Rodolphe Petter Photos

Rodolphe Petter (1865-1947) was a General Conference Mennonite Church missionary working with Cheyenne people in Oklahoma 1891-1916 and Montana 1916-1947. He and his family members accumulated a large photo collection, including photos they took and others they acquired. The gallery pages on this site include all of the Petter photos, scanned from negatives where we have them, and otherwise digitized from prints.

The numbering system is arbitrary. As far as we know, it does not date back to the Petters. Someone (we don’t know who) made an initial selection of Petter negatives to print, probably in the early 1970s. Those prints were numbered at the time when the prints were made. But at least half of the negatives were not printed, and there were also many prints for which there weren’t negatives. In 2017 we decided to digitize all of the negatives and prints in the collection. We started with the ones that were already numbered, and then simply continued the number sequence with the additional negatives and prints.

#1-2010 are the 1970s prints
1021-1820 are negatives that did not have matching prints
1821-2697 are prints for which we did not have negatives
2698-2984 are prints from various scattered folders in the Petter papers
2985-3026 are glass lantern slides that were in the Petter papers
3027-3034 are from a “photographs” scrapbook in box 80 of the Petter papers
3035-3059 are from a Selma Sprunger scrapbook in the Petter papers
3060-3082 are additional prints which did not have negatives

If there are photos here that should not be displayed, please contact us.

This page has a list of all of the photo captions, for easier searching.

The photo gallery format shows 100 photos per page. Clicking on an individual photo brings up a larger version of that photo.

Searching: Use the Media Search box to search the captions of photos. The regular WordPress search box searches only page text, not photo captions.

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Young Cheyenne man with white man in a plain coat, on back it says “The big shot of the College” [from folder 108]

Large mixed-race crowd outdoors, on back it says “Try fine my picture these were taking at ‘Camp Mack’ during freshman party. These buildings are owned by college include lakes the lakes are right below where this picture was taking. These are only half of the students” [maybe in Indiana?] [from folder 108]

Studio portrait of young Cheyenne man, photographer: Christensen, Forsyth, Montana [from folder 108]

Young Cheyenne man with elderly white woman, covered bridge in the background, on back it says “This was taken Sunday morning before we started for Church. I told a girl that took these pictures of June and me to get part of the old fashion bridge you always talk about. [from folder 108]

Cheyenne woman with baby, and a white woman, Cheyenne child cut off at right, standing in snow, probably Montana [from folder 107]

Emma King, her son James to her right, her nephew to her left [markings on the back indicate this was used in some General Conference Mennonite publication] [from folder 107]

Cheyenne man and woman in front of house, Montana [from folder 108]

older Cheyenne couple with dog, in front of church or school building, Montana? [from folder 109]

two Cheyenne women, Anna Wolfname on the right; on back it says “Anna Wolfname (Vxzeta) who learned to use Mr. Petter’s Remington typewriter and typed all his translations, the Cheyenne grammer etc. and also assisted in folding papers while Ernest King did the printing. See pictures of Anna (Vxzeta) Ernest and Mr. Petter with the Grammater printing machine.” [from folder 110]

Rodolphe Petter holding Cheyenne child, with two Cheyenne women, on back it says “Enlarge the Indian woman in center, if this can be done to advantage. If not, return picture” [from folder 110]

Bertha Kinsinger Petter, looks like a passport photo or drive license photo, found in folder 8 attached to a letter dated 21 Dec 1929

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