Henry Red Eagle

Henry Perley (1885–November 15, 1972), widely known by his pseudonym Chief Henry Red Eagle, was an Algonquin actor, entertainer, wilderness guide, and author. Born the oldest of four siblings, his family roots traced to the Maliseet Reservation in Tobique, New Brunswick, Canada, where his parents, Gabriel and Philomen Tomah Perley, were known as Canadian Malecites who migrated to the United States in the 1870s due to a lack of game. Perley grew up in Greenville, Maine, where he attended Greenville High School, earning money during those years by crafting snowshoes and working in lumber yards. He became the youngest licensed guide in the state of Maine at age 14, and went on to graduate as valedictorian and class president with the class of 1902, the first full-blooded Indian to graduate from Greenville High School.

Following graduation, Perley worked at the L.A. Harris Drugstore for several years before joining traveling shows across the United States and Great Britain during the 1910s. His first appearance in such shows came with the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Show, where he performed in full tribal regalia. He subsequently traveled with an Indian troupe to Great Britain, performing there in 1911 and 1912. Upon returning to the United States, he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and the Barnum and Bailey Circus, frequently portraying Indians in roles stereotyped as savages that were common in productions of that era.

His work with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Barnum and Bailey's Circus drew the attention of Hollywood talent scouts, leading to appearances in numerous silent films alongside actors including Mary Pickford, the Gish Sisters, Rudolph Valentino, and Richard Dix. Among his film credits is Tongues of Flame (1924). The visibility he gained through silent film work brought him roles in six Broadway productions. These included Cole Porter's 1916 musical comedy See America First and Lo, The Poor Indian, written by Lynn Riggs with music by Cole Porter. Before concluding his performing career, he also appeared as part of an Indian show at the Chicago World's Fair.

While still active in performance, Perley met his wife Wanna Eagle, a professional diver and swimmer, while working at Coney Island's Dreamland. The two returned to Greenville, Maine, where Wanna established the Eagle Haven recovery swim camp on Sugar Island for polio victims.

Perley had begun a parallel writing career as early as 1910, publishing short stories under the name Henry Red Eagle in pulp magazines including Argosy, Top-Notch Stories, and All-Story Weekly. His fiction drew on themes of lumbering and wilderness guiding, with a particular focus on New England and the ongoing presence of Native Americans in the northeastern United States. In the 1930s he returned to the Moosehead Lake Region, working as a wilderness guide and serving seasonally as a counselor at Camp Morgan in Washington, New Hampshire, a position he held until 1966. During those decades he also contributed to regional publications such as In the Maine Woods and the Moosehead Gazette, and became recognized as a storyteller and advocate for environmental conservation. Twenty-five years after his death, his niece and granddaughter published a collection of his writings under the title Aboriginally Yours in 1997.

Perley died on November 15, 1972, in Greenville, Maine, at the age of 87, and is buried in the Greenville Cemetery.