Iron Tail was one of the most famous Native American celebrities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a popular subject for professional photographers who circulated his image across the continents.

"[3] Iron Tail was an international personality and appeared as the lead with Buffalo Bill at the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France, and the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.

[5] On one of his visits to The Wigwam of Major Israel McCreight, Buffalo Bill asked Iron Tail to illustrate in pantomime how he played and won a game of poker with U.S. Army officials during a Treaty Council in the old days.

In 1898, Käsebier watched Buffalo Bill's Wild West troupe parade past her Fifth Avenue studio in New York City, toward Madison Square Garden.

Her memories of affection and respect for the Lakota people inspired her to send a letter to Buffalo Bill requesting permission to photograph Sioux traveling with the show in her studio.

Käsebier's project was purely artistic and her images were not made for commercial purposes and never used in Buffalo Bill's Wild West program booklets or promotional posters.

Käsebier admired their efforts, but desired to, in her own words, photograph a "real raw Indian, the kind I used to see when I was a child', referring to her early years in Colorado and on the Great Plains.

The resulting photograph was exactly what Käsebier had envisioned: a relaxed, intimate, quiet, and beautiful portrait of the man, devoid of decoration and finery, presenting himself to her and the camera without barriers.

On June 22, 1908, Iron Tail presided over a ceremony at the tent of Buffalo Bill adopting McCreight as an honorary Chief of the Oglala Lakota.

On June 22, 1908, Iron Tail and "Buffalo Bill" Cody visited Du Bois, Pennsylvania with the Wild West Congress of Rough Riders.

"When Chief Iron Tail was finished with greeting the long line of judges, bankers, lawyers, business men and neighbors who filed past in a receiving line just as the President is obliged to receive and shake the hands of multitude of strangers who call on New Years, the chief grasped hold of the fine buffalo robe which had been thrown over a porch bench for him to rest on drawing it around his shoulders, walked out on the lawn and lay down to gaze into the clouds and over the hundred mile sweep of the hills and valleys forming the Eastern Continental Divide.

After Chief Iron Tail had shaken hands with the assembled guests he gathered the big buffalo hide about his shoulders, waived aside the crowd and walked away.

"[12] In May 1916, Chief Iron Tail, at the age of 74, became ill with pneumonia while performing with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was placed in St. Luke's Hospital.

Buffalo Bill was obliged to go on with his show next day to Baltimore, Maryland, and Iron Tail was left alone in a strange city with doctors and nurses who could not communicate with him.

McCreight learned about the Chief's admission to the hospital in the morning Philadelphia paper, and immediately sent a telegram to Buffalo Bill to send Iron Tail by next train to Du Bois, Pennsylvania, for care at The Wigwam.

[14] Iron Tail's body was transferred to a hospital in Rushville, Nebraska, then to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where he was buried at Holy Rosary Mission Cemetery on June 3, 1916.