Names were misspelled.

Nations were misidentified.

Ceremonial clothing was treated as costume.

Staged images were presented as spontaneous scenes.

Photographs made for anthropological study were later reproduced as nostalgic “Indian” imagery without context.

Ishi’s archive allows us to see how this process works almost in real time.

The camera followed him because he was already famous.

His fame came from a particular story.

The photographs then reinforced that story.

A staged hunting image looked like proof that he belonged to an earlier age.