This photographic art print is printed on acid-free paper that will last a hundred years, and is matted in neutral colors chosen to compliment the print, yet match any decor.

Each art print is backed with cardboard, ready to frame, and is enclosed in a plastic bag for protection.

This art print measures approximately 8x10 inches, including the mat. The mat pictured is representative, the one you receive may vary. If you are ordering more than one print, we will try to match mat colors when available.



If your ENTIRE order will fit in a poster tube, or 9x11 envelope, enter ARTPRINTS in the Coupon box to save $3.00 on postage.

This item can be shipped internationally, but additional postage may apply.

This art print is made from an historical photo of an unidentified Dakota Mother and Child was taken by photographer Charles Fletcher Lummis.

Charles Fletcher Lummis, (1859-1928), beaome one of the most famous and colorful personalities of his day as a book author, magazine editor, archaeologist, preserver of Spanish missions, advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt and a crusader for civil rights for American Indians.

In 1884, Charles Lummis walked 3,507 miles from Ohio to Los Angeles, California in 143 days. Along the way, he submitted weekly letters to newspapers, chronicling his journey. When he arrived in Los Angeles, he went to work for the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper gave him an assignment at Fort Bowie in Arizona covering General George Crook's campaign to capture Geronimo.

In the spring of 1886, Charles Lummis went to the front lines to cover the last days of the Apache War. Lummis arrived at Fort Bowie, an isolated post near Apache Pass in the Dos Cabezas Mountains southeast of Tucson, on March 31, 1886. Lummis was on hand when a large group of Apaches who had turned themselves in were sent by train to a federal stockade in the east. A total of eighty-seven Apaches were shipped to Florida that day including Geronimo’s wife and children, leaving thirty-seven of the tribe led by Geronimo still at large in Sierra Madre.

After a debilitating stroke that left his left side paralyzed, Charles F. Lummis moved to San Mateo, New Mexico for two months to recuperate. The stay extended to nearly a year before he moved on to the Pueblo Indian village of Isleta after receivig death threats in San Mateo related to a news story he was covering.

Isleta had been a focal point in the sometimes violent convergence of European and native cultures in the Rio Grande Valley for 300 years when Lummis arrived. An ancient aqueduct system from the Rio Grande provided water for the village, as it does today.

Charles Lummis was there when the last of the life-appointed hereditary chieftains of Isleta passed on. The cheiftain's role was filled a decade after his death by the first democratically selected Pueblo Counsel.

The Pueblos have always been famously wary of outsiders -- a suspicion borne of centuries of repression and attack by outsiders. The pueblos generally made exceptions for foreign traders and priests, but not for the likes of Lummis. He wrote in his diary in December 1888, a few weeks after he arrived, that the aguacil, or pueblo sheriff, told him point blank that he could not stay. But the aguacil clearly did not speak for everyone. Lummis’s landlord was Juan Rey Abeita, the patriarch of one of the most prominent families in town.

Over the years, the Pueblo people gave Charles Lummis several names. One Tigua name that they gave Lummis meant "One Who We Worry About." Others called him Kha-tay-deh, which means "Withered Branch." But the nickname that stuck was "Por Todos" -- For Everyone.

While living in Isleta, Lummis battled with the U.S. government's Indian education bureacracy, which insisted on taking Indian children away from their parents for years at a time. Lummis won the fight, succeeding in liberating 36 Isleta children from the Albuquerque Indian School. A year later, Congress repealed the policy that permitted government officials to remove Indian children from their reservations and send them to far-away boarding schools.

In 1901, several months after his old Harvard acquaintance Theodore Roosevelt became president, Lummis formed the Sequoya League, an organization dedicated to promoting policies that "make better Indians by treating them better."

The next year, Lummis and his Swquoya League spearheaded an attack on a policy that called on U.S. government agents on each reservation to cut the long hair off all of the Indian men under their jurisdiction.

In the final years of his life in the 1920s, Charles Lummis plunged once again into the Indian policy war, this time playing a supporting role for a younger, more vigorous Indian rights activist named John Collier. One of the big battles in the 1920s concerned an attempt by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to put a stop to Indian dancing. Collier, with help from Lummis, proved to be an effective advocate for the religious rights of Indians.