The Chief and the Pope

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It was only recently that we saw this photograph for the first time and it left us bewildered. Wow! Was that really an Indian, or Native American, in full feather headdress, cranking up his motor? Was that even possible, timewise?

With a picture as good as this one it was to be expected that other people had tried to decipher it, and we soon learned it wasn’t perhaps quite as romantic as we had first thought. But its background story is a fascinating one nevertheless.

When you look a bit closer at the backdrop in the picture you may just spot that there’s a big tent behind our chief. Yes, that’s a circus tent, and perhaps the best known of them all in its day because it’s legendary showman William F. Cody’s tent. He was, of course, better known as Buffalo Bill and his show was called Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Chief Iron Tail

The man in the photograph is in fact Chief Iron Tail, who travelled with Cody throughout the country and beyond. The chief became an international personality after touring England, Scotland and Wales as well as coming over to the Champs-Élysées in Paris and the Colosseum in Rome in the late 19th and early 20th century. Buffalo Bill reputedly once said: "Chief Iron Tail is the finest man I know, bar none." The two continued to travel until 1913.

There’s no shortage of information on the big chief himself but the motor vehicle he is seen with here is not quite so well documented. It is believed to be a Pope-Toledo of around 1907 vintage, but maybe you can tell us even more about that?

Words by Jeroen Booij. Picture source unknown.

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