Last Days of Red Cloud Agency

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a cache of previously unknown photographs are surely worth a book. Especially when those images are from a period of traumatic change for Native peoples in the 1870s on the Northern Plains. This book reproduces for the first time images captured at the "Indian Agency" that marked the end of tribal traditional lifestyles and the beginning of restriction to reservations after the so-called "Great Sioux War."

The book, completed by well-known Ft. Robinson historian Thomas R. Buecker just before his untimely death in 2015, presents a collection of stereo card photographs of the Oglala Lakota and Arapaho Indians at northwestern Nebraska's Red Cloud Agency, of the agency itself, and of other sites and landmarks in the vicinity. Peter T. Buckley, who worked at Camp (later Fort) Robinson, Nebraska, during those crucial years collected the work of multiple photographers. Many views are published here for the first time, and with those already familiar to historians, they tell a story of a land and culture in transition.

Decoding these complex stories takes work. But readers are fortunate to have Thomas R. Buecker to guide their exploration. A longtime curator at Fort Robinson Museum and author of the fort's definitive two-volume history, Buecker (1948-2015) was equally comfortable talking with other historians and with the general public. Here he unravels the events and personalities behind the photographs, and shows how they illustrate the historical moment Buckley lived and wanted to preserve.