Mammoth paint pots before 1891

Frank Jay Haynes created this photograph of the Mammoth Paint Pots in Yellowstone National Park, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Haynes was the official photographer for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and his images were instrumental in promoting tourism to the park. These landscapes were not simply pristine wilderness but were also the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples, often overlooked in romanticized depictions of the American West. The commodification of nature, like this, occurred at the expense of Indigenous communities, who were displaced and marginalized as the park and tourism industry expanded. Consider how Haynes' photographs contributed to a narrative of untouched wilderness, obscuring the complex history and ongoing presence of Native people. These images, while beautiful, reflect a complicated history of dispossession and cultural erasure.