Prose Don Stoll

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Don Stoll

Don Stoll is a Pushcart-nominated writer living in Southern California. His fiction has appeared twice in A NEW ULSTER and recently in THE SANDY RIVER REVIEW (tinyurl.com/ha2t5eha), INLANDIA (tinyurl.com/322bbv2u), and A THIN SLICE OF ANXIETY (tinyurl.com/fy9wer4h). In 2008, Don and his wife founded their nonprofit (karimufoundation.org) which continues to bring new schools, clean water, and medical clinics to a cluster of remote Tanzanian villages.

Vanishing Race

by Don Stoll

January 18, 2022

Michael Caruso, Editor-in-Chief

Smithsonian magazine MRC 513, PO Box 37012 Washington, D.C. 20013

Dear Mr. Caruso:

My name is Alvin Dark Cloud. Years ago I won notoriety as an associate—a sort of

“leading follower”—of Dennis Banks and Russell Means in the American Indian Movement.

Lately, health problems have forced me to keep a low profile but I’ve remained active in

promoting the cause of my people.

I write at the urging of my daughter, Dr. Shaliyah Dark Cloud, Associate Professor of

History at The Ohio State University, who has called my attention to a story in Smithsonian’s

December 2021 issue. It concerned the discovery of twenty-one tintype photographs that

had languished in the possession of Ms. Susan Stuart, unknown to her until recently, which

represented part of the estate of her father, Curtis Drake Stuart (1931-1968).

The story described the mystery and controversy generated by the photographs after

Ms. Stuart, living in Tucson, had driven to Phoenix to show them to the Heard Museum.

She thought the pictures would interest an institution dedicated to the advancement of

American Indian art. She also hoped for monetary gain. As you know, the photographs

seemed to represent Native American men and women who had lived in the middle of the

nineteenth century, or earlier.

Yet their condition after half a century in the possession of Ms. Stuart, who conceded

that the grocery bag in which they were stored “with other odds and ends” had been handled

casually, implied a more recent origin. Ms. Benton, author of the story, reported the expert

consensus: the photographs had most likely been made during Curtis Stuart’s lifetime, in all

likelihood by Stuart himself. Ms. Benton reported that the experts could not explain how

this was possible.

I have information to shed light on the mystery. As suggested by the enclosed snapshot

of myself, taken in 1967, a year before Stuart’s death by heart attack, I am the subject of one

of the tintypes. You will have no trouble identifying which of the twenty-one faces matches

mine.

You’ll also see that, despite the facial resemblance to that proud and noble

“representative of a Vanishing Race”—to speak anachronistically and ironically—my face in

1967, at age twenty, evinces neither pride nor nobility. In the snapshot I am drunk. A

girlfriend took the picture in a bar in the dusty town of Sheridan, South Dakota, near Rapid

City. Curtis Stuart found me there in the bar in 1968. Where Sheridan used to be, you will

now see only a filling station with a 7-Eleven store attached. Say good riddance and you’ll get

no argument from me.

I am drunk in the picture the girl took, but I was probably even more drunk when

Stuart found me. He found me because he was looking for drunken Indians to photograph.

I was so drunk when he found me that I have to take his word regarding the

circumstances of our first meeting. But I have no reason to doubt him.

I became aware of Stuart as I regained consciousness on a bed in his suite in the Alex

Johnson Hotel, in Rapid City. I suspected what the smiling, well-dressed white man sitting at

the foot of the bed wanted yet I didn’t fear him. I had sold myself to white men before

because it was a fast way to make a dollar. At that time I had no interest in making a dollar

honestly.

Resting a hand on my belt buckle I said, “Bring me a glass of water and I’ll give you

this.”

He shook his head. He stood and handed me a card. Walking away he said, “Ice?”

The card said CURTIS STUART FINE PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY. I read the

phone number and the Denver address.

I drained the glass of water. I couldn’t speak for a minute because I felt like my head

would fall off from frostbite. When I had thawed out I said, “I can’t let you take pictures

because Denver’s too close and somebody I know might see.”

He said he didn’t take those kinds of pictures. He said did I want a hot shower, and a

shave too if I liked, and could I wait till I was done before he explained about his pictures?

I enjoyed the best shower I’d ever had but I didn’t shave.

When I came out he pointed at the bed and said, “Clean shirt and socks.”

He said he would wait for me in the other room where I might be interested in the hot

meal he had ordered. While I was eating my steak and potatoes he explained his pictures.

He said he had invented a new way to take old-fashioned pictures. He asked if I knew

what tintypes were. I said no so he showed me a book full of them. I had seen pictures like

that before, but I never knew what they were called. I asked what his new way was. I thought

I should be polite because I could see that his new method meant a lot to him.

I nodded while he explained. He watched to make sure I was paying attention. But

between only pretending to pay attention and my poor understanding of chemistry, what he

said went over my head. It’s a shame because what he had achieved was astounding. For my

money computer-generated imagery can’t compare to Curtis Stuart’s method. I wish I could

tell you how it worked. Maybe Ms. Benton can encourage Susan Stuart to search anything

that remains of her father’s estate for his description of the method. He must have written it

down.

Here’s what I know, based on what I recall of his words and my subsequent reading.

He used the wet collodion process invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851. But Stuart

had refined it by adding certain chemicals to the immersive solution of collodion, or

cellulose nitrate. His trick lay in the added chemicals, and naturally that’s the part I can tell

you nothing about. But during the stage of fixing the image, the last step before washing and

varnishing, for an interval of maybe fifteen seconds when the image is soaking in the

immersive solution it disappears before reappearing again. The shocking thing Stuart had

accomplished with his added chemicals was to make the photographic subject reappear at an

earlier stage of its development.

