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Native Nations: First North Americans as Seen by Edward S. Curtis
Just after the turn of the century Edward Curtis set out to photograph and document the Indians of Northern America. This book contains 125 of his best photographs, which together with text, provides a view of the emotional and spirital lives of the indiginous North Americans of that period.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published October 19, 1993
60 people want to read
About the author
Edward S. Curtis
213 books38 followersBeginning in 1900 and continuing over the next thirty years, Edward Sheriff Curtis, or the “Shadow Catcher” as he was later called by some of the tribes, took over 40,000 images and recorded rare ethnographic information from over eighty American Indian tribal groups, ranging from the Eskimo or Inuit people of the far north to the Hopi people of the Southwest. He captured the likeness of many important and well-known Indian people of that time, including Geronimo, Chief Joseph, Red Cloud, Medicine Crow and others. This monumental accomplishment is comprised of more than 2,200 sepia toned photogravures bound in twenty volumes of written information and small images and twenty portfolios of larger artistic representations.
Edward S. Curtis was born near Whitewater, Wisconsin in 1868. His father, a Civil War veteran and a Reverend, moved the family to Minnesota, where Edward became interested in photography and soon constructed his own camera and learned how to process the prints. At the age of seventeen he became an apprentice photographer in St. Paul. The family moved near Seattle, Washington, where Edward purchased a second camera and bought a half interest in a photographic studio. He married and the couple had four children.
In 1898 while photographing on Mt. Rainier, Curtis encountered a group of prominent scientists who were lost, among them George Bird Grinnell, a noted Indian expert, who became interested in Curtis’ work and invited him to photograph the Blackfeet Indian people in Montana two years later. It was there that Curtis practiced and developed his photographic skills and project methodology that would guide his lifetime of work among the other Indian tribes.
Such a massive project is almost incomprehensible in this day and age. In addition to the constant struggle for financing, Curtis required the cooperation of the weather, vehicles, mechanical equipment, skilled technicians, scholars and researchers and the Indian tribes as well. He dispatched assistants to make tribal visits months in advance. With the proper arrangements Curtis would travel by horseback or horse drawn wagon over paths or primitive “roads” to visit the tribes in their home territory. Once on site Curtis and his assistants would start work by interviewed the people and then photographing them either outside, in a structure, or inside his studio tent with an adjustable skylight. Employing these and other techniques over his lifetime he captured some of the most beautiful images of the Indian people ever recorded.
One of Curtis’ major goals was to record as much of the people’s way of traditional life as possible. Not content to deal only with the present population, and their arts and industries, he recognized that the present is a result of the past, and the past dimension must be included, as well. Guided by this concept, Curtis made 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Indian language and music. In addition he took over 40,000 images from over 80 tribes, recorded tribal mythologies and history, and described tribal population, traditional foods, dwellings, clothing, games, ceremonies, burial customs, biographical sketches and other primary source information: all from a living as well as past tradition. Extending the same principle to the photographs, he presented his subjects in a traditional way whenever possible and even supplied a bit of the proper clothing when his subjects had none. Reenactments of battles, moving camp, ceremonies and other past activities were also photographed. These efforts provided extended pleasure to the elders and preserve a rare view of the earlier ways of the people.
With the publication of volume twenty in 1930, the years of struggle finally took their toll with Curtis suffering a physical and nervous break down. The declining interest in the American Indian, the Great depression, and other negative forces slowed, then halted the successful financial completion of the project. Less than 300 sets
Edward S. Curtis was born near Whitewater, Wisconsin in 1868. His father, a Civil War veteran and a Reverend, moved the family to Minnesota, where Edward became interested in photography and soon constructed his own camera and learned how to process the prints. At the age of seventeen he became an apprentice photographer in St. Paul. The family moved near Seattle, Washington, where Edward purchased a second camera and bought a half interest in a photographic studio. He married and the couple had four children.
In 1898 while photographing on Mt. Rainier, Curtis encountered a group of prominent scientists who were lost, among them George Bird Grinnell, a noted Indian expert, who became interested in Curtis’ work and invited him to photograph the Blackfeet Indian people in Montana two years later. It was there that Curtis practiced and developed his photographic skills and project methodology that would guide his lifetime of work among the other Indian tribes.
