Chief lobbyist: he made little headway with President Grant, but Red Cloud won over the 19th century's greatest photographers.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-JUN-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Smithsonian Institution

Red cloud started down the path of becoming the most photographed American Indian of the 19th century one spring morning in 1872, a few blocks from the White House. Before meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant, the Lakota chief agreed to sit for Mathew Brady, famed for his Civil War-era photographs and his portraits of the prominent. Two days later, Red Cloud posed at the nearby studio of Alexander Gardner, Brady's former assistant and one of the founders of American photojournalism. That session yielded a picture (left) that was a bestseller in its day and is one of the earliest, most striking photographs of an Indian chief in his prime.

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