TRAVEL FACES: GROETHE's LAST STAND - a photographer extraordinaire

Bill Groethe considers his most important work the series of photos he took in 1948 of the Native American survivors of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, better known as Custer’s Last Stand.

These portraits were taken at an event at Custer State Park in South Dakota, a place I stayed at in September, 2014 just before the annual Buffalo Roundup.

(On June 25 and 26, 1876 the 7^th Cavalry led by Lt Col George A Custer was defeated in Montana at what Indian tribes called the Battle of the Greasy Grass. I understand the people in the photo are Little Warrior, Pemmican, Little Soldier, Dewey Beard, High Eagle, Iron Hawk, Comes Again, Nicholas Black Elk and John Sitting Bull, who although not a survivor, represented his adoptive father, Sitting Bull.)

Later I visit the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and while talking to archivist Tawa Ducheneaux at the Woksape Tipi Library at the Oglala Lakota College, my eye is drawn to the prints of these photos on the wall. I try to do the maths and work out what Groethe later tells me – these men were between 85 and 90 years old when he took their pictures.

Ducheneaux tells me Groethe is not only alive (he’s 91) but still working as hard as ever. I call him at his shop when I get to Rapid City and he says to come quickly as he and his wife are getting ready to do another trip to the battle site in Montana, where a frieze is being made of his photos, sandblasted into granite – part of a memorial to the Oglala Sioux area tribes, who fought there.

“They’ve had a memorial from day one almost of the troops; the battlefield used to be called Custer Battlefield but now it’s Little Big Horn Battlefield (national monument).  It took many years to get it changed,” Groethe tells me.

As for the background to the famous portraits: “I took the photos all in the one day. The youngest was 13 at the battle, 85 when I took him.”

So how did it come about? Well, as he says, they all knew this pesky, teenage photographer, who’d been hanging round taking photos of them for months.

“I grew up here,” he explains. “I used to follow them around. They called me ‘the kid’. I was always going to their dances and stuff and photographing them.

“They were disappearing fast. In ‘51, the 75th anniversary, there were only three of them left.”

I ask Groethe if he asked his subjects about their experiences at this famous almost-end to the Indian wars.

“I never talked to them…the battle’s over. They were trying to live and assimilate into the community, make a little money when they dressed up for a powwow.

“I concentrate on my job. I want to get the images right and (it) takes a little more time. Talk to and learn from the people so I didn’t have to take a lot of pictures because I couldn’t afford to buy so much film.”                                 

One of his subjects, Dewey Beard, also survived Wounded Knee, 14 years later.

 “He lost his wife and daughter and he and his brother escaped. He was the last to die. He has a double survival record. He died November 2, 1955 and that happens to be South Dakota Day.

 “It’s the most important work I’ve done,” he says explaining he started as an apprentice with  Bert Bell,  when he was 12.

 What have your learnt from the Lakota and other Oglala Sioux, I ask?

 "I thought I had compassion but they’ve got more than the average white man to put up with us, I tell you.  When you’re all in the same boat in the Depression you’re all poor. I had no problems. Today we have more problems all the time because disparity is increasing all the time.

 “I learnt a lot, these people are very gentle really, considering they’re the warrior bunch. After the war was over and they were made to settle down and so many of them are all over that. They don’t want to talk about that. I never ask them either.”

 One major regret he has is that a writer, David Humphreys Miller, who asked to use his colour slides of the Battle of the Little Big Horn survivors, never returned them.

 “I shot 5 x 7 black and white of each one and then I shot 5 x 7 transparencies in colour the same time, so the images are almost exactly the same but I was young, I trusted this man and he was going to write a story for National Geographic and I foolishly gave him the transparencies and he never returned them.

 “He’s gone, his wife’s gone, I know the family has them someplace because 20 years ago he tried to sell those to the battlefield and of course they recognised immediately that they were the same poses as mine. They refused him and they called me right away and I still haven’t been able to run him down and now he’s gone.”

 One of his projects is to shoot all the phases of what is known as the Lakota Moon, so laborious a task that he’s so far only taken eight shots in 25 years.  The moons represent the different seasons, based on information from the famous book, Black Elk Speaks.

 “The scarlet moon is September and that’s when the wild plums are scarlet in the reservation. The moon of ripe cherries, that’s when the wild cherries are a deep plum colour.

 “I’ve still got four to get. You only get a minute or two to shoot. The foreground and moon have to be at the same density. You can teach chemistry and how to fix a machine, but a natural view is God-given.

 “I sit there and wait and then I shoot. Otherwise I pack up and go home.  I’ve set up and packed up 100 times.”

 "You’ve had a very interesting life,” I say in awe of this modest and fascinating photographer, who never uses a digital camera for his own work, as he shows me his room full of cameras and lenses. (He also once owned production labs in seven states – all since closed.)

 “Well, it’ not past,” he answers. “I work every day. I work four days in the lab and I take Friday to get ready to do a shoot. I went to (Mount) Rushmore every Saturday all summer.

 "I’m a commercial photographer. I’ve done portraits. I no longer do that… I do a lot of the tough jobs, photographing murals, things that nobody else wants to spend the time to do.”

 *        A longer version of this interview/story is available at request.

Photos: Diana Plater. Apologies to Bill Groethe for the quality!