L.A. Huffman
n.d.
The Honyocker

Collotype, hand-tinted
Cowan's Auctions, Inc
2010, American History Absentee and Live Auction, January 21, Lot: 293
 
Later hand-tinted print from Huffman's original glass plate negative. In weathered wood frame. "Honyocker" was the derogatory term given to farmers/squatters by the ranchers who had been on the Plains for decades. They "turned the prairie upside down" with their plows and fenced off their farms with barbed wire, restricting grazing for the vast cattle herds that had replaced the bison on this sea of grass.
 
L.A. Huffman first came West to Fort Keogh, MT in 1879 as post photographer (unpaid). He later opened a studio in Miles City, made accessible by the railroad, and set out documenting a West that was rapidly changing. He photographed Indians, ranchers, farmers, bison herds, cattle, railroads, and anything else that caught his eye. He has been described as having the "eye of an artist and the perspective of an historian" (www.lahuffman.com), and he ended up in the right place at the right time.
 
LL/82782