
The pictures look like fairytale images - capturing a long-forgotten age when tribal chiefs, medicine men and dancers roamed America's open plains.

But they are in fact photographs, taken of Native Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, carefully painted to give the illusion of color - and now collected together by filmmaker Paul Ratner.

The director developed a fascination with the stunning images while working on short film Moses on the Mesa, telling the true tale of a Jewish man who came to fall in love with a Native American woman in the late 1800s.

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Fascinating: This picture of Arrowmaker, an Ojibwe man, was taken in 1903 and then 'colorised'

Glimpse: Eagle Arrow, a Siksika man who lived in Montana in the early 1900s. The colorisation process was an art in itself

Forgotten: A Northern Plains man on an overlook in Montana in the early 1900s. Artists had to carefully paint over the photograph

Royalty: Pictures like this one of Charles American Horse, the son of Chief American Horse, were discovered by director Paul Ratner

Education: Ratner believes the colour helped give him an insight into the lives of people like Strong Left Hand and his family, who lived in Northern Cheyenne Reservation in 1906 (pictured)

At first, he only found monochrome images - but it was enough to pique his interest further.

'They were black and white photos of a beautiful mystical people, and it felt inconceivable that anyone would want to exterminate them from this continent as a conscious policy stretching over hundreds of years. It just seemed so barbaric and inhumane,' he wrote in a blog for Huffington Post.

It was then he started to discover the colorised images, which were created by artists carefully painting the photographs, bringing their subjects to life.

'Looking at them I see regular people but also royalty,' Ratner wrote of his discovery.

'They are in a way no different than historical portraits of European kings, queens and nobility.'

Stunning: Some of the people were ordinary tribesmen, but others, like Bone Necklace, the Oglala Lakota Chief, were clearly royalty

Fame: Geronimo - pictured here in 1898 - was a leader during the Apache wars of the 1800s

History: Old Coyote, also known as Yellow Dog, of the Crow, or Apsáalooke. This photo was taken in about 1879

Surviving: Songlike, a Pueblo man, photographed in 1899. Today there are about 350,000 Pueblo, mainly in the south-west

Leader: Chief James A. Garfield, a Jicarilla Apache, in 1899. They were put on a reservation in 1887, which was expanded in 1907

Traditional beliefs: Piegan men giving prayer to the Thunderbird near a river in Montana

Ratner began to share the images on the film's Facebook page - and was delighted with people's reactions.

'I found that by posting the photographs, I could connect to thousands of people who want to know more about Native American history,' he toldIndian Country Today.

'I learned a lot about the Native American community, its history and its concerns through the comments that people leave as they experience and debate the photo glimpses into the past.'

Wixe: Cheyenne Chief Wolf Robe was forced to take his tribe from the plain to the reservation in the 1800s

Summer dress: Members of the Kiowa tribe in 1898. Today there are 12,000 Kiowa, with their base in Oklahoma