A group of five Native Americans identified on the mount recto as "Indian Family" poses for this hand-colored albumen CDV made by A.W. Barker of Ottawa, Kansas, likely in the 1870s or early 1880s. Barker operated an active commercial trade in Indigenous portraits, advertising on the reverse that he held "a large assortment of Indian Pictures taken among the principal Tribes of the West, for sale" at 25 cents per picture and catalogue.

Three figures are seated in the foreground wearing fringed hide dresses ornamented with yellow-painted medallion details, beaded necklaces in blue and teal, and wrapped blankets in green, pink, and blue plaid; two additional figures stand behind them in striped blankets and earrings with long pendant strands. The hand-applied color throughout emphasizes the textile patterns and ornaments with unusual care.

Barker's practice of commercial ethnographic portrait sales places this card within a well-documented genre of frontier studio photography that circulated widely as collector's items in the post-Civil War decades. The reverse imprint reads in full: "A.W. Barker, Photographer, Ottawa, Kan."

From the collection of James Lee Soffer