Pictures of the Ho-Chunk

Charles Van Schaick photographed anyone who came to his studio in Black River Falls, Wis., with money in hand, including members of the nearby Ho-Chunk Nation. Nearly 300 of those portraits (plus a few outdoor shots of American Indian ceremonies) have been published in a coffee table book, People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families by Charles Van Schaick, 1879-1942 (Wisconsin Historical Society Press).

The beginning of Van Schaick's professional life coincided with the aftermath of the worst times in Ho-Chunk history. The Ho-Chunk, or Winnebago as the federal government called them, had lived in Wisconsin from time immemorial but were “removed” from the territory in the early 19^th century in an ethnic cleansing of forced marches to distant reservations in the West. By the time Van Schaick set up shop, the U.S. relented and surviving Ho-Chunk were allowed to return to the state. According to the book's essayists, Van Schaick, unlike many of contemporaries who photographed Indians, had no particular agenda. The point is supported by several comparisons with portraits of local whites posed in the same manner as the Indians, their neutral expressions in contrast to the phony smiles of mid-20^th century studio photography.

Documenting change, Van Schaick's work shows a gradual process by which native dress mixed with American fashion until the 1930s, when most Ho-Chunk went about clothed like their white neighbors. Much effort was made to identity the faces, making the book especially interesting to Ho-Chunk members,

For the rest of us, they are beautifully composed photographs from a lost era. Van Shaick's work has been seen before in Michael Lesy's culty but controversial book Wisconsin Death Trip (1973). As Yale University archivist Matthew Daniel Mason writes, Lesy's depiction of the bizarre madness of Black River Falls in the late 19^th century “provides a limited historical view of the region by explicitly shaping textual and visual source material to fit his preconception” that the region was in thrall to crime, disease and insanity. Mason charges Lesy with using Van Shaick's photos out of context. People of the Big Voice presents his work as his customers intended—family and individual portraits of a moment in time.