Five Northern Arapaho leaders and their federal agent gather in J. N. Choate's Carlisle, Pennsylvania studio in this cabinet card, made during a February 1882 delegation to the Indian Training School. The reverse identifies the group as Black Coal, Sharp Nose, Iron, Little Wolf, and White Horse, with Maj. Charles Hatton, U.S. Indian Agent, standing at center.

The four chiefs wear hairpipe breastplates, fringed beaded vests, fur-trimmed capes, and beaded moccasins. Two seated men hold a long pipe stem, and another grips a beaded bag marked with a cross motif. Hatton wears a dark suit and waistcoat, his beard and center-parted hair distinct among the group.

Black Coal and Sharp Nose led the Northern Arapaho onto the Shoshone Reservation at Wind River in 1878, an arrangement that became permanent after years of negotiation with federal officials. Both chiefs sent children to Carlisle, and Hatton arranged this 1882 visit east to the school and Washington, D.C.

The reverse bears Choate's printed Carlisle catalog advertisement, handwritten red ink identifications of the sitters, a manuscript number 5, and a notation reading Compliments of W. J. Hastings, Shoshone Indian Agency, Wyoming Territory.

From the collection of James Lee Soffer