Leith North Dakota Sioux Indian Woman Butchering Cow 1912 Real Photo Postcard

This postcard, likely from the early 20th century, depicts Native American women dressing a beef near Shields, North Dakota, a location proximate to the Standing Rock Reservation. This activity highlights the significant adaptation of Indigenous foodways among Lakota and Dakota peoples following the near extinction of the American bison. Cattle became an essential protein source and an integral part of subsistence economies for reservation populations during a period of profound cultural and environmental change.

The women's traditional role in preparing food, demonstrated here through the processing of beef, reflects the enduring importance of communal labor and traditional skills amidst changing circumstances. This scene illustrates the intersection of traditional practices with the new economic realities of reservation life, where government rations or small-scale ranching replaced ancestral hunting practices. The distant railroad trestle in the background further underscores the rapid transformation of the Great Plains landscape and the advance of American settlement and industry into Indigenous territories during this era.