WORKSHOPS

Thomas Leander “Major Lee” Moorhouse was born in Iowa in 1850. While he was still a child, his family crossed the Plains by wagon and settled near Walla Walla, Washington. As an adult, Moorhouse lived in and around Pendleton, Oregon, which was then on the vanguard of the developing frontier. After brief spells as a prospector and cowboy, he found employment as a shipping clerk, wheat rancher, merchant, and insurance salesman.

Moorhouse took up the photographic hobby around 1897. During a 25-year career he produced over 9000 glass plate negatives. Two-thirds of these images record turn-of-the-century life in rural northeastern Oregon and adjoining Washington State. They capture the reality of local ranch life, small town activities, and regional train and water traffic. Moorhouse also made over 600 photographs of the Pendleton Round-Up. These include all aspects of that famous rodeo, including action portraits of many of the noted animal and human (male and female) performers of the event’s first decade.

Best known among Lee Moorhouse’s photographs are his images of the Indian people of the southern Columbia River Plateau. Moorhouse served as agent for the Umatilla Indian Reservation during 1889-1891 and he was heralded locally as an authority on Indian life. He bought and sold Indian curiosities for several decades and was known for a collection of Indian objects that was an institution in northeastern Oregon. Moorhouse frequently used items from his curio collection to adorn his photo subjects. However, his non-studio views of life on the Pacific Northwest’s interior Indian reservations also provide an important record of the region’s rich equestrian history. The Indian people of the Columbia River Plateau are generally less well known and celebrated for their horses than are their neighbors on the Plains. The Moorhouse photographs reveal that the Plateau was a major center and exporter of Indian horse culture.

In addition to collecting artifacts, Moorhouse also collected the work of other regional photographers. Among these are numerous portraits of Yakama people taken by Thomas H. Rutter of North Yakima, Washington. When Rutter’s studio closed in 1905 Lee Moorhouse acquired many of his works. Following period practice, Moorhouse signed his name to these images and sold them as his own.

A Moorhouse image, the 1898 Cayuse Twins, enabled the photographer to begin reaping an early monetary return on his hobby. He produced and sold many other Indian photographs as both prints and postcards. He also sold numerous views of rodeo scenes. Several of his early photographs were used by the Pendleton Woolen Mills to promote their Indian-design robes and blankets and some of these images remain in use today.

Moorhouse took a number of photographs at the Umatilla Indian boarding school and at other reservation schools in the Plateau region. These record an important facet of reservation life that was frequently overlooked by other photographers. The views are particularly important because they were made at a time when the U.S. government was actively promoting the acculturation and assimilation of Indian peoples.

The showing here in The Museum of Anthropology is part of a national tour over a two and a half year period containing approximately fifty one black and white photographs reproduced from the original glass plates.. The tour was developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, an exhibition tour development company in Kansas City, Missouri, is part of a national tour over a two and a half year period containing approximately fifty one black and white photographs reproduced from the original glass plates. The tour was developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, an exhibition tour development company in Kansas City, Missouri.

Courtesy of Steven L. Grafe and the
National Cowboy & Western Heritage MuseumTour Development by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, Kansas City, Missouri