Archives West Finding Aid

This collection consists of 574 photographs, including photographic prints, photographic postcards, and one cyanotype, taken by Major Lee Moorhouse between approximately 1897 and 1919. Many of the photographs are of Native people of the Columbia and Umatilla River basins in Oregon, taken circa 1900-1912, and including members of the Cayuse, Nez Percé, Umatilla, and Walla Walla tribes. These photographs also include views of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and other unidentified Native settlements in Oregon. There are also some photographs of members of the Yakama tribe, and these images may have been taken by photographer Thomas H. Rutter, who photographed the Yakama until his death in 1906; Moorhouse collected many of Rutter's negatives and sold them as his own. Other photographs in this collection depict landscape views of the areas in which Lee Moorhouse lived and worked with Native people, such as the Columbia River basin, including Celilo Falls; the Umatilla River in Oregon; and the Little Bighorn River valley in Montana. These landscape views were all taken from approximately 1897-1905.

The collection also contains photographs of the Pendleton Round-Up, a rodeo in Pendleton, Oregon, that were taken by Moorhouse between approximately 1909 and 1919. Subjects include various rodeo events, such as bronc riding, bull riding, steer roping, and photographs of the Cowgirl's Bucking Contest, which was discontinued after 1929, as well as Round-Up parades and participants, including Black, Native, and women performers. Additionally, there are two photographs by Moorhouse of other Round-Ups in Crooked River, Oregon, and Toppenish, Washington.

The collection also includes safety film negatives not taken by Moorhouse.