Hand-tinted stereograph, T. W. Ingersoll [?], c. 1899, 8.9 x 17.8 cm. 

Two Native American Indian men bent over facing away from camera.  One wearing pants, jacket, and hat, and the other wrapped in blanket or cloak.  In background are women in dresses and shawls, wagons, horses, and cows. 

On front: “430.  Beef Issue to Sioux Indians at Standing Rock.” 

On back: “From time to time the Government supplies its somewhat unruly wards on the various Indian Reservations, with an issue of live beef, to supplement the efforts of the Indians themselves in furnishing their own livelihood.  Those who have been accustomed to thinking of the Indians as pictured by Fennimore Cooper and lurid writers of a later date, will no doubt look with contempt upon this specimen of aborigines, clad in store clothes, with conventional dresses for the women and driving well made wagons and fairly well kept horses.  One of the peculiarities of the Indian character is that he readily adapts himself to those usages of civilization which commend themselves to him because they save labor or conduce to his primitive comfort.  It must not be thought, however, for a moment, that this deprives them of their savage nature or in any way makes them more useful or desirable as neighbors or citizens.  The very Indians shown in the foreground of this picture were among those who, a few short years ago at the time of the Big Medicine dances, attacked United States troops with fanatical bravery and were only repulsed after a large number of their people, including among them women and children, who assisted in the attack, were killed.  From time to time the Government discontinues this issue of ration at various reservations and when such time arrives the Indians are, ordinarily, driven to some sort of work to sustain life, and to that extent at least, become useful citizens.  The busy man has no time for conspiracies or plots against the authorities.  A8835”