Dark Cloud (actor)

Dark Cloud
Dark Cloud, before 1918
Born	Elijah Tahamont 20 September 1855 Odanak, Quebec, Canada
Died	September 17, 1918(1918-09-17) (aged 62) Los Angeles, California
Resting place	Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Occupation	Actor, model
Years active	1910-1918
Spouse(s)	Margaret Camp (actress, Dove Eye)

Dark Cloud (1855—1918) was an First Nations silent film actor, born Elijah Tahamont. He was a chief of the Abenaki, a First Nations band government belonging to the Algonquin people of northeastern North America.

Tahamont's father, also named Elijah Tahamont, had studied at Moor's Charity School and Dartmouth College, where Native American education had been funded by a gift of £12,000 in 1767 from a Native American, Presbyterian Rev. Samson Occom. Moor's School had been established for "civilizing the wild, wandering Tribes of Indians in North America, and ... for promoting religion, virtue, and literature among people of all denominations."

Tahamont became known first as a popular lecturer, and as a model for artist Frederic Remington, the most successful Western illustrator in the “Golden Age” of illustration at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Remington wrote and illustrated a novel, John Ermine of Yellowstone.

Dark Cloud began working for American Mutoscope and Biograph in New York City in 1910, making his first screen appearances in the era of "eastern Westerns" under the direction of D. W. Griffith and with cinematography by Billy Bitzer. Unlike the later Westerns, featuring dramatic conflicts and indolent Natives, these early films showed Native Americans with respect: in serene, nearly still-life profile against a wide landscape, as though in calm reflection on their lives before the treaties were broken.The Song of the Wildwood Flute, with Mary Pickford and Mack Sennett, was filmed near Fishkill, New York. Dark Cloud's first movie, The Broken Doll, was made in 1910 in Coytesville, near Fort Lee, New Jersey, where Griffith also filmed Call of the Wild.