[Indian scouts on horseback passing under cover of night]

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Few horse pictures in this gallery show riders in darkness, and this one lets the night itself carry the scene: mounted scouts move in a line through the dark, their shapes set against the ground. The record credits the copyright to Rodman Wanamaker, the department-store heir who financed a series of American Indian photographs and films around 1913, and it tentatively names Dixon as the photographer, a detail the catalog marks as unverified. Pictures from that project were often carefully arranged, so the scene may reflect the photographers' ideas of Plains life as much as a single real moment. The image is worth comparing with the period's romantic views of the frontier.

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