Edward Curtis

Edward Curtis
1868-1952
Main Photographic Subject: Native American Peoples

Edward Curtis’s full name was Edward Sheriff Curtis, not the most likely name for someone to later become a strong champion of the Native American Peoples. Curtis was born in Whitewater, Wisconsin but grew up in the Cordova, Minnesota area. By the time Curtis reached age 17 he had already constructed a camera and learned to develop prints. This led to his apprenticeship with a St. Paul photographer.

In 1887 Curtis’s family moved to Port Orchard in the Washington territory. Shortly after the move, in 1891, Curtis furthers his photographic career with a studio in Seattle. At first Curtis became known for his portraits and landscapes. However, it was there that Curtis soon became interested in the American Indians living near the waterfront of Seattle. His first well-known Native American photograph was taken in 1895 of Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Seattle.

A few years later, in 1898, Curtis was photographing areas on Mt. Ranier when a chance meeting with a group of lost scientists again set him towards photographing the Native American Peoples. Two of the lost scientists on Mt. Ranier were C. Hart Merriam and George Bird Grinnell. Merriam helped to get Curtis appointed one of the two official photographers on the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899 but it was American Indian expert and Field and Stream Editor George Grinnell who brought Curtis back to the Native American Peoples. In 1900, Curtis and Grinnell made a trip to Montana where they witnessed and photographed the Sun Dance Ceremony on the Piegan Reservation. It was this trip where Curtis decided his purpose was to record, through writing and photography, the “North American Indian.”

This project was of a scope nearly unimaginable at the time and financing was a real struggle. Other photographic triumphs helped to make Curtis’s Native American photographic project possible. In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt asked Curtis to photograph his children after Curtis won “The Prettist Children in America” contest through Ladies’ Home Journal. This publicity helped to make Curtis’s photography more sought after by prominent and wealthy citizens. The same year Curtis was asked to photograph the Roosevelt children, Louisa Satterlee (the daughter-in-law of J. P. Morgan) purchased several Curtis photographs at a New York exhibition. This led to Curtis being able to secure funding from J. P. Morgan for the field work necessary to create a 20-volume set of works on the North American Indian with a deadline of 5 years.

The first volume of The North American Indian was published in 1907 with Theodore Roosevelt providing a forward for the book. The 5 year deadline soon came and passed however, with only 8 volumes being completed by 1912. A year later J. P. Morgan died but his son continued financing Curtis’s work with the Native American Peoples. Because of World War I, the timeline for the complete set of books was again delayed and the complete 20 volume set was not final until 1930. By that time Curtis had moved to Los Angeles (1920) and was self-financing his work through photographic work with the Hollywood studios. With 30 years of photographic work recording the traditional life of the Native American Peoples completed, Curtis sells his left-over materials from those 30 years and the photogravure plates to a rare book dealer in Boston a mere 5 years after the completion of the project. From there Curtis became interested in farming and gold-mining, laying aside his camera.

The 20 volume set of The North American Indian was a massive work with each volume including over 100 photogravures and 300 pages of text. While researching the project Curtis photographed individuals from over 80 tribes West of the Mississippi River stretching from Alaska to Mexico. During those 30 years Curtis took over 40,000 images and made detailed records of the traditional way of life or the Native American Peoples. However, even Curtis is not without controversy as he occasionally supplied “traditional” costumes to his subjects if they did not own any traditional clothing. He also photographed reenactments of traditional and historical activities such as camp moves, battles, and ceremonies. While purists decry these reenactments, they were well received by his Native American subjects (who called him “Shadow Catcher”) and are in many cases our only record of such activities.

In spite of the amount of work and skill that went into The North American Indian books only about 300 sets of the volumes were sold due to changing times and the Great Depression. Curtis died on October 21, 1952 of a heart attack with very few people knowing who he was or what he had done. It is only now, years after his death, that his legacy is truly being honored.


References

• PBS American Masters Series


• Library of Congress


• Edward Curtis Gallery