20 Amazing Pictures of North American Indians in the Early 1920s

By the late nineteenth century, all Americans, except for American Indians, knew for a fact that all Indian tribes would be extinct in the twentieth century and that all individual American Indians, like other immigrants, would be fully assimilated into mainstream American culture in which they would be English-speaking, Christian farmers.

While this American fantasy continued to survive through most of the twentieth century, Indians did not vanish. As Americans entered into the period of growth and prosperity popularly known as the Roaring 20s following World War I, Indian tribes and Indian people continued to exist, usually out of sight of non-Indians.

These early 1920s photographs of North American Indians are amazing, but often also very sad faces.

Indians in a reservation in Montana.

Malamut Indians in Alaska.

Pueblo Indians in Tusuque, New Mexico.

Apache Indian workers in Arizona.

Florida seminoles.

A Canadian Cree Indian.

A Sioux girl.

A young Tlingit woman.

Eastern Canada Indians.

Ojibway Indian from Manitoba.

Young Iroquois woman.

Hualapai girl.

Moki girl from Arizona.

Chemehuevi wife with baby.

Stockbridge tribe woman.

Indian chief.

Apache Indians.

Navajo Indian (Arizona).

Young Seri woman (Arizona).

Apache woman (Arizona).