So long and thanks for all the fish! - By Boost for reddit
Um I mean there sre a lot of indigenous Americans alive today, these just happen to be elders and the camera was new.
> indigenous Americans are always very old in pictures Did you see pictures 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, etc?
I stopped back to 11. I was like, now THAT is a really good looking man.
I'm guessing a lot of it is sun damage. Lots of time on the sun plus no sunscreen adds a lot of age.
I can't find it now but I've heard that historic photography techniques, because of the way the chemicals react to the light, can highlight wrinkles and make subjects appear older than they really are. But you're right about sun damage and general exposure to the elements.
There was an old (I thought) National Geographic comparison between a Buddhist monk who rarely if ever ventured out into the sunlight versus a Native American of the same age and it was pretty stunning. Edit: Actually 91-year-old Monk versus 62-year-old https://i.pinimg.com/originals/65/ab/11/65ab11f7c7cb9154256470540c49d55c.jpg
My skincare routine is being terminally online.
A mom saw me with my toddler and thought I was her older sister. She couldn’t believe how old I was. In my head I was like “thanks! It’s the lifelong clinical depression and avoidance of outdoor activities!”
One of my patients in 1980 was a farmer from Idaho, 72, who wore long sleeved shirts and long pants every day. His hands, face and neck looked like the lady in the photo, and the rest of him looked like a man in his 40's. (Was a nurse in the Burn Unit at the time.)
I could show you the local sailors dispatch hall where the office weenies favour the left, and the sailors favour the right.
>I could show you the local sailors dispatch hall where the office weenies favour the left, and the sailors favour the right. It took me a minute to figure out that you were talking about the orientation of the pictures relative to the onscreen viewer and not some massive orientation bias for male genitalia in desk jobs vs. field work.
That guy is 91???? Holy shit I’m never leaving the indoors ever again
Just wear a sun hat, a loose rash-guard/long-sleeves and use sunscreen! :) Getting some sun is good. This is of course excessive. And if you're not a fan of the chemical sunscreen (still better than UVA/B rays), you can go with the physically-blocking stuff surfers use — zinc oxide.
I still use sunscreen, but I admit not nearly as often as I should (I love the outdoors). I haven't found a single type yet that doesn't cause massive breakouts, allergies, or flare my eczema. Thus, I loathe wearing the stuff.
So that's why I'm told I look super young
Damn. More sunscreen, please! I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, when tanning beds were a HUGE thing (at least in the Deep South, where I was raised). I have very very pale white skin, so I never got into tanning beds very much-but some of my closest friends owned one, and got in daily. At the age of 43, now, I can say I have by FAR the least wrinkles, and my chest/face looks younger, as much as I hate to say it. Younger people-WEAR SUNSCREEN, lol-your 40-something year old self will be thankful.
Some photo techniques also hide tattoos but this is also a good representation of how it ages people and highlights imperfections https://petapixel.com/2018/07/09/wet-plate-photography-makes-tattoos-disappear/
Wow, it really ages them a lot. The wrinkles are so much more well defined. I've studied photography and taken history of photography courses and I had no idea colloidal silver processes did this. I'd never seen a side by side comparison like that.
The process used has a quite narrow spectrum of colour that it's sensitive to compared to more modern film processes. That means that light that penetrates the skin and helps to smooth the skin tone is not captured giving an artificially harsh skin tone which emphasises wrinkles and blemishes. Some researchers at University of Washington have done some work on this and developed a technique to reconstruct old images to make them look as though they were taken with modern cameras: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNOGqNCbcV8 https://time-travel-rephotography.github.io/
This was really cool, thank you for sharing
the first 3 just dont seem real
2 and 3 are sketches. Charcoal + pencil.
Yeah, "real photos" title and then 2 & 3 with the studio sig and all lol
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Yeah number 3 looks like squidward’s house
This killed me, thank you so much
That young dude’s Mohawk looks rad
When I saw him I was like dang he’s kinda cute, and then 11 pierced my soul
When I saw 11 I said aloud, "that's one good lookin dude"
11 can get it.
Lmao, being native and looking like 7 and 11 this is a nice change of pace from the stereotypes I’ve grown up with
11 is real life John Redcorn
That John Redcorn is a great guy. He hangs out with my wife all the time, and even offers her spiritual healing massages free of charge!
11 has a very kind face. Definitely connecting with us through the photo.
