A seated portrait of Nez Perce Black Eagle fills this cabinet card, photographed by Bowman of Pendleton, Oregon, likely in the 1880s or 1890s when the studio was active serving the communities of northeastern Oregon, a region home to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation including the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla peoples.

Black Eagle wears a fringed hide garment layered with multiple strands of beads and shell ornaments at the neck, and holds a rifle across the lap with both hands. A whole animal pelt, likely coyote or fox, rests beside the figure on the right, and a long strand of trade beads trails to the floor at left. Hair is worn long and gathered upward at the crown, and the painted studio backdrop depicts a landscape with trees.

Pendleton, Oregon served as a commercial and cultural hub adjacent to the Umatilla Reservation, and portrait studios there regularly documented tribal members, producing images that now constitute an important visual record of the region's Indigenous communities. The reverse bears a penciled notation reading "625" in the upper right corner.

From the collection of James Lee Soffer