Striking late 19th-century cabinet card portrait of the Hunkpapa Lakota war leader Rain in the Face, photographed by L.W. Stilwell of Deadwood, South Dakota. Identified in the image by a faint printed caption, the sitter appears seated in a studio setting wearing a bone breastplate, fur pelts, and a feathered headband, conveying both dignity and defiance. Rain in the Face was a prominent figure during the Indian Wars and is widely remembered for his role in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, where he was alleged, though he denied, to have killed and mutilated Captain Thomas Custer.

The verso advertises “Indian Relics; Sioux, Apache, Etc.” and offers an extensive selection of ancient stone tools, minerals, and fossils, indicative of the era's commercial fascination with Native cultures. Stilwell, active in the Black Hills region in the 1880s and 1890s, was one of several frontier photographers who documented Native leaders in the wake of the Plains Wars. Portraits of Rain in the Face are scarce and highly sought after, especially those made during his later years when his image had become emblematic of the resistance to westward expansion.