Matthew D. Mason, Department of History, The University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee; School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, Wisconsin; and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. Home Address: 2023 Mayflower Drive, #8, Middleton, Wisconsin, 53562. (608) 836-9119. mdmason@memphis.edu

Native in the Frame: Viewing the Ho-Chunk Nation (HoChunkgra Wazijaci) in the Studio Portraiture of Charles J. Van Schaick in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, 1870-1930.

Charles J. Van Schaick (1852-1946) worked as a commercial photographer in Black River Falls, the county seat of Jackson County in western Wisconsin during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His professional and personal photographs captured scenes from nearly five decades of town and rural life in the upper Midwestern region of the United States. Over these years, he chronicled changes and constancies in the place and people over time. The images captured on the emulsion of his negatives represent moments in the lives of individuals.

This paper will explore the ways the camera and the audience of the photograph during the period viewed Native American people, namely members of the Ho-Chunk nation (HoChunkgra Wazijaci). Van Schaick did not leave any manuscript records, so the contextual evidence for interpreting his images has come from contemporary accounts, including newspapers, personal papers of other individuals held in local archives, and governmental records. Readings of the photographic images will comprise the primary evidence for the ways tribal members viewed themselves and how they allowed others to view them.

Subjects covered in this paper will include the various conventions of studio portraiture photography during the era, and the agency of the photographer's subject and customer. It will explore how studio photographs of these people reflected the time and place in which they lived; such as the socially acceptable ways they were perceived according to their ethnicity, occupation, social standing, and marital status.