Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

So when I see this woman’s image, see the title
“Digger Belle,” I am stunned by what she has
survived, and I wince at her probable fate. Was she
paid to sit for the photograph, or simply forced? Paid
in money, or food? Released afterwards, or returned
to her owner? And if released, what home, what
homeland, what community, did she have to return
to?
Her fierceness—her face a mask of hardness and
suspicion—burns through the photographer’s lens
and artist’s hands.
The term “belle,” with its connotations of
civilization and domesticated females with the sole
purpose of serving as objects for male enjoyment,
seems to have been a widespread joke in California—
sarcasm, irony, mean-spirited derision of Indian
women.
Here is another example, titled “The Belles of San
Luis Rey”—three elderly Indigenous women seated
in the ruins of Mission San Luis Rey.