Progressive Era: 1890–1920s: Native Americans Fight for Land, Identity, & Education
"Kloochy," a McCloud River Indian, eighty years of age, poses outdoors. ca. 1915. Photographer unknown. Postcard published by Thomas Houseworth & Company, San Francisco. Collection of Oakland Museum of California. Gift of Robert Reeves.
"With wild men, as with wild beasts, the question whether to fight, coax, or run, is a question merely of what is easiest or safest in the situation given."
- 1870s U.S. Indian commissioner Francis Amasa Walker
This souvenir postcard was made in San Francisco in the early 1900s, and shows the ambivalent ways in which whites viewed Native Americans at that time. A Native American man is wearing native clothes and is in a hunting pose with a bow and arrow, representing the white fascination with Native Americans as "wild men" who should be treated as one would treat a dangerous animal. These views would continue to shape California dealings with Native Americans up until the 1950s.