Wild West Photos

L.A. Huffman's pictures are a magnificent pictorial history of the era of the last of the Indian wars, the extermination of the great buffalo herds, the rough and ready life of the frontier towns and the cattlemen and the coming of the railroad. Huffman came to Montana Territory in 1878 to become post photographer at Fort Keogh, the army post, and later opened a studio in Miles City. Round about him in this land of the Yellowstone, Missouri, Big Horn and Powder Rivers, stretched miles of open country; unfenced and not yet spanned by railway. Here was the last place in America where the Indian subsisted on buffalo meat, tanned skins for his lodge and used the robe for his blanket. Huffman photographed Indian warriors, buffalo herds and cowboys in greater extent and detail than was ever done. With a crude, homemade camera he made his early photographs on glass plates. From horseback or from well chosen points of view he preserved this heritage with great patience and skill. The six pictures shown below are among the best most representative of Huffman's work. Each print you order will be individually hand-made and will in some small way be different from every other print made even though multiples may be produced from the same negative. The artistic and historical value of these works of art will endure for years to come.