[Eskimo man standing on railroad tracks] - Frank G. Carpenter collection

These portraits are valuable records that document Native American dress and customs at the end of the nineteenth century during an active period of Indian removal and hostilities against Native Americans.Library of Congress holds one of the most important collections of Native American photographic portraits.

Native Americans Portraits

Eskimos, or Esquimaux, are terms used to refer to people who inhabit the circumpolar region, excluding Scandinavia and most of Russia, but including the easternmost portions of Siberia. There are two main groups of Eskimos: the Inuit in northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland, and the Yupik of western Alaska and the Russian Far East. The Eskimos are related to the Aleuts and the Alutiiq from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska as well as the Sug'piak from the Kodiak Islands and as far as the Prince William Sound in southcentral Alaska. Eastern Eskimo people (Inuit) speak Inuktitut, and western Alaskan Eskimo communities (Yup'ik) speak Yup'ik. There is a dialect continuum between the two, and the westernmost dialects of Inuktitut could be viewed as forms of Yup'ik. Kinship culture also differs between east and west, as eastern Inuit lived with cousins of both parents, but western Inuit lived in paternal kinship groups. The Sireniki language is sometimes regarded as a third branch of Eskimo, but other sources regard it as a group belonging to the Yupik branch.