Portrait of Keokuk
This portrait is inscribed “Ke-o-kuk or the Watchful Fox.” Some portions have been colored with pigment. The words “Easterly” and “Artist” are engraved into the corners of the frame of the daguerreotype. One of Easterly’s most famous portraits, this is part of a series of daguerreotypes he made of a small group of Sauk and Fox men, women, and children who traveled from their reservation in Kansas to St. Louis in the late 1840s. It captures a moment just after the Missouri Sauk and Fox had been forcibly removed by the US government to territory farther west.
Object Title and Accession Number
Portrait of Keokuk. Daguerreotype by Thomas M. Easterly, 1849. N17179.
A historical daguerreotype photograph of a man wearing traditional attire. He is adorned with a feathered headdress and a necklace made of large beads or claws, holding an object in his hand, and looking directly at the camera.