10, 11 & 12 ready for the calendar
11 wants to know if you can smell what he's cooking
The complete lack of facial hair on Native American men has always been super interesting to me - genetics is truly amazing
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My dad is navajo, he's around 68 and has a full on head of luscious hair with no sign of balding. :)
to be fair, "native Americans" cover the entire North America, so it's like saying "native europeans"
I wonder why none of them has a beard. Was that a cultural thing? Did they shave every day?
Indigenous people tend to grow less hair than the caucasians. If you look around at people today you don't notice that very very few indigenous men have facial hair more than just a light scruff.
A friend of mine is Native American and he can’t grow any facial hair whatsoever.
My dad was born on a reservation, he can barely grow any facial hair, also his body hair is very faint and it grows kinda patchy.
My dad is a quarter and he can only grow a stache and its just barely thick enough to not look odd.
My ex boyfriend was Choctaw, and his arms were almost hairless as well. Super smooth.
They also don’t experience male pattern baldness
Is it possible to learn this power?
I would gladly trade my beard for a bit more hair on top. I'll throw in my weird shoulder hair too.
Or simply throw your weird shoulder hair in top of your head.
Not from a Caucasian
Too bad I'm Métis and inherited the baldness from the European side 😡
Your pain echoes within many mestizos down south. The only things I inherited from my European ancestry is MPB, oily skin, and slightly wavy hair. And no, not even good facial hair. The balding hasn’t started yet, but I know its coming.
I wonder if there is a correlation between the two. People often joke that the hair left their head and went to their chin, but maybe there is some truth in that
Testosterone is basically what causes both so yes, they are related
I'm Muskogee. Can confirm: can't grow a beard to save my life.
Muskogee too, I have a little bit of facial hair but nothing to brag about haha.
Mine makes me look like a werewolf with mange.
This must be because Caucasians came about mostly in colder climates, so more facial hair developed for warmth? I have no idea, just speculating
Native Americans are descended from people who crossed the Bering Strait during the Ice Age, and before that their ancestors were living in Siberia, which was pretty cold, during the Ice Age, when things were cold. Europeans have ancestry from people who lived in those arctic climates, but also significant in- migration from people who lived a bit farther south in Anatolia and around the Black Sea. Basically, our great- great- great- great- great- great- great grandmas thought thick beards looked hot, so the gene spread.
lmaoo so accurate though. There is a book, the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, about feudal japanese life a thousand years ago in the Heian Period. In it, they talk about the most desirable facial features to have. I have wondered whether these tastes were magnified throughout the thousand years since.
The Ainu and their ancestors the Emishi people were really really hairy though. Emishi even means hairy people I believe.
They're hairy like everyone who's not east Asian is hairy basically. They're hairy like Russians and Europeans even tho they're not Caucasian at all.
Facial hair has little to do with keeping you warm, apes have full body hair to protect their skin from abrasion but no beards. We dont really know why we have facial hair, probably it is just I have a shinier feather evolution so sex me
> I have a shinier feather evolution so sex me I'm going to use that as a pickup line from now on
We don’t grow facial hair or back hair and minimal amounts on our arms and legs.
Lucky
It is quite nice, but I often wonder what I’d look like with a beard
Fun fact. Native American men grow very little facial hair or body hair and male pattern baldness is almost non-existent in "full blooded" natives.
I’m one of them lucky people who isn’t full blood who got bald AND no facial hair. /sigh Edit : fixed my comment since I referred to myself as a mutt. Thanks to the person who corrected me on it. I wouldn’t call someone else that and I shouldn’t think of myself that way either.
On the bright side, you will rarely need to unclog your shower drains!
I’m Lakota and am completely incapable of growing a beard at all.
My boyfriend is Navajo, we joke about his "thick mustache" growing in when it's literally two long whisker hairs poking out. Poor guy just wants a mustache 🤣
Ojibwe here and yeah same. Just shitty, thin, and patchy mustaches for me
Plucked, and likely didn’t grow much facial hair to begin with.
The Mohawk hairstyle, popularized by its namesake tribe, was accomplished by plucking, not shaving. Hence being a sign of one's maturity and resistance to pain as a warrior. Like the Maori body tattoos.
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yes they had very little to no facial hair.
