Crow Native American Traditional Dress Rodeo Gallup New Mexico 1969 #4 Acrylic Print

40 Blackfeet and Crow were hired for Raoul Walsh's "The Big Trail" (1930) to attack the wagon encircled settlers in Moise, Montana and ride along side a buffalo stampede which stalled the wagon train.

The largest buffalo herd (800) in the country was located in Moise, with Fox hiring them for the staged stampede, a spectacular action sequence in the picture.

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...