"Joseph" (Hin-Mah-Toó-Yah-Lat-Kekht), Chief of the "Nez Percé" Indians,

1889

As the rapid advance of settler colonialism made clear by the mid-nineteenth century, Indigenous life in North America was endangered. Various artistic projects arose to document the supposedly doomed Native Americans, such as Inman’s painted catalogue of diverse Indigenous sitters, and later, in the commemorative mode of sculptural silhouette, Warner’s portrait medallions. Inman’s paintings depicted Native American leaders who travelled to Washington, DC, to negotiate territorial treaties, which were often disregarded by American lawmakers. Warner portrays Hin-Mah-Toó-Yah-Lat-Kekht in a medallion format often utilized to memorialize deceased subjects. Until just before the medallion was made, however, the chief was actively—and successfully—resisting capture by US armed forces seeking the removal of his people from ancestral lands. In an ironic reversal, a Cochiti Pueblo artist produced this humorous, two-headed likeness of a white newcomer to the Southwest, which was marketed to Anglo collectors seeking authentic “Indian” curios, and who thus unknowingly acquired caricatures of themselves.