Gall (Pizi), the celebrated Hunkpapa Lakota war leader and principal military strategist at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, is depicted here in a full-length studio portrait made by Deadwood and frontier photographer David Francis Barry at his West Superior, Wisconsin studio. Barry was among the most prolific documentarians of Plains Indian leaders in the late nineteenth century, and this copyright-imprinted cabinet card belongs to his commercially distributed series of portraits of notable Native figures, likely produced in the late 1880s or early 1890s.

Gall stands barefoot in light moccasins against a painted backdrop depicting an open plains landscape with canvas army tents visible at left, wearing a dark wrapped skirt and a cross pendant at his chest, his long braids falling over his bare shoulders and a single two-toned feather rising from his hair. His expression is composed and direct, his posture upright, and a blanket or robe lies bundled at his feet on the studio floor.

Gall emerged as a leading figure in Lakota resistance during the 1860s and 1870s before ultimately settling on the Standing Rock Reservation, where he became a judge and advocate for accommodation with the federal government. Barry's portraits of him remain among the most recognized photographic documents of any nineteenth-century Lakota leader.

The mount recto reads "CHIEF GALL." in large display type with "COPYRIGHTED BY" beneath, and "D. F. BARRY, WEST SUPERIOR, WIS." in red. The reverse bears a printed red engraved portrait of Gall with his name, Barry's studio imprint, and the notation "PHOTOGRAPHS OF ALL NOTED INDIANS, Catalogues Mailed on Application."

From the collection of James Lee Soffer