[The Lone Ranger] Thanks, Tonto.

- Growing up, my impression of Native American cultures was largely shaped by Westerns on TV.

I thought that by the late 1800s, most Native people had been pretty much wiped out, and that those who remained had been relegated to reservations.

It's such a strong misconception that decades later, when I first saw this photograph, I was intrigued.

Taken in Washington, D.C., in 1916, an early caption read, "Frances Densmore using wax cylinder phonograph to record Mountain Chief, a Blackfoot Indian."

But who was Mountain Chief and why would he agree to be photographed?

What is this woman doing?

And what has brought them together?

The search for answers could transform how we see this photograph, and reveal the dynamic present and future of Native communities that many people assume belong to the past.

[gentle music] Across the Great Plains, people's lives are shaped by the conquest of the West, when white settlers moved out here in the 1800s, driven by a belief that they were destined to take over the continent, regardless of their impact on Native people and their ways of life.

In Browning, Montana, headquarters of the Blackfeet Nation, Jesse DesRosier is an educator, with ties back to Mountain Chief's band.

- It was the end of the Buffalo era for our people.

And that was an era that sustained our people for thousands and thousands of years.

And it changed within the blink of an eye.

We were completely taken aback.

We were completely reliant on the United States government for food, which led to several starvation winters -- sickness, smallpox epidemics, measles.

It was the time of reservation life, boarding schools.

It was the motto of Carlisle Boarding School: "Kill the Indian, save the man."

"Let's take away everything that makes this person human, and give him an identity that we see fit."

- [Vincent Brown] As government policies threatened the survival of Native peoples, some white Americans developed a fascination with Native cultures.

Philip Deloria, who is of Dakota descent, teaches American Indian history at Harvard University.

- On top of all that, there's the sense that if Indian people are disappearing and dying out -- "Dang, we better grab as much of their culture and memorialize it and put it in our museums and lock it up as knowledge."

- [Vincent Brown] Much of this work involved physical objects, but one group of researchers focused on less tangible things.

- [Philip Deloria] There's this whole field of people who become very, very interested in Native musics.

And they've got their recorders and they're trying to notate things, and it's a part of that larger world of collecting of Indian things.

- [Vincent Brown] Among these people was Frances Densmore.

Growing up in Minnesota in the late 1800s, Densmore translated a love of Dakota culture into a career as an ethnomusicologist.

- We see Densmore as a woman who fought very hard to do the work that she did.

She saw herself as a scientist studying Indian music.

- [Vincent Brown] This meant learning to use a phonograph -- an early recording device that captured sound on wax cylinders.

Could you talk a bit more about the context in which she was doing her work, especially in regards to attitudes toward Indigenous American culture?

- Well, she felt that the work she was doing was, recording something that was going to disappear forever.

When she did her fieldwork, she would try to find the oldest members of the tribe.

She would try to talk to the tribal leaders.

- [Vincent Brown] By the time this photograph was taken in 1916, Densmore had been collecting Native music for a decade.

But she still needed to promote her work -- and for that, photographs were invaluable.

Fortunately for her, in February 1916, Mountain Chief was visiting D.C. As a leader of the Blackfeet people he was one among many Native dignitaries who traveled to the nation's capital to negotiate with the federal government.

As far as we can tell, Densmore and Mountain Chief had never met, but he came to her office at the Smithsonian Institution and the photograph was taken.

But the photo contains a clue that this isn't the whole story -- something Densmore herself pointed out in a scrapbook she compiled.

- [Both] "Error - in caption," she says.

- [Michelle laughing] - Yeah, he's not recording, he's interpreting the words of a song.

Basically, if you know a little bit about phonographs, the way the horn is shaped, it's designed to allow sound to come out.

If she was recording, it would be a much narrower horn, so that it would funnel that sound right into the recording.

- [Philip Deloria] And suddenly the whole meaning of the photo changes.

So now Mountain Chief is listening to a playback, presumably of his own music, but perhaps of something else, right?

And suddenly he becomes a different kind of active agent: not the person who's giving up his song, right, to the sort of recorder or collector, but the person who's sort of doing a sound check.

- Then it seems like Frances Densmore is coming to him, like he's granting her an audience.

- Yeah, that's exactly right.

He's an autonomous person in this with his own agenda.

