Wanamaker Collection

Understanding the historic context of the Wanamaker holdings is vital to their research and educational use. Joseph K. Dixon was hired by the Wanamaker Department Store in Philadelphia in the early 1900s, after he had worked with the Kodak Company. He was named the Director of Education at the store—a role similar to that of museum educator today. He gave public presentations at the store, and also spoke to 100s of school children about his work. 

At first his perspective was highly romantic: he sought to capture images of “the vanishing race,” staging photos with titles such as “Song of the Arrows” (1962-08-2006) and “On the Sky Line” (1962-08-2667). However, Dixon could not help seeing and hearing about the conditions under which his subjects were living – confined to reservations, deprived of means of subsistence, neglect or worse by the federal government charged with their care. He photographed these conditions as well, as in “Slum tepee, Cheyennes [sic], Crow Agency” (1962-08-0987). From that point on, it is clear from the documents and from the photographs themselves that Dixon had concluded that American Indians were not vanishing though treated badly by the US government.

In 1913, Joseph Dixon helped organize—on behalf of Rodman Wanamaker—an “Expedition of Citizenship,” a months-long journey through Oklahoma, the southwest, California, the northwest, the upper plains, and the northern states in the east, visiting 73 locations. The purpose of this trip was to ask Native leaders to sign a “Declaration of Allegiance” to the United States, in order to demonstrate to the US Congress the Native peoples’ desire (or willingness) to become US citizens. At these locations Dixon took photos of his subjects both in traditional attire (“Judge and Mrs. Wolf Plume and baby, ‘Little Handsome Woman,’” 1962-08-3513) and contemporary clothing (“Mosh-Shah—James Waters, full face, bust," 1962-08-3146).

Dixon’s next major project was documenting the stories and images of Native Americans who had served in the Great War (World War I). He visited military installations and hospitals on the east coast before the veterans were demobilized, taking down their stories as well as photographing them. The images include celebrated individuals (“Choctaw Telephone Squad”, 1962-08-6453) and those injured in their service to the country (“Sergeant Lee Shananquet,” 1962-08-6355). Dixon distributed (again on behalf of Rodman Wanamaker) hundreds of questionnaires to Native veterans; the archives includes 2,700 of these documents.

Finally, in 1921 Dixon traveled to France and Belgium to record the devastation that the war had brought to towns (1962-08-6776) and countryside (1962-08-7443).