“Group of Indians” taken by Edward Muybridge in 1868 at Fort Tongass, near Ketchikan. This was the first stop on Muybridge’s journey in Southeast Alaska.

Two weeks after the United States made its first payment to Russia for Alaska, the Tlingit people were photographed for the first time by one of the most world’s most famous photographers: Eadweard Muybridge.

If Muybridge hadn’t taken the photographs, “these early documents probably would have been lost or destroyed,”…