What do we have here? On the Archival Trail at the Briscoe Center
One of the photographs shows a young man leaning against a studio prop covered in some sort of animal hair, his right forearm resting on the prop just above his waist, his left arm cocked at a 90 degree angle with his fist planted on his left hip. He wears a white cotton tab-collared shirt with long, voluminous sleeves, cuffs buttoned at the wrist, a dark vest, and a Native American breast piece. His pants are dark, but just barely visible, as his lower body is covered by a light colored striped blanket, which, with the odd prop he leans against, serve to obscure the bottom portion of his standing pose. His face gazes stoically just to the left of the photographer’s lens. A large, circular earring hangs from his left earlobe, and his straight dark hair is pulled behind his ears beneath a gray felt western hat, the brim turned up in front, a long eagle’s feather trailing off behind his left shoulder. The hat’s other accoutrement are just visible but difficult to make out. He is framed by a plain gray background whose rounded upper border cuts an arc against the upper right corner of the rectangular photograph.
The back of the photograph bears three different types of markings. In the upper left corner there is a number “10,” written in a light red pencil, distinguishing it from the other thirty-nine photographs in the collection. Centered, in two lines of black ink at the top of the card stock, in the looping cursive that we may suppose belonged to the photographer, William S. Soule, are the words “Quinine Celi” (top line), and “Quah-ah-da Comanche” (beneath). Beneath these words is a long description of the photograph’s subject, printed in black ink and a small, unremarkable script. Many of the collection bear these added notes, but few are as long or detailed as this one, which consumes virtually the entire back of the artifact. The text reads:
This is undoubtedly the earliest photo of the famous chief Quanah Parker (ca. 1845-1911) the half breed son of the Nokoni chief Peta and Cynthia Ann Parker a white captive. Although born a Nokomi (sic) he frequented with the Quahada band and eventually obtained their leadership and was the most important man among the Comanche during the reservation period from 1875 until his death. The name Quimine (sic) was that used by him as an adult man, but during the reservation period after visiting his mother’s family he always used (and was referred to) the name Quanah (Comanche ‘Kwaina’- Fragrant) the childhood name given by his mother for whom he always remembered a particular fondness. Taken at Ft. Sill late 1869. (John Barman, Berkshire, England)
We may imagine that John Barman owned these photographs sometime after A. B. Stephenson but before they came into the custodianship of the Briscoe Center, and from the amount of detail he provided on the photograph’s reverse, and the photo’s subject, that it was one of the most highly prized of his collection. Or, perhaps Barman made the notes on the back of the photographs for A. B. Stephenson, one enthusiast of the American West sharing his knowledge of the subject with another. But, as with the absent album, how Barman’s notes came to be on the back of the photographs remains, at least for now, a mystery.
I returned to the Briscoe to view the photographs again with three questions for the archivists, although I wasn’t certain they would be able to answer any of them. Does the album still exist? Do they know anything about A. B. Stephenson, to whom the album was inscribed? And, do they know anything about John Barman, and how (and when) his notes were added to the photographs? I filled out my call slip with some help from the archivist and went to my table to wait for the folders. When the materials came, I immediately knew something was different. Rather than two manila folders, the assistant carried a small box, with a pair of the white handling gloves, trailed by one of the head archivists. The archivist opened the box, revealing the answer to my first question. As he removed the album, he reminded me that the album and photographs were from the 19th century and should be handled with great care. I quickly told him that although I was happy to look at the album, and that it would answer some of the questions I had, on my previous visit I had seen the photos in two manila folders, and I had questions about those. He relief was almost palpable. He informed me that those were prints reproduced from the originals in the album, and that was actually the way the Briscoe preferred to let researchers view the photos, thus sparing wear and tear on the album. He offered to send for them and allowed me to, carefully, peruse the album until he returned with the folders, which was fine with me.
In the meantime, I could see (with some trouble, the ink was fairly faded) that the album was inscribed to A. B. Stevenson, just as the archive’s listing had said. The looping cursive descriptions on the back of the prints that I had attributed to the photographer had most likely been penned by an archivist, who I could now see had copied them from the photographs’ titles in the album. The photographs were the same, albeit more faded, than the prints I had seen. When the prints came (and the archivist reclaimed the album), there were now three manila folders rather than two. The third contained the dust jacket of a book on William Soule’s photographs, several documents concerning the Briscoe’s acquisition of the Soule materials from their previous repository, and documents charting descriptions of the photographs. My examination of them turned up no information on A. B. Stephenson or John Barman, although, after seeing the album and its inscription, I was now less interested in Stephenson than in the Barman notes. I turned my attention to the prints, took my photos, and prepared to return the materials.
When I returned to the circulation counter, I asked the archivist about the Barman notes, showing her a few examples on the backs of the prints. She also found them a curiosity. After a moment she told me there was another file on the Soule photographs that she would pull, which might have some information on the added commentary. I went back to my table and waited for the file to be pulled. When the archivist brought the file, she seemed almost embarrassed, and she explained that it looked like John Barman had written a letter, and well, it was 1979, she shrugged with a bemused smirk on her face, saying that she guessed archival practices were different then. I interrupted her, asking “So you’re pretty sure he wrote a letter?” She said she’d let me draw my own conclusions, but pointed me to a document in the file, several stapled pages of handwritten notes in blue ink. Each note had a number in the left-hand margin and a title, both of which corresponded to the Soule prints that bore Barman’s commentary. I found the note for print 10, the photo of Quanah Parker. It was the same as on the print. The archivist then pointed me to the last page of the stapled document. There at the bottom of the page, in the same black ink and unassuming print as the Barman notes on the back of the photographs, someone had penned “from a letter from John Barman (his address in Berkshire, England, below his name, and) Aug 19, 1979.” Although it didn’t tell us much more about Barman, it did solve the mystery of how and when his notes had been added to the prints.
Reflecting on the Barman notes after my visit, I found that I had mixed feelings about them, perhaps similar to the archivist’s uneasiness. What type of authority was he, if at all? On the back of one of the prints titled “Arapahoe Squaw,” his commentary tells us that the subject is “almost certainly not Arapaho but Cheyenne,” and provides ethnographic evidence (similar hair braiding and “dress and ornaments”) in referencing another picture that is indeed labeled as Cheyenne. He seems to have intimate knowledge of the subjects, often identifying them as well as their familial relations.
But, even as we now know how and when his notes were added to the prints, they open up larger questions about the life of the album before it arrived at the Briscoe. For instance, under what circumstances did Barman see the photographs to have gained such familiarity with them? Was his expertise solicited? Since his commentary comes in a letter, sent from England, we may suppose that he was not viewing them in the archive. Had the album been in England before arriving at the Briscoe? How did he know where it ended up so as to write his letter? And again, what type of authority was he? Who was John Barman?
Without going into deeper research, I’ll be left with these questions to gnaw at me. But for now, I come away with a few thoughts about the Barman notes beyond their mystery. One, that I would rather the prints have them than not; that is, rather than see them as an example of archival worst practices (which they probably are), I found the photographs richer with their (albeit problematic) addition. Second, and most significantly, they hint at a life and significance of the Soule album otherwise hidden from us. Penned a little over 100 years after the photographs were taken, Barman’s notes help to prove the enduring fascination non-Indians had for these images of a “vanishing race,” and the cultural work that trope continued to do in shaping memories of western expansion well into the latter half of the twentieth century.
