Edward S. Curtis became interested in photography when he was 17 years old, back in 1885. Two years later, meanwhile having moved from Minnesota to Washington, he already co-owned a photo studio. Another ten years later, in 1895, Curtis met princess Angeline, daughter of Chief Sealth of Seattle. She became his first of many Native American portraits.
Princess Angeline (1896)
Photograph by Edward S. Curtis.
In the years that followed, Curtis became more and more involved in Native American documentary photography, eventually earning him a $75,000 sponsorship by J.P. Morgan in 1906 to produce a series on the Native American culture. He was assigned to make 20 volumes, containing 1,500 photographs in total.
Curtis embarked on a quest to document Native American traditional life, “before it would disappear.” In a time span of more than 20 years, Curtis eventually took over 40,000 photographic images from over 80 tribes, alongside 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Native American language and music. 222 complete sets of pictures were eventually published in the 20 volume The North American Indian.
Complete Set of The North American Indian
By courtesy of EdwardCurtis.com
Meanwhile, things in Curtis’s personal life weren’t going well. In 1928, desperate for cash, he had to sell the rights to his project to J.P Morgan’s son. In 1935, the Morgan estate sold the rights and remaining unpublished material to the Charles E. Lauriat Company. Lauriat bound the remaining loose printed pages and sold them with the completed sets. The remaining material remained untouched in their Boston basement until they were rediscovered in 1972.
But the Library of Congress also acquired a lot of Curtis’s work. From about 1900 through 1930, they collected more than 2,400 silver-gelatin, first generation photographic prints made from Curtis’s original glass negatives. About two-thirds (1,608) of these images were not published in The North American Indian volumes, and therefore offer a different and unique glimpse into Curtis’s work with indigenous cultures.
Giving the medicine–Navaho.
A Navajo shaman giving medicine to participant sitting atop blanket used in sweatbath, as two others look on.
Pakit–Maricopa.
Head-and-shoulders portrait of a Maricopa woman, wrapped in a blanket.
The snake priests–Hopi.
Ten Hopi snake priests, standing, facing front, carrying sticks, some with bags.
Red Cloud.
Red Cloud, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing left.
Hamatsa emerging from the woods–Koskimo.
Hamatsa shaman, three-quarter length portrait, seated on ground in front of tree, facing front, possessed by supernatural power after having spent several days in the woods as part of an initiation ritual.
Mis Se Pah & Big Head.
Left: head-and-shoulders portrait of a Mohave woman. Right: head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front.
Yurok canoe on Trinity River.
Cheyenne mother and child.
The end of day.
Hopi boy herding horses and sheep across sand dunes, New Mexico.
Village criers on horseback.
Bird On the Ground and Forked Iron, Crow Indians, Montana
Even though Curtis’s work was widely hailed for its extensiveness, being called “the most gigantic undertaking since the making of the King James edition of the Bible,” he was also subject of criticism for allegedly manipulating his images. Curtis actively removed traces of Western material culture in many of his pictures. By reinforcing their native identity as a tragic vanishing race, some believe Curtis detracted attention from the true plight of American natives.
King Island village.
Houses on stilts on a terraced cliff above body of water, small boulders and low growing vegetation in foreground.
Arikara medicine fraternity–The prayer.
Arikara shamans, without shirts, backs to camera, seated in a semi-circle around a sacred cedar tree, tipis in background.
At the ford–Apache.
Four Apache men on horseback at the edge of a stream.
An oasis in the Badlands.
Red Hawk, an Oglala warrior, sitting on a horse that is drinking from a small pond in the Badlands of North Dakota.
Watching the signal.
Three Crow Indians, one sitting, two standing, facing left.
The flight of arrows.
Shows an Atsina dance with Natives gathered in a circle around a central figure, posed as if shooting arrows toward the sky.
War party’s farewell.
Four Atsina Indians on horseback overlooking tepees in valley beyond.
Quinault berry picker.
A mat shelter.
Two Skokomish women by mat shelter and rowboat.
The vanishing race.
Navajos on horseback riding away from photographer.
All pictures form part of the Edward S. Curtis Collection of the Library of Congress. Some of them were published in Curtis’s The North American Indian.