Such a massive project is almost incomprehensible in this day and age. In addition to the constant struggle for financing, Curtis required the cooperation of the weather, vehicles, mechanical equipment, skilled technicians, scholars and researchers and the Indian tribes as well. He dispatched assistants to make tribal visits months in advance. With the proper arrangements Curtis would travel by horseback or horse drawn wagon over paths or primitive “roads” to visit the tribes in their home territory. Once on site Curtis and his assistants would start work by interviewed the people and then photographing them either outside, in a structure, or inside his studio tent with an adjustable skylight. Employing these and other techniques over his lifetime he captured some of the most beautiful images of the Indian people ever recorded.
One of Curtis’ major goals was to record as much of the people’s way of traditional life as possible. Not content to deal only with the present population, and their arts and industries, he recognized that the present is a result of the past, and the past dimension must be included, as well. Guided by this concept, Curtis made 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Indian language and music. In addition he took over 40,000 images from over 80 tribes, recorded tribal mythologies and history, and described tribal population, traditional foods, dwellings, clothing, games, ceremonies, burial customs, biographical sketches and other primary source information: all from a living as well as past tradition. Extending the same principle to the photographs, he presented his subjects in a traditional way whenever possible and even supplied a bit of the proper clothing when his subjects had none. Reenactments of battles, moving camp, ceremonies and other past activities were also photographed. These efforts provided extended pleasure to the elders and preserve a rare view of the earlier ways of the people.
With the publication of volume twenty in 1930, the years of struggle finally took their toll with Curtis suffering a physical and nervous break down. The declining interest in the American Indian, the Great depression, and other negative forces slowed, then halted the successful financial completion of the project. Less than 300 sets
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 24, 2022
These are the BEST photos from Curtis' 1907-1930 collection that were part of his 23 volumes, that brought praise by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 as he saw this collection getting started. The magnificent cover picture is of Bear's Belly, from the Arikara tribe, in 1908. He was hunting bear for his medicine-making and came upon (and killed) three bears that nearly took his own life.
Many honored elders in the pictures of this book. There are simple shots too of catching trout, weaving, picking berries, or a camp. I like the short caption/paragraphs for each picture that convey the author definitely knew his subjects!
For as good as this book is, it feels like when you buy a record album that is the 'best of' collection of an artist. You KNOW there are so many more songs that you value that didn't make the popularity-cut. This sparked me to find and check-out more books about Edward Curtis from my local library.
Editor's Note: Edward Curtis was born in 1868 near Whitewater, Wisconsin to Reverend Johnson and Ellen Sheriff Curtis. They moved to Cardova Minnesota where Reverend Johnson reached his parishioners by canoe, with five-year-old Edward accompanying.
Edward ended his formal education in 6th grade but found "Wilson's Photographics" book where he learned how to build his own camera and develop film. In 1887 his father died upon arrival in their new home of Puget Sound, near Seattle, Washington. Curtis found local Indians with culture and traditions still relatively intact, and let his hired help run his local photo business while he went into the field to take photos of tribes.
In 1898 a chance event radically altered his life. While taking photos on Mount Rainier, Curtis rescued a group of lost mountaineers. This group included members nationally recognized for work in conservation, Indian ethnography and publishing. Included were Gifford Pinchot (head of forestry), C Hart Merriman (chief of US Biological Survey) and George Bird Grinnell 9Naturalist, conservationist and renowned Indian authority). They were impressed with Curtis and got him to take some field assignments.
Curtis often sent assistants ahead months in advance to supplement his extensive pre-field research. Only then would Curtis show up to take photos, knowing full-well who and what were important. Word spread among the tribes and Curtis was dubbed the "Shadow-catcher". Tribes wanted him to come visit them!
"The North American Indian" began as a 5-year, $25,000 venture. Instead, it consumed $1.5 million and 30 years. The New York Herald hailed it as "the most gigantic undertaking since the making of the King James edition of the Bible."
23 volumes ultimately came out, starting in 1908 with Volume 1 The Apache, The Jicarillas, The Navajo. The final volume came out in 1930 on the Alaskan Eskimo.
In his early 80's, Curtis planned a major expedition to Brazil, the Amazon and Andes. The organizers cancelled the expedition. Curtis died soon afterward at age 84.
