Connections in the Collections: Cincinnati Museum Center's Enno Meyer Collection

Cincinnati Museum Center's Enno Meyer Collection was donated to the Ethnology Department of the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History (now part of Cincinnati Museum Center) in the 1980s and comprises original photographic prints and glass negatives of American Indians, an assortment of American Indian artifacts, a handful of letters and some miscellaneous papers. Although small, this collection illuminates an interesting episode in a multifaceted Cincinnatian's young life and in Cincinnati's history. The collection and the story behind it are thoroughly described elsewhere, but a brief retelling is necessary here.¹

Enno Meyer (1874–1947) began his photography career when he was a boy by working in his father's photography studio in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. He also pursued a career in art, graduating from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1897. While still a student, he began to focus his artistic talent on his interest in animals. To this end, he became involved with the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, providing animal photographs for the zoo while he satisfied his own desire to study and draw a wide variety of live animals. Eventually, he combined his photographic skill, artistic talent, and interest in animals in his career as a painter specializing in portraits of well-bred dogs and horses and as a nationally known and respected dog breeder and show judge.²

Young Enno Meyer's unexpected connection with American Indians began in June 1895 when over a hundred Cree men, women, and children from Montana were abandoned by a failing Wild West show and ended up stranded in Bellevue, Kentucky, just south of the Ohio River near Cincinnati. After much debate about what to do with this destitute group, help came from an unexpected quarter. The Cincinnati Zoo stepped forward and invited the band of Cree to set up their camp on the zoo's wooded grounds. There they would have a secure living area, food, and an opportunity to earn their train fare back to their home near Havre, Montana, about fifteen hundred miles away. They performed their own Wild West shows at the zoo, similar to what they had been doing before their abandonment. The Cree visitors were a big hit with Cincinnati area residents, and the zoo had record attendance that summer. Twenty-one-year-old Enno Meyer, photographer, art student, and minor employee of the zoo, was no doubt delighted by the chance to photograph some of these visitors. Fortunately, the Cree earned enough money to travel back to Montana in July. The zoo hoped to repeat this lucrative event, so it arranged to bring a group of Sicangu Lakota Sioux from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota to Cincinnati for the next summer.

In June 1896, eighty-nine Sicangu Sioux men, women, and children arrived in Cincinnati by train, along with their horses, tipis, and belongings. They set up their village on the zoo's grounds and then proceeded to charm the people of Cincinnati. Like the Cree visitors of the year before, they performed in Wild West–type shows. They also welcomed zoo visitors into their village, and, in spite of a language barrier, they made friends with some of their Cincinnati guests. Some of the Sicangu had their hospitality returned and were invited to visit the homes of their new friends and were taken on sightseeing and shopping trips. One Cincinnatian who eagerly visited and made friends was Enno Meyer; he obviously won their friendship and trust, for his photographs show the Sicangu relaxed and pleased to pose for him. They valued his photographs so highly that after they had returned to their reservation, some wrote letters asking him to send them more of his photographs of their friends and relatives. In return, Meyer acquired a small collection of artifacts from the Sicangu.

Sicangu Sioux woman (on right) wearing blanket decorated with beaded strip. Enno Meyer photo taken at Cincinnati Zoo in 1896.

CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

Sicangu Sioux man (on left) wearing blanket decorated with beaded strip. Enno Meyer photo taken...