In this photograph, a Houma man poses with a fishing net. In 1938, Speck advocated for the recognition of the Houma as Indigenous people by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a claim that had the power to grant Houma children access to the pursuit of equal education in Louisiana’s segregated public schools. Speck argued that it was the Houma’s consciousness of their lineage, traditions, and cultural characteristics that made them Indigenous. During his visit to the bayous of Louisiana, Frank Speck documented various Houma practices such as the use of canoes and the construction of palmetto houses to prove his claim. 

To Speck, it is the fishing net that provides this Houma man a direct link to an Indigenous identity. While this photo may have been taken with the intention of highlighting and preserving the significance of fishing to Houma history, economics, and culture, this image paints a much more complex picture of Houma identity. Though this man is demonstrating something Speck perceived as Indian, the man’s identity is not caught up in the fishing net alone. The man’s pinstriped suit implies that he is also a modern member of society, and that Indigenous identity is not just drawn from seemingly antiquated material objects, but from a robust lived experience revolving around kinship, places, and traditions.

Frank Speck visited the Catawba in South Carolina on a number of occasions between 1913 and 1944. In this photograph, Sally Brown Gordon collects sedge-grass to make a broom. Broom straw was commonly harvested in the fall and was also used for medicinal purposes. Sally Gordon, her brother Chief Sam Blue, and mother Margaret Wiley Brown were among the last fluent speakers of the Catawba language. Speck expressed a number of frustrations in his attempt to study the Catawba, as he believed their culture had little ethnographic information to offer him. Most of this frustration stemmed from the difficulty Speck experienced in trying to distinguish the Catawba’s Indigenous culture from that of the rural south. 

While Speck may have been disappointed that his informants could not offer him the insights he was seeking, his frustrations and photographs encapsulate Catawba identity in the twentieth century. The Catawba gained federal recognition in 1941, but were terminated in 1959 due to the United States’ federal Indian policy. As a result of the negative ramifications of termination, the Catawba petitioned for federal recognition, which they were granted in 1993. The Catawba Indian Nation is presently located near Rock Hill, South Carolina.

In this photograph, a Montagnais-Naskapi, or Innu, boy dressed in pants, an overcoat, and a feather headdress aims down the sights of a crossbow. Frank Speck devoted nearly twenty years to the study of the Innu people of the Labrador Peninsula and northern Quebec in the early twentieth century. Convinced that Indigenous cultures were best preserved in northern Canada, Speck believed the Innu were far more “primitive” than any other groups he had previously studied. 

The crossbow held by the boy exemplifies the type of “primitive” traditions Speck wanted to document. Photographing a child holding a crossbow creates a stark contrast between youth and antiquity, reinforcing non-Native expectations of primitiveness and simplicity to justify the authenticity of Indigenous identity and culture.

This photograph of a Montagnais-Naskapi, or Innu, family in Quebec features a father, mother, and their two daughters. All are wearing leather moccasins, while the man wears a suit, and the women wear plaid skirts, and long sleeve button up shirts. Having been influenced by missionization from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, a number of Innu people converted to Christianity for a multitude of reasons. Roman Catholicism in particular had a large impact on Innu culture. 

While Speck viewed the Innu as “primitive” and “culturally pure,” this photograph deconstructs those assumptions. The photograph of this family challenges Speck’s notion of cultural purity by revealing how Indigenous peoples, cultures, and beliefs often coexisted alongside non-Native traditions. Despite the colonial pressures that often sought to erode and undermine Indigenous peoples in Canada, the Innu demonstrate their own agency through the adoption and display of certain Christian symbols, such as the large cross necklaces worn by many of the women in Speck’s photographs.

A Muscogee (Creek) family of five poses for a photograph outside of their home in Oklahoma. Perhaps what stands out the most in this image is the young girl holding onto a mortar and pestle and the young boy holding a bow and arrow. Other than these two items, everything else in the photograph appears to be relatively modern for the time. 

