Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill
The series' most widely distributed photograph
Artist	William Notman & Son
Year	1885
Medium	Photography (silver salts on glass, gelatin dry plate process)
Location	Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill is a set of studio photographs of the Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull and the entertainer Buffalo Bill, taken in Montreal in 1885. The session was held at the studio of William Notman during a North American tour of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, the Wild West show which enrolled Sitting Bull for a single season. The eight joint portraits of Sitting Bull and "Buffalo Bill" Cody were part of a commission for 47 photographs, which were printed and sold as cabinet cards during the tour.

Nine years prior to the session, Sitting Bull and Cody both famously participated in the Great Sioux War of 1876 on opposite sides. For this reason, the most widely distributed of Notman's dual portraits was frequently captioned "Enemies in '76, Friends in '85". It shows Cody pointing to an imagined horizon as he and Sitting Bull jointly hold a Winchester rifle. They are dressed in their archetypal show clothes and stand in front of a painted backdrop of a forest, as in the other dual portraits. Although interpretations of the pose vary, this image is considered emblematic of American history and culture.

Notman's photographs helped establish the trope of the "Cowboys and Indians", a core element of the Western genre. They are also among the last taken of Sitting Bull before his death at the hands of Indian tribal police in 1890. The depiction of his relationship with Cody in Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill has been analyzed and criticized by scholars as a representation of settler colonialism in the United States.