Chief Two Gun White Calf and his four-year-old granddaughter meet with Haskell Institute Superintendent Hervey B. Peairs before a crowd of observers at the 1926 dedication of the new football stadium at Haskell. Chief Two Gun White Calf is believed to have been the model who posed for James Earle Fraser’s sculpture used on the “buffalo nickel”.

In 1926 Kansas photographer Louis Palenske was living and working in Burlington, Kansas when it was announced that Native Americans from across the country would be attending a four-day dedication of a new football stadium at Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. The event was advertised under the name, All Indian Trails Lead to Lawrence. While Lawrence was some 85 miles north of Burlington, Palenske packed his newly acquired Korona Panoramic View Camera along with numerous film loaders containing 7×17-inch sheets of film and headed to Lawrence.

Six dignitaries from New Mexico Indian tribes pose for Louis Palenske’s camera at the “All Indian Trails Lead to Lawrence” dedication of the new football stadium at Haskell Institute in Lawrence Kansas on October 27-30, 1926.

Haskell Institute, founded as the Indian Training School in 1884, constructed a football stadium at the school 1926, which by that time offered post-high school classes. The stadium was built with donations from Native American tribes from across the country. So, when the stadium was to be dedicated in the final days of October 1926, Haskell Institute invited all of the Native American tribal members across the nation to attend.  While the organizers of the event expected a few hundred attendees, everyone was surprised when several thousand Native Americans arrived to celebrate the new stadium.

Nineteen Blackfeet Chiefs and their families from Montana attended the October 1926 dedication of the new football stadium at Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. Louis Palenske produced this print from a 7×17-inch negative.

In addition to the panoramic views that Louis Palenske created with his Korona camera, he also produced a series of almost square views which he printed on a single 17-inch sheet of paper.

Louis Palenske created these three photographic views of Indian Chiefs camped on the grounds of Haskell Institute in October of 1926. Notice in the photo on the far left that buffalo meat is being dried.