Additional on Curtis:
Edward S. Curtis: Visions of the First Americans by Don Gulbrandsen
Edward S. Curtis: Coming to Light by Anne Makepeace (National Geographic)
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan
Many honored elders in the pictures of this book. There are simple shots too of catching trout, weaving, picking berries, or a camp. I like the short caption/paragraphs for each picture that convey the author definitely knew his subjects!
For as good as this book is, it feels like when you buy a record album that is the 'best of' collection of an artist. You KNOW there are so many more songs that you value that didn't make the popularity-cut. This sparked me to find and check-out more books about Edward Curtis from my local library.
Editor's Note: Edward Curtis was born in 1868 near Whitewater, Wisconsin to Reverend Johnson and Ellen Sheriff Curtis. They moved to Cardova Minnesota where Reverend Johnson reached his parishioners by canoe, with five-year-old Edward accompanying.
Edward ended his formal education in 6th grade but found "Wilson's Photographics" book where he learned how to build his own camera and develop film. In 1887 his father died upon arrival in their new home of Puget Sound, near Seattle, Washington. Curtis found local Indians with culture and traditions still relatively intact, and let his hired help run his local photo business while he went into the field to take photos of tribes.
In 1898 a chance event radically altered his life. While taking photos on Mount Rainier, Curtis rescued a group of lost mountaineers. This group included members nationally recognized for work in conservation, Indian ethnography and publishing. Included were Gifford Pinchot (head of forestry), C Hart Merriman (chief of US Biological Survey) and George Bird Grinnell 9Naturalist, conservationist and renowned Indian authority). They were impressed with Curtis and got him to take some field assignments.
Curtis often sent assistants ahead months in advance to supplement his extensive pre-field research. Only then would Curtis show up to take photos, knowing full-well who and what were important. Word spread among the tribes and Curtis was dubbed the "Shadow-catcher". Tribes wanted him to come visit them!
"The North American Indian" began as a 5-year, $25,000 venture. Instead, it consumed $1.5 million and 30 years. The New York Herald hailed it as "the most gigantic undertaking since the making of the King James edition of the Bible."
23 volumes ultimately came out, starting in 1908 with Volume 1 The Apache, The Jicarillas, The Navajo. The final volume came out in 1930 on the Alaskan Eskimo.
In his early 80's, Curtis planned a major expedition to Brazil, the Amazon and Andes. The organizers cancelled the expedition. Curtis died soon afterward at age 84.
Additional on Curtis:
Edward S. Curtis: Visions of the First Americans by Don Gulbrandsen
Edward S. Curtis: Coming to Light by Anne Makepeace (National Geographic)
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan
February 28, 2011
I have to go along with the others and rate this book 5 stars. It is an incredibly beautiful book. The reading is very interesting and the pictures are breathtaking imho.
March 25, 2013
The beautiful photographs and brief descriptions of Edward S. Curtis' North American Indians.
April 19, 2015
Just beautiful and priceless. Photographs of various Indians taken in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Fascinating and important to preserve!
January 29, 2023
Magnificent, this is one of the most insightful books that I have read as the introductory essays, including one from 1906 by the photographer himself, Edward S. Curtis, give a deep and affectionate understanding of the native Indians, their habits and customs.
On the cover is Bear's Belly of the Arikara tribe, born at Fort Clark in the [resent North Dakota, who at the age of 19 joined Custer's scouts at Fort Abraham Lincoln and immediately went into battle against the Sioux and claimed some victims. But his real fame came from fighting three bears and coming out victorious. But not all the fantastic quadratone portraits are of Indian braves, there are plenty of activity shots, shots of the Indian villages and their tipis, and of the customs and artefacts of the various tribes. Quadratone is a printing that is with four images at different angles and different colours and end up with the chosen colour - sepia or brown in this case.
