Half-length albumen CDV studio portrait of an unidentified Kickapoo elder. [Mexico City, Mexico]: [Cruces y Campa]. Modern pencil identification to verso.

A sensitively lit and posed portrait of an older Kickapoo elder who was probably part of a delegation of south Texas Kickapoo who visited Mexican Emperor Maximilian I during the Civil War. The delegation went to seek Maximilian's protection against enemy tribes and Texas colonists. When Texas Confederates attempted to impede their progress across the state, the Kickapoo routed the Texans at the Battle of Dove Creek.

Though unidentified, the subject is clearly an important elder of the tribe. He is seated pensively with pursed lips and a concentrated expression. Wearing a calico shirt, he wears several strands of beaded necklaces and long earrings. 

An Algonquian-speaking Indigenous tribe, the Kickapoo originated in the Great Lakes region. After a series of military defeats and treaties ceding their original lands, the tribes moved west and south. There are tribes located in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. They are one of only two tribes that never signed a peace treaty with the United States. 

A modern pencil inscription attributes the portrait to Cruces y Campa, a photography studio based in Mexico City founded in 1862 by Antíoco Cruces and Luis Campa, an engraving professor at the Academia de San Carlos. They captured political figures, the court of Maximilian, as well as the Indigenous and common people of Mexico. Their exhibition "Tipos populares mexicanos" series won a bronze medal at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition. 

They are also known to have taken portraits of a Kickapoo delegation from south Texas that traveled to Mexico City to meet Maximilian I of Mexico. 

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