Historic Portrait of Osage Leader “Playful Chief” at the Dawn of Reconstruction

Quarter plate tintype. Full leatherette case. Attributed to B. Z. Gannaway. Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1865. Verso of plate inscribed: “Fort Smith,” “Chas E. Pease,” “Osage,” the year 1865, and a phonetic rendering of the chief’s name.

A compelling and significant portrait of the Osage leader Ga-hi-ge-wa-da-in-ga, known in English as Playful Chief or Saucy Chief, seated beside a white man identified as Charles E. Pease. Bare-chested and wearing multiple strands of beads, ornamented leggings, and a distinctive decorated cap, the chief holds a long-handled axe upright, its blade resting near his lap.

The identification of Playful Chief in this view is supported by related, contemporary portraits. One related example is held by The Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives, which records it having been taken at Fort Smith (dated September 1865), while a group photograph in the British Museum identifies him among the Osage leaders assembled there in connection with the postwar peace council. These comparisons definitively place the example offered here within a significant early photographic record of Osage leadership taken at the close of the Civil War at Fort Smith.

The Fort Smith Council, held September 8–21, 1865, brought representatives of Native nations together with federal commissioners seeking to redefine relations after the war. Its implications extended far beyond reconciliation. The government invoked Confederate alliances as grounds for repudiating earlier treaty obligations and advanced demands involving land, emancipation, and the reorganization of Indian Territory. Delegations whose people had supported the Union also confronted this assertion of federal power. Although the council produced a preliminary peace agreement, many of its most consequential questions remained for subsequent negotiations. The gathering marked a critical stage in the extension of Reconstruction into Indian Territory and the erosion of tribal sovereignty.

Playful Chief’s own wartime allegiance gives this setting particular significance. An obituary published in The Red Man and Helper on October 18, 1901, drawing upon the Osage Journal, reported that he had joined the Kansas Home Guards in 1862 and “served the government with distinction.” It also credited him with participating in Osage treaty negotiations and advocating education for Osage children. His Union service is further recognized in the University of Oklahoma’s Indigenous Media Portal, in a record prepared with contributions from the Osage Nation Museum. His presence at Fort Smith embodies the difficult position of Native Union veterans whose military service did not shield their nations from the pressures of postwar expansion.

Playful Chief's importance also extended to the preservation of Osage knowledge. Period documentation identifies him as a leader of the Tsi-shu Peacemaker clan, also associated with the Red Hawk people, and a keeper of a sacred pipe of the Little Osage. In January and February 1883, he supplied James Owen Dorsey with information concerning his clan and its traditions. The Smithsonian preserves a corresponding manuscript under the title Osage sociology and history from Saucy Chief.

For the Osage, the diplomatic upheaval of 1865 had enduring territorial consequences. The separate treaty concluded at Canville Trading Post, Kansas, on September 29 provided for substantial land cessions and contemplated an eventual removal to Indian Territory. In 1871–72, the Osage relocated to the reservation purchased from the Cherokee Nation that became their permanent homeland.

The attribution to Gannaway is consistent with research connecting his Fort Smith studio to the 1865 portraits of visiting Native leaders through surviving cartes de visite bearing his imprint.

Note: “Chas E. Pease” may be Charles Elliott Pease (1838–1886), the Union staff officer who played a notable role in the negotiations culminating in Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Initially commissioned in the 44th New York Infantry, Pease subsequently served as an assistant adjutant general with the Army of the Potomac. On April 9, 1865, he carried Lee’s correspondence to Ulysses S. Grant and accompanied Grant to Appomattox Court House. If confirmed, this identification would give the portrait an additional dimension of importance, bringing together an officer associated with the Confederacy’s military collapse in Virginia and an Osage leader whose Union service preceded the difficult negotiations over his nation’s postwar future. The inscribed name makes the association plausible; however, independent documentation establishing the officer’s presence at Fort Smith or otherwise confirming his identity as the sitter has not yet been located. It is the cataloger’s opinion that the man in this portrait bears a favorable likeness to known views of Pease.