Fake History Hunter

This picture has been going around the internet with the claim that it shows “One of the earliest known photographs of a Native American with a wolf” or “One of the few documented images capturing the coexistence of a Native American and a wolf”, usually followed by a nice story about how Native Americans and wolfs respected each others boundaries, lived in harmony and so on.
But the image has nothing to do with Native Americans or wolves.

To make things worse, an Ai generated version of the image is currently being spread on the internet, more about that later.

To research the photo I did an reverse image search online and soon found that it had been published in several books over the decades with a completely different description, like here in the 1961 book ‘Man, God, and magic’ by Ivar Lissner:

In this book the image is described as an Yukaghir woman, they are a Siberian ethnic group in the Russian Far East.
The book mentions that wolfs were considered their “eternal enemy” and that they used dogs both as companions, to help with hunting, to pull sleds but also as dinner and a source of leather and fur.
According to the author some Native Americans like the Iroquois, Ojibwa, Assiniboins and Nootka did this as well.
The author also writes; “The Eskimos in the southeast of Baffin Island used to breed two kinds of dog, the smaller for eating and the larger for pulling sledges, but the smaller breed has died out.”.
I can not confirm any of these claims.

The photo was earlier published in ‘The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, volume IX, part III, 1923‘, but with no mention of a wolf or even a dog.

Another mention in the 1928 book ‘Peoples of Asiatic Russia’ by Mr. Waldemar Jochelson, still no mention of America or wolves.
Mr. Jochelson was a Russian ethnographer and researcher of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North.

This is the original photo, I found it on the website of the American Museum of Natural History (link).
They describe it as “Yakaghir man with dogs at entrance to summer tent, Siberia, 1901” and they identify Mr. Jochelson as the photographer.

The photo shows that there are actually several dogs around the tent.
All good boys & girls, I’m sure.

This evidence thoroughly debunks the original claim, the photo has nothing to do with Native Americans & wolves besides of course that the first people to arrive in the Americas roughly came from that region of Northeastern Siberia.

Recently Ai decided to pollute the internet and this story even more by releasing a nonsense “creation” based on the original photo:

Although to those of us who are always suspiciously looking for signs of fakery it clearly looks like Ai, you still have to try and prove it.
So one of the main pieces of evidence showing us that it’s Ai is that there doesn’t seem to be a trace of it online ever anywhere in the history of the internet until a few months ago, which if real would make it a recent discovery… possible but…

Yes when you use reverse image search you sometimes get much older dates shown but that’s because the link itself sometimes goes to a website where the image is used as a thumbnail on the page of an article that’s older, like a reading suggestion.

Another also slightly suspicious find is this colour image that looks rather similar…

And although it’s not evidence (because Ai detection software can get things wrong) it is an interesting analysis:

Either way, Ai or not, comparing both images and seeing that they are extremely similar and that there’s no source for one but a lot of sources for the other, tells us everything we need to know.

Sources:

• ‘Man, God, and magic’ by Ivar Lissner
• The Reindeer People, article by Don Hitchcock
• ‘The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, volume IX, part III, 1923‘
• ‘Peoples of Asiatic Russia’ by Mr. Waldemar Jochelson
• Photo in the American Museum of Natural History archive.

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Disclaimer;
Picture(s) found online, used for (re-)educational and journalistic purposes only, it falls under ‘fair use’.
I do not own the copyrights to these images, I only share them here for educational purposes to try and make sure the real story behind it becomes known and people will stop spreading false information.
If the copyright owner objects to the sharing here, kindly contact me and I shall alter the article.
If you’re interested in using any of the images here get in touch with the copyright owners mentioned in the article.
Feel free to contact me with questions.