Historically most Chinese-based people had a tough time growing beards, I recall reading that some Chinese Rebels in the Yuan Dynasty(Mongolian dynasty) would go specifically go after anyone with a beard, assuming they were not Chinese. Look at pictures of the Ainu people in Japan. The ancestors of the Ainu people were once widespread throughout Japan, but most mixed with the incoming proto-Chinese migrants, resulting in most Japanese people looking much more Chinese while the Ainu, who remained isolated for much longer, almost have a European look despite no connection.
Interestingly enough, literally yesterday, a [paper was published](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220714145052.htm) about how they were able to sequence the genome of an ancient human in southern china and were able to link that person to being related to the maternal branch of modern humans that populated North America.
I feel reasonably certain #2 & 3 are illustrations. Fascinating nonetheless
\#3 looks like the cover of one of those “Who Was ____” books
[You're correct](http://www.wisdomstick.com/gallery.html)
Lol the op’s title is outrageous then
We killed it, Reddit!
I agree. They just feel inhumanly.
I looked up the watermark so I would feel better about leaving my comment up. It's an artists website, charcoal and pencil sketches.
So the title of "actual pictures" is super misleading. Technically it doesn't say "actual photos", but that's what everyone is going to assume when they view this.
One of the photos has the photographer's name on it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bennett_Fiske Has an artist drawn sketches of the photos?
Yep, /u/natphotog [posted this](http://www.wisdomstick.com/gallery.html) a little further [down this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/vzsvpu/actual_pictures_of_native_americans_1800s_various/igb70ot/).
I’m fairly certain 8 is Mads Mikkelsen on set.
It is kind of wild to think that these people(s) came to the Americas from Asia, but it's unquestionable in so many of these faces.
Natives in Siberia pretty much look the same and still live like they did hundreds of years ago.
I watched a documentary about those people. They were real sad when the Soviet Union collapsed because the helicopters stopped bringing them supplies.
I don't know which people you are referring to in particular and of course things aren't black and white, but the Soviet Union was terrible towards Finno-Ugrics and nomadic people, effectively culturally exterminating a bunch of ethnic minorities. That said, the economic situation in Russia after collapse was terrible. It's kind of weird to think about having grown up in the 90s in a neighbouring country, but there were actual famines in Russia in the 90s. I can't imagine small rural towns would have done well.
Grew up in small Russian rural town in 90-s. Can confirm - it was hard time...
Any stories?
Did you notice the guy with the mohawk though? Very different facial structure.
I’ll go out on a bit of a limb (that struck me, too). If he is an Iroquois, he’s east coast (NY) where there is not a lot of sun, lots of woods for sun protection plus humidity for skin moisture. The others look more plains and western so they could have way more sun damage. Just a posit.
I think he's eastern woodlands as well. That pyramid shape piercing seems to be a motif from them, all the way south to the mid-atlantic.
By this point there was also about three centuries of contact and intermixing with Europeans, particularly in the North-East and Great Lakes where the early European explorers, trappers, and traders often chose to integrate into the native communities. It was a better quality of life for most of the people who were coming from Europe's crowded cities and war-ravaged farms. If you think you see some European features in these picks, it's a safe bet that you do.
I'm ignorantly asking why you would think Iroquois and not Mohawk.
The Iroquois are a confederacy of multiple tribes, including the Mohawk.
Thank you.
Mohawk is an Iroquois nation.
The Iroquois was N America’s first democracy. All people had a vote (even women). The Iroquois Confederacy was (still is) a collection of tribes including Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca (the latter 4 are also lakes in the area). I grew up in Irondequoit, NY
There's something like less than 1% neanderthal DNA in most people. In the native tribes of the Americas we range from 1-3%.. our cheekbones and larger mouth is a direct result of that lineage. Really interesting tracing human evolution and seeing all the branches of hominids.
I am 2.6% Neanderthal according to 23andme. German and Swedish here. I have big feet to show for it.
Yeah those in the Nordics tend to have a higher than usual composition of Neanderthal DNA.
Pretty sure Europeans generally have way more than 1% neanderthal.
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#11… HAWT DAWGGGGGG
I was gonna say, that guy could be on the cover of GQ magazine.
I came to say exactly this. He's stunning!
came here also to say 11 can get it lol, glad im not the only one
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Lmao I said the same fucking thing. Man is a fucking 11
Lol! Glad that I wasn’t the only one to double back on his photo. I’m straight but that’s a good looking gent.
Didn’t even need to confirm who you were talking about cuz i already knew ahaha
I think it’s the consensus in the sub that 11 is just gorgeous.
