Photographs
Sanora, born April 21, 1907, lived in Red Rock, Oklahoma when it was still Indian Territory. She liked to tell how the Otoe chief wanted to adopt her. Instead, when her father refused, the chief gave her a pinto pony and the name "Little Cheyenne Who Rides Like the Wind". All her life she maintained a great affinity with Native Americans and their culture.
Sanora, with her father Walter and mother Jennie moved to Waynoka, Oklahoma, where her sister Dorothy was born. Walter was a professional gambler and this necessitated the family's frequent moves from one small town to another. After several years in Waynoka, they returned to Red Rock.
Sanora and her sister, Dorothy, as pictured on a postcard addressed to their grandfather, Alonzo Babb in Two Buttes, Colorado, August 1911. It reads in part, "Dear Dad, Sanora has washed and hung this washing by herself. So I had her picture taken while she was working." (Sanora would have been four years old.)
Walter Babb and his daughter Sanora taken when the family lived in Waynoka, Oklahoma.
A more formal photo of Sanora and her sister taken before they moved to Baca County in Colorado to live in a one-room dugout. (The story of their life there is recounted in her memoir, An Owl on Every Post.)
Jumping ahead several decades in this photographic chronology of Sanora's life. Here she is with her husband, James Wong Howe, in their Hollywood Hills home. Jimmie was an innovative and Oscar winning cinematographer.
More photos will be added over time.