The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

Commentary on "Sitting Holy, Sioux Indian"

Gertrude Käsebier captioned most of the photographs within the set of Sioux Indian portraits that she took of the Buffalo Bill Wild West performers. One man in particular, Kills Close to the Lodge, also in several prints has the name Sitting Holy. Then as I began my research and branched out into other collections of Käsebier work, I went to the Library of Congress who has 50 original glass negatives from the sitting with the Sioux Indians. As I went through those images, Kills Close to the Lodge was also called Luke Big Turnips. So herein lies the continuing research that's needed on these images to learn more about the biography, the biographical information about these individuals and how we begin to do this research that leads us back to Pine Ridge Reservation and potentially to their families.