The faces of the Central Coast’s Native American tribes peer out from black and white photos.

Some are posed portraits; others are candid shots. Tribal chiefs stand rigid in traditional regalia and young men sit still in military uniforms, perhaps wondering if they’ll make it home from one of history’s great wars.

Together, the photos form an exhibit called “Native Americans of the Central Coast” now on display at the Santa Maria Public Library as part of Native American Heritage month. More than 100 images of Native Americans from tribes based in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties, including branches of the Chumash linguistic family, form the collection.

“When you look at the pictures, you see that the Indian families’ histories are intertwined with the history of the United States,” said anthropologist John R. Johnson, who helped collect and identify the photographs. “You see families who served in the military and worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps.”

The exhibit was the product of a collaboration in the late 1990s between Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and the Advisory Board of the Black Gold Cooperative Library System.

Johnson, who for more than three decades has been tracking Native American genealogy through records from California’s historic Spanish missions, helped track down photos for the exhibit and painstakingly researched the dates of the photos and names of their subjects.

The earliest photo in the collection shows a group of six musicians in 1873 posing for a picture at the San Buenaventura Mission. The final photos in the exhibit, which is organized by date, stretch past the mid-20th century.

Johnson and the Black Gold Cooperative collected the photos from local Native American families, from Central Coast museums and from as far away as France.

“There are studio portraits, vacation snapshots and others taken by anthropologists,” Johnson said. “I think there is no other place you can go today and see as many photographs of families of our local tribes all brought together in one place.”

The Santa Maria Public Library is at 421 S. McClelland St. For more information, call 925-0994

More information

Native Americans of the Central Coast

• What: A photo exhibit depicting local Native Americans from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century
• Where: Santa Maria Public Library, 421 S. McClelland St.
• When: During library hours through the end of November

Information: 925-0994