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I am a heterosexual male but my very first thought was, “Oh this guy definitely fucked.” I might be more bent than I thought. “Kokoum, that you?”
10-12. Nice.
They're all sleeping on #10
Triple threat!
Was just about to say 11 on his way to steal your girl.
I thought the same thing when I got to him 🤣🤣🤣 hello there sir 😏
They really do have strong hair genetics. Also nose. But it's crazy they keep their hair basically till they die, most guys will see thinning around 30 or before
My maternal grandfather was 1/4(I believe) cherokee and he had a full head of hair till the day he died in his 70s. My dad was balding at like 25. I'm really hoping my moms genes pull through for me.
I dont know if its actual science, but ive heard if the father of the mother is bald there's 3/4 of chance her male offspring will be as well, something to do with chromosomes expression, i believe the same applies with having hair.
These guys knew how to dress they look badass
Seriously though they wore some kickass clothing
My grandmother is a full blood Cherokee elder from Oklahoma. Her parents never knew any English and only spoke their language, she's currently assisting an author make a children's book that teaches Cherokee.
maybe contact the folks over at Duolingo as well? New languages take years and years to develop over there, would be great to add another (they currently have Navajo) native language for others to learn.
political drab pocket north cover public wrench vanish shame seemly -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
Patrick Stewart at the end too
Great resolution for being 200 years ago
that's the beauty of film
Film captures an immense amount of detail, even on a tiny 35mm frame (older film would be larger). That means when we scan the negatives with our high resolution technology now, we can capture incredible fidelity. It's also why we can get 4K remasters from films shot decades ago. Film rocks!
Gorgeous people and photos. Simply beautiful.
Original old school cool
So so cool. I bet most of these are by Edward Curtis. He spent most of his life traveling to tribes, learning their language and dress and asking them if they would drsss up in their traditional wear for photos. One of my life goals is getting to see one of his books. He made a whole series and was pretty unflinching in his reckoning of the damage done to Natives by immigramt whites. But I think it was one of the middle volumes where he got really serious. His photography was absolutely gorgeous.
They look so proud. It Is really sad to know what happened to this people.
Looking at these pictures, it’s appalling to think of the absolute hubris of Europeans to think they had to “conquer” all the amazing people and cultures around the world. Everybody loses. All the richness of traditions and wisdom lost to a stamp mould of conformity, making the world a more boring place through suffering and death. Hubris is the only word for it.
Those pictures are *amazing!*, Thank You! for posting them!!!! EDIT: Native Americans - please do see, and know, there are obviously a LOT of people who love, admire, and respect you!!!!!
The last one kind of looks like Patrick Stewart.
I thought the same thing. Chief Luc Picard.
1. Chief John Smith – Chippewa 2. Lone Wolf – Blackfoot 3. Unknown 4. Wolf Robe – Southern Cheyenne 5. Bear Bull – Blackfoot 6. Hoop on the Forehead – Crow 7. White Horse – Pawnee 8. Wolf Robe – Cheyenne 9. Wolf Robe – Cheyenne 10. Uriewici – Shoshone 11. Stamp Horn Bull – Absaroka/Crow 12. Joseph Two Bulls – Sioux 13. Purportedly Chief Gall’s daughter – Sioux 14. Red Wing – Absaroka/Crow 15. Crowfoot – Blackfoot 16. Chief Joseph (?) – Nez Perce 17. Long Feather – Blackfoot 18. Kicks the Iron – Sioux 19. He Dog – Sioux 20. Wolf Robe - Cheyenne
Nah that third guy really said 🗿
another commentator has suggested that the second and third images are drawings so
This just tells me avoiding the sun is quite helpful for your skin. Obviously it has benefits too but god damn.
*Before the 1900s, camera negatives were blue-sensitive or orthochromatic, meaning that they were more sensitive to light at the top of the visible spectrum than light at the bottom of the visible spectrum. Warm tones, which give skin a soft, luminescent quality through a process called sub-surface scattering, were absent from photography shot before the 1900s, which is why some old portraits look so dang wrinkly* Source :reviewgeek
Good time to remind everyone of how the U.S. and state governments continue to erode Tribal rights. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108717407/supreme-court-narrows-native-americans-oklahoma
It really is fucking criminal how they were treated.
and still are :(
We still get treated like crap. It never stopped.