Collection: Patchogue-Medford Library Digital PML Collection https://digitalpml.pmlib.org/search.php?search=item&item=352

Date: 1909

Type of Material: Photograph

Source: Scanned from the original photograph which is 10 inches in height and 8 inches in width.

Language: English

Coverage/Location: Unknown

Creator: Red Thunder Cloud [Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West]

Copyright: No Known Copyright Restriction

Description:

The caption reads:
“This is an excellent photo of the full blood type of the Shinnecock Indian. The man is Charles Somer Bunn, who was at the time of this photo, taken in 1909, the best known guide on Long Island. Sportsmen from all over the east hired the services of Charles Bunn and followed him to the haunts of the Black Duck on the marshes situated on the edges of Shinnecock Bay.
While conducting research in 1937, I stayed in the home of Charles Bunn, on the Shinnecock reservation. While he seemed to have an avid interest in the older traditions of his people, like many other Shinnecock men of his generation, he married a Negro. Of his four children, one daughter Helen, married a Negro, one daughter, Osceloa married an Apache, and two of his children died without having married. He has two living grandchildren who are the son and daughter of his oldest daughter, Osceloa who married Charles Martinez an Apache. The two grandchildren have married members of the white race and do not live on the reservation.
Charles Bunn’s mother, Mary Emma Bunn, like her son, exhibited all of the physical and personality traits of the full blood Indian. Indian types, such as Charles Bunn, are exceedingly rare among the Shinnecocks of today. With his moustache very easily pass for a Kwakiutl Indian of British Columbia.”