Five Shoshone men identified on the mount as "Snake Chiefs" stand in a line before a tipi in this albumen stereoview, number 579 in the Rocky Mountain series published by O. C. Smith of Brooklyn, New York, and photographed by A. J. Andrew Joseph Russell circa 1869. Russell served as the official photographer for the Union Pacific Railroad during the construction era and produced some of the most significant documentary images of the American West during that period.

The five men wear a mix of traditional and Euro-American dress, including wide-brimmed hats, beaded or fringed breast ornaments, and dark trousers, standing shoulder to shoulder on a dry, scrubby hillside with rolling terrain and open sky visible behind them. The tipi rises prominently at center-left, its poles crossing above the canvas, and additional structures or camp elements are faintly discernible in the far background.

Russell's Rocky Mountain series documented indigenous peoples, railroad construction, and Western landscapes along the Union Pacific route, and this view falls squarely within that record. The Snake, or Shoshone, peoples occupied territories across present-day Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah, and their leaders were photographed by multiple expeditionary photographers during this era.

The reverse reads "No. 579 Snake Chiefs" in manuscript above the printed O. C. Smith imprint at 314 Washington Street, Brooklyn, N.Y., with a handwritten notation "350" at upper left. The front mount border is yellow with a blue strip at top, and a handwritten script notation appears vertically along the right border.