Big Head, identified by manuscript inscription on the mount face, is the subject of this albumen cabinet card portrait, likely made during the 1870s or 1880s when agency and reservation photography of Plains leaders was common. The reverse bears a second penciled inscription reading "Upper Yanktonais," placing him within the Yanktonai Dakota, a division of the Great Sioux Nation occupying lands along the upper Missouri River.

He wears a dark fur-trimmed cap ornamented with a shell or bone disc badge, a single upright feather rising from the crown, and long braids wrapped with fur or leather wrapping. A bone hair pipe breastplate layers over a white cloth shirt beneath a dark vest, and he holds what appears to be a hide-covered drum or bundle across his lap, gripping a slender stick or beater.

The Yanktonai, sometimes rendered Yanktonais, occupied territory in present-day North and South Dakota and were among the groups photographed during treaty and agency visits to document tribal leadership. No photographer's imprint is visible on the mount. Pencil sketches of a tipi, heart, and abstract forms appear scattered across the reverse alongside the tribal notation.

From the collection of James Lee Soffer