He showed me a picture of a wolf. He claimed to have made it by photographing a

stray mutt picked up off the street in Denver. That had been the first use of his method on a

living subject. Since then he had learned to adjust how far back in time to go by adjusting the

amount of added chemicals.

Not quite believing him I said, “So you could make a picture of me as a cave man, or—

He stopped me by taking my hands in his and smiling. It gave me a creepy feeling.

“I want to photograph you as one of your recent, noble ancestors.”

I said, “Noble?”

He put his hand on my chin. It was a soft grip. Even so I started to pull away. His grip

became firm but he spoke in a soothing voice like doctors use before doing something that

will hurt you. I let him tilt my head to the side and run his finger along my cheekbone.

“Haven’t shaved for a while,” he said. “Can’t hold the razor still? But I can shave you.

We’ll want you clean-shaven to show off that classic bone structure.”

He turned my head the other way.

“Magnificent.”

Nobody had ever called me magnificent before. I recall appreciating it a little. But I also

had other feelings about it.

“Remove your shirt,” he said.

I went along. I still had a creepy feeling but I knew he wasn’t interested in the kind of

funny business I’d worried about at first. He walked around me so he could look from every

angle. I followed him with my head until he had got almost behind me and I needed to turn

my body.

“Hold still,” he said.

It was a commanding voice instead of the soothing one.

When I could see him again he was nodding his head like he approved.

“Flat and hard,” he said, patting my stomach. “It won’t be like that in a few years if you

keep living like you do. You’re lucky that you’re young enough to get away with it for now.”

It was true but I didn’t like hearing it. You could say I decided to take it because I owed

him for the meal and the clean clothes and for getting me out of the bar at a time when I

was going so bad that every bender could have been my last. But the truth is that I didn’t

know how to stand up for myself. I felt like nothing so I didn’t know what I could have

stood up for.

He said, “Ready to be photographed?” and I said, “You want me to put the shirt back

on?”

“Won’t matter,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

He said we had to go down the street to where he had rented space to take and develop

his pictures. I took the shirt. I reckoned he wouldn’t bring me back to the hotel once he was

done.

I recall very little about the studio and everything about the dark room. It’s funny that it

happened this way, but in the dark room I was wide awake after almost falling asleep in the

studio even though you can see from the photograph that it was brightly lit. The alcohol was

still in my system and I think in the studio it started to catch up to me again. As for why I

would have been awake in the dark room, I’m coming to that.

Stuart must have had a hell of a time photographing me. Never mind that I’m standing

up proud and straight in the picture, I only look that way because he had somehow propped

me up.

I remember him saying “Done!” in a sharp voice that brought me to my senses. I asked

what came next. He said he needed to develop the picture but that didn’t concern me so I

should leave. I said would he mind if I followed him into the dark room. He gave me a

suspicious look and I said I was curious. I promised not to touch anything.

“I’ve photographed twenty other Indians and they all left right away,” he said.

I expected to get a no but instead he said, “Why not?”

Maybe he had decided I was harmless. Or maybe he was so pleased with his new

process that he wanted to show it off to someone, even if it was only a drunken Indian.

In the dark room he explained about the image disappearing in the immersive solution

for a few seconds. He said it was more than a chemical process. It also had a deeper

meaning.

“You belong to a vanishing race. Your choice of how to live makes you complicit in the

disappearance of your people. The drunk hastens to an early death, prefigured by the

vanishing of your image in this solution.”

His words didn’t seem as insulting as they should have because I was paying less

attention to what he was saying than to what he was doing. I wanted to see my picture. I

wished he would stop talking. But he had a hard time doing that.

“What will appear is an image of yourself as you would have looked if the Europeans

had never arrived. Your people were doomed because the Europeans brought the superior

civilization demanded by the imperative of historical progress. But during their all-too-

fleeting time your people were noble and beautiful and we can still savor their bygone

virtues.”

The appearance of the image finally shut him up. By this time I was as grateful for that

as I was for the picture itself. It’s a crude thing to say because you know how beautiful the

picture is.

Stuart lingered over it for a long time. Then he turned to look at me. His eyes opened

wide and he sucked in his breath and gave a kind of little jump.

He said, “Let’s go out into the light so I can—

He never made it. He sat down on the floor in the dark. He said something was

pressing against his chest. I didn’t know he was having a heart attack because in the movies

you grab your chest. He didn’t do that. But I could see he needed help so I went out into the

studio.

There was a table with a phone on it against the wall. I picked it up but then dropped it

when I saw myself in the mirror above the table. My image in the picture had been

transformed and so had I. I had worn Stuart’s clean shirt to be photographed. But in the

picture I was bare-chested and I had become bare-chested, too. In the mirror I could see

scars that hadn’t been there before. I realized that they were from the Sun Dance. I probed

the tiny mounds of scar tissue.

When I had first looked in the mirror I wanted to run. But the scars gave me strength. I

called for an ambulance and went to check on Stuart.

If he had been alive I would have stayed with him. I couldn’t help, though, and I didn’t

want to be there when the ambulance came. In the washroom next to the studio I scrubbed

the paint off my face. As I finished washing I heard the siren. I left.

In the street, if anybody had asked why I didn’t have a shirt on I would have pointed to

my scars and said that in feeling them I also felt my life had changed. But I passed only white

people. They wouldn’t have understood.

After this it was just a matter of time before I would connect with the American Indian

Movement. If you print my letter, Mr. Caruso, maybe some of Stuart’s other Indian models

will come forward with stories about how their lives were transformed.

Although Curtis Drake Stuart was a talented photographer, he never understood what

he may have thought would be the defining subject of his career. He thought my people

were a vanishing race. But we haven’t gone away. No, sir: we’re still here.

Sincerely,

Alvin Dark Cloud

END