Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Chief Dark Cloud

aka Elijah Tahamont

 

 

BORN: September 20, 1855, St. Francis Indian Village, Quebec, Canada

DIED: October 17, 1918, Los Angeles, California

CAUSE OF DEATH: Lobular pneumonia following Spanish Influenza

BURIAL: Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Section 10W

 

By Allan R. Ellenberger

 

Chief Dark Cloud, whose real name was Elijah Tahamont, was a Native American film actor sometimes billed as William Dark Cloud. He was also a popular and highly paid model who posed for over twenty years for famed sculptor, Frederic Remington. He was a chief of the Algonquin tribe (or Abenaquis tribe depending on the source) and prior to his film career was known as a popular lecturer.

 

 

Dark Cloud began working for American Mutoscope and Biograph in 1910, making his first screen appearance under the direction of D. W. Griffith. Moving west, he appeared in scores of westerns and other films.

  

 

 

 

Dark Cloud was married to Soaring Dove (Margaret Camp), also a model, and the father of actress Beulah Dark Cloud (1887-1945) and Bessie ‘Bright’ Eyes Tahamont (who died at the age of fifteen in September 1907, in Astoria, New York). Both girls were the first Native American children to attend a New York public school.

 

 

Dark Cloud was reportedly an alcoholic and womanizer, which gained him many enemies. Influenza, which was at a world-wide epidemic, was the official cause of his death in 1918. However, rumors at the time claimed that he was either murdered by a jealous husband or died from accidental drowning.

 

 

 

Thanks to Jim L of Hollywoodunderground for Dark Cloud’s date and cause of death

The preceding is one in a series of biographical sketches of

Hollywood Forever Cemetery residents.