The magnificent photographs are accompanied by explanatory text (and there is plenty of it for the pages measure over 13 inches by more than 10 inches) that puts the subject in context and gives a most sympathetic account of the tribe that is relevant to the photograph. And Curtis seems to have researched practically every tribe of native Indians that were around for his monumental work 'The North American Indian' runs to 20 hug volumes and took him 23 years, 1907 to 1930, to complete. But as he states in his lengthy introduction the work 'had its inception in 1898' when he began 'accumulating the data necessary to form a comprehensive and permanent record of all the important tribes of the United States and Alaska'. He does admit, 'The task has not been an easy one' but as he says, 'The word story of this primitive life, like the pictures, must be drawn direct from Nature' and he states that it had to be written 'while I am in close touch with the Indian life'.
But being in touch with the Indian life is shown to fantastic effect in the superb Foreword by George P. Horse Capture of the Atsina tribe whose words are so revelationary that you feel as though you are a member of the tribe yourself, realising how the Indian nations see the world and those populating it. For instance he admits that 'growing up on an Indian reservation is not as romantic and full of adventure as some might believe' and goes on to say, when he attended the off-reservation public school, 'our environment abruptly changed as we encountered the non-Indian world for the first time'. He then reinforces his view by saying, 'Only George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Armstrong Custer, and other non-Indians filled the history books. Even Jesus was white'! He adds, 'It was as if we didn't exist, and out minds and souls suffered from tis exclusion in our own country.'
The remainder of his Foreword is as powerful and gives the reader a better understanding of Indian life when viewing the wonderful images that Curtis presents us with later.
On the cover is Bear's Belly of the Arikara tribe, born at Fort Clark in the [resent North Dakota, who at the age of 19 joined Custer's scouts at Fort Abraham Lincoln and immediately went into battle against the Sioux and claimed some victims. But his real fame came from fighting three bears and coming out victorious. But not all the fantastic quadratone portraits are of Indian braves, there are plenty of activity shots, shots of the Indian villages and their tipis, and of the customs and artefacts of the various tribes. Quadratone is a printing that is with four images at different angles and different colours and end up with the chosen colour - sepia or brown in this case.
The magnificent photographs are accompanied by explanatory text (and there is plenty of it for the pages measure over 13 inches by more than 10 inches) that puts the subject in context and gives a most sympathetic account of the tribe that is relevant to the photograph. And Curtis seems to have researched practically every tribe of native Indians that were around for his monumental work 'The North American Indian' runs to 20 hug volumes and took him 23 years, 1907 to 1930, to complete. But as he states in his lengthy introduction the work 'had its inception in 1898' when he began 'accumulating the data necessary to form a comprehensive and permanent record of all the important tribes of the United States and Alaska'. He does admit, 'The task has not been an easy one' but as he says, 'The word story of this primitive life, like the pictures, must be drawn direct from Nature' and he states that it had to be written 'while I am in close touch with the Indian life'.
But being in touch with the Indian life is shown to fantastic effect in the superb Foreword by George P. Horse Capture of the Atsina tribe whose words are so revelationary that you feel as though you are a member of the tribe yourself, realising how the Indian nations see the world and those populating it. For instance he admits that 'growing up on an Indian reservation is not as romantic and full of adventure as some might believe' and goes on to say, when he attended the off-reservation public school, 'our environment abruptly changed as we encountered the non-Indian world for the first time'. He then reinforces his view by saying, 'Only George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Armstrong Custer, and other non-Indians filled the history books. Even Jesus was white'! He adds, 'It was as if we didn't exist, and out minds and souls suffered from tis exclusion in our own country.'
The remainder of his Foreword is as powerful and gives the reader a better understanding of Indian life when viewing the wonderful images that Curtis presents us with later.
April 23, 2023
There are many reproductions of the great photography capturing the likenesses of Native Americans taken at the end of the nineteenth and beginnings of the twentieth centuries. This oversized book is the best I have seen. Much of the writing is Curtis's own words. There is A statement by Theodore Roosevelt and interesting background information. If you ever have a chance to spend time with this volume, do not hesiitate!
April 25, 2019
I was blown away by this incredible collection of photographs of a time that has passed. Powerful.
July 23, 2020
Some of the language and statements here are racist and outdated. The photography is wonderful! The beauty, character, and strength of the people shine through.
June 22, 2021
Amazing work!
January 8, 2020
Poetry, History, images of a long gone era.
Can’t believe that anybody may have rated this masterpiece less than five stars
Can’t believe that anybody may have rated this masterpiece less than five stars
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews