Attributed to Hamilton & Hoyt, Sioux City, Iowa. Circa 1870s.

Stereoview portrait of Gihega seated on a log before a backdrop of draped cloth and hides. His elaborate headdress has a long, decorated projection extending to one side, with feathers, circular ornaments, and a hand motif above the brow. A circular medal hangs on his chest below a large necklace and a second round ornament. He also wears metal armbands, decorated leggings, and moccasins. Across his lap rests a long-stemmed pipe tomahawk, its broad blade pierced with a heart-shaped opening.

The yellow mount is unprinted, with “79” visible at the lower left of the image. Pencil inscriptions on the reverse identify “Gihega—an Omaha Chief,” repeated in a later hand along the upper edge. The Smithsonian catalogs a No. 79 portrait of Gihega under Hamilton and Hoyt, providing the basis for the attribution.

Gihega (d. 1882), also known as Pe-dhan-ba, or “Seven,” was an Omaha chief of the Inke-sabe, or Black Shoulder, clan, which held responsibility for the tribe’s sacred peace pipes. Long associated with the chiefs’ party, he favored compromise among rival Omaha political factions and was among the chiefs elected in March 1880, when the tribe assembled in open council and voted by a show of hands. The ethnographer James Owen Dorsey also recorded his accounts of clan origins and traditions surrounding the sacred pipes, documenting his knowledge of Omaha history and ceremonial life. A particularly personal detail survives in an inscription accompanying another portrait, now at the Amon Carter Museum: the hand emblem on his headdress commemorated an exploit in war.