Speck was primarily concerned with salvaging a way of life he considered to be vanishing, and many of his photographs feature objects he considered to be primitive. To Speck, photographing Indigenous people with objects that were overtly Indigenous carried significant weight in his personal evaluation on the status of a tribe’s culture and identity.

In this photograph, John and Nanny Driver pose with their children in Big Cove, North Carolina. The men are dressed in overalls and the women wear calf-level dresses. This photograph clearly reveals the relationship between the preservation of Cherokee traditions and the consumption of modernity. The little girls in the photograph all carry seemingly modern dolls that were likely purchased from a store. 

The girl in the center is carrying her doll tightly wrapped and carried on her back in a traditional Cherokee manner. While the girls pose with their dolls, the oldest boy poses with a rifle. Using modern objects, this family is able to practice traditions and reinforce Cherokee views on gender roles in a new way. Though this photograph may seem like a snapshot of ordinary life, it highlights a unique blend of indigeneity and modernity.

This undated photograph features a man wearing a headdress and a child holding a spear. This lantern slide is categorized as "Miscellaneous" and the only identifying information listed is,“Native American.”  It is likely that this lantern slide was categorized as such by a later archivist, or perhaps by Anthony Wallace, the anthropologist and student of Speck who first organized the manuscript collection. Though we are not provided with names of the individuals or the name of their tribal nation, they are clearly seen as Indigenous based on the headdress and spear they display. 

Imagine this photograph without the headdress and spear. The man is wearing a suit and tie and the boy is wearing a leather jacket. Without these two objects, would the man and boy be easily labeled as Native? Would their photograph still be included in Speck’s lantern slide collection? Though this image was not categorized by Speck himself, these questions allow us to think critically about perceived Indigenous cultural identity within archives.

This photograph of a group of Creek children in Alabama was taken in 1941. All of the children are wearing seemingly modern clothes. Some of the girls are holding dolls and one little boy holds a ball. To Frank Speck, there may not be any cultural elements showcased in this photo that would give away these childrens’ identity as Indigenous. To a salvage anthropologist focused on saving vanishing cultures, these children may not appear to have anything to save. 

These children do not necessarily fit the non-Native expectation of what Indigenous children should look like. However, it is not clothes or toys that define indigeneity, but something much deeper.  Though it may not have been intentional, Speck again demonstrates the historical process of restructuring the meaning and expectations of “Indianness” throughout the twentieth century.

This photograph shows three Huron, or Wendat, boys smoking next to a fence in Quebec, Canada. The young boys are dressed in leisure suits and flat caps, a style popular among men of various classes and backgrounds during the early twentieth century. This photograph captures the boys’ participation in restructuring the meaning and expectations of “Indianness” throughout the twentieth century. 

The young boys are willing to participate in and consume elements of modernity, demonstrated by their fashion and cigarette smoking. However, they also retain an identity that is distinctly Indigenous, though it may not be easily perceived from the outside. Their consumption of cigarettes symbolizes a blend between traditional Indigenous tobacco use with modern forms of tobacco adaptation and production.

This photograph shows four Seminole men standing outdoors with stickball sticks. All of the men are wearing shirts that feature Seminole patchwork, and there is a small child standing amongst them. The lantern slide seeks to document a traditional game and its significance to Seminole culture. While the emphasis of the photo is on the ball players, it is interesting to note that the men are not actually playing the game, but posing still to allow the viewer to clearly observe the stickball sticks. The men hold the stickball sticks together, to demonstrate how the objects function in the context of the game. 

Like many of Speck’s photographs, this image is centered around the objects that are seen as distinctly Indigenous. In this case, the objects featured are the stickball sticks rather than the game itself. To an audience who is not familiar with the game of stickball, this photo may seem as if stickball is a primitive or passive game rather than a sophisticated and highly competitive sport with cultural and historical significance.