Writers and Injuns

Digital ID: cph 3c08080
Source: b&w film copy neg.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-108080 (b&w film copy neg.)
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
CREATED/PUBLISHED: [1923 May 31]



The profile of Chief Two Gun White Calf appears on the reverse of the buffalo nickel.

Rinehart, Mary Roberts:

1876—1958, American novelist, b. Pittsburgh. A graduate nurse, she married Dr. Stanley M. Rinehart in 1896. The first of her many mystery stories, The Circular Staircase (1908), established her as a leading writer of the genre; Rinehart and Avery Hopwood successfully dramatized the novel as The Bat (1920). Her other mystery novels include The Man in Lower Ten (1909), The Case of Jennie Brice (1914), The Red Lamp (1925), The Door (1930), The Yellow Room (1945), and The Swimming Pool (1952). Stories about "Tish," a self-reliant spinster, first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and were collected into The Best of Tish (1955).

Chief Two Guns White Calf:

1872-1934. Also known as John Two Guns and John Whitecalf Two Guns, this Blackfood chief provided one of the most readily recognizable images of a Native American in the world after an impression of his portrait appeared on a common coin, the Indian head nickel.

Two Guns White Calf was born near Fort Benton, Montana, son of White Calf, who was known as the last chief of the Pikuni Blackfood. His visage was used along with those of John Big Tree (Seneca) and IRON TAIL (Sioux) in James Earl Fraser's composite design for the nickel.

After the coin's release around the turn of the century, Two Guns White Calf became a fixture at Glacier National Park, where he posed with tourists. He also acted as a publicity spokesman for the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose public relations staff came up with the name "Two Guns White Calf".

He died of pneumonia at the age of sixty three and was buried in a Catholic cemetry at Browning, Montana

Chief Mad Plume: