Good Eagle, identified on the mount as "Chief of the Cheyenner" and a performer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West, stands in a full-length studio portrait made by Elliott and Fry at 55 Baker Street, London, almost certainly during the show's celebrated 1887 London engagement. The cabinet card format and the studio's Royal Warrant-bearing imprint place this squarely within the wave of portraits Elliott and Fry produced of Wild West performers for the British public that season.

Good Eagle wears a dark fur-trimmed hat set with two eagle feathers, a dark trade blanket draped over one shoulder bearing a bold white and black woven band, a multi-strand beaded necklace with a large circular gorget, and a striped shirt beneath the wrap. His expression is composed and direct, and he stands before a painted woodland backdrop with a log and rock prop at his feet.

Elliott and Fry were among the most prominent portrait photographers in Victorian London, holding appointments to the royal family, and their documentation of Buffalo Bill's 1887 tour produced one of the most significant bodies of studio portraiture of Native American performers ever made in Britain.

The mount recto reads: GOOD EAGLE," CHIEF OF THE CHEYENNER." / Buffalo Bill's Wild West. / ELLIOTT & FRY Copyright. 55, BAKER STR, LONDON.W. The reverse bears the Elliott and Fry imprint with Royal Arms crest, 55 & 56, Baker Street, London W., and a printer's mark for W. Herrmann & Co., Berlin.

From the collection of James Lee Soffer