- [Vincent Brown] So, what was Mountain Chief's agenda?

Why would he sit for this photo, and what was he hoping to achieve?

Piecing that story together begins with Mountain Chief's obituary, published in the "New York Times."

Here, it sketches the details of his life: How he was born in 1848...

Led his first war party at age 18... Was engaged in battles through his mid-30s.

He then negotiated treaties with the U.S. government, while being considered a mighty warrior his entire life.

We also know that he met four U.S. presidents, and was part of a broad network of American Indian leaders fighting for their people's survival.

- They become part of a really interesting resistant generation of Native folks in the early 20th century, which is big and diverse and takes all these different forms.

So he's part of this really interesting group.

- [Vincent Brown] In the face of government attempts to eradicate Native cultures, Mountain Chief clearly understood the power of photography to shape public perceptions.

Why would he sit for a photo like this?

- He's one of this whole group of Native people who come to understand the power of representation -- "Here I am, look at me.

I'm dressed in my finest, and I'm part and parcel of your world."

There's nothing naive about these folks.

They find ways to tell their story and to be represented, and then to use that to come into the white American world and consciousness.

- [Vincent Brown] This desire for visibility could be one reason why Mountain Chief agreed to sit for this photo.

It would make sense -- He was photographed at least 20 other times.

[camera clicks] But maybe there's something else going on, which could explain why Mountain Chief met with Densmore.

- A lot of folks who engage with these anthropologists and ethnographers are pretty explicit about saying, "You're gonna be a repository," you know, "for me."

And I think the Native people who were doing these recordings and giving up these objects for "safekeeping" a lot of times, are now reasonably seen as visionary, right?

In the sense that, like, "We're gonna use these white institutions, and 80 years, 90 years, 100 years down the road, we're gonna come back for our stuff.

And our stuff is gonna be waiting for us."

- [Vincent Brown] One place these materials are stored is the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in northern Virginia.

- [Matthew Barton] Cylinders are in here.

- These vaults contain over 8,000 wax cylinder recordings dating back to the late 19th century.

They include Frances Densmore's collection, but also the work of other ethnologists, one of whom worked closely with the Blackfeet people in the 1890s, and made many recordings.

[static] Here, from 1898, is the voice of Mountain Chief, speaking in the Blackfoot language.

[Mountain Chief singing in Blackfoot language] - That's Mountain Chief?

- That is Mountain Chief.

- Wow.

He sounds so forceful.

- Yeah, he was probably instructed to sing forcefully because that's the best way to capture the voice through the horn onto the cylinder.

[Mountain Chief recording continues] [calm music] - Mountain Chief died in 1942, aged 94, and was buried here in Browning, Montana.

He had fought a long, hard battle, for the rights of his people and to keep their culture and traditions alive.

Here at Cuts Wood School, there's evidence he succeeded.

Founded in 1992, the school has played an important role in helping to revitalize Blackfoot culture.

The school teaches children in the Blackfoot language -- and Jesse DesRosier has gone from being a student to a teacher.

- The number one thing that this school provides is it allows children to connect back into their identity.

You know?

And with that comes confidence, comes an understanding, and it gives them so much purpose.

- So do you consider your work and the work of the school as a continuation of Mountain Chief's legacy?

- I, I do.

You know, um...

I think just being Blackfoot today, we're continuing that legacy.

His hope was just that his people can survive through these times.

So the fact that we got a heartbeat, we're able to make them proud.

But the step further is understanding why, understanding the who -- Who are we?

Why are we?

That's the connection.

So I really have a great respect for our leaders at that time.

The fact that we're here today, I know, is because of their strength, their perseverance that got us through it, their resilience.

The fact that we're still here today gives them credit.

He helped preserve it.

He helped maintain it.

And I don't like the word preserve, because we're not here to preserve anything -- we're here to live it.

This is a living energy.

This is a living language, a living culture.

It's gonna adapt, it's gonna change through time, but it remains true to itself.

- [Vincent Brown] Coming back to the photograph, I now see what's going on very differently, with Frances Densmore documenting Native traditions in the belief that Native people were vanishing, while Mountain Chief is doing all he can to resist attempts to make his people disappear.

It's a powerful reminder of the dynamism of Native peoples and the recent revitalization of Native cultures, something that is only clear when we see "The Bigger Picture."

[gentle music]