Book In Focus: Unraveling Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian

Join Herman Cohen Stuart in his discussion regarding his newest work 'Unraveling Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian' below:

Between 1895 and 1927, American photographer Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) took about 40,000 photographs of North American Native Americans west of the Mississippi River. His goal was to make a record of their cultures, which he – and, at the time, many others – thought were about to disappear. His project yielded the twenty-volume book series The North American Indian (hereafter: NAI). Each book describes the cultures of one or more Native American peoples, from the California Diegue?o to the Chipewyan in Canada and from the Wichita in Oklahoma to the Noatak of Alaska. In all, Curtis visited and described over eighty tribes. The books are lavishly illustrated with photographs, and with each book comes a portfolio of more than 30 large-format photographs. Original full sets fetch around a million dollars these days, but today an easily affordable paperback edition is also available. Curtis’s photographs are mostly person photos, in which subjects are often – but not always – traditionally dressed, but he also paid attention to many different aspects of Native American life: from housing to food supply, habitat, arts and crafts, religion and ceremony, daily life and modes of transportation. Additionally, his texts deal extensively with the histories of many peoples and their relations with the European and American conquerors of their land. Although Curtis’s portraits of Native Ameircans are widely appreciated for their artistic qualities, he’s best known today for the way he manipulated his photographs and thus created his own reality, using techniques such as retouching and staging, and providing his subjects with Native American clothing that he carried with him in case they did not look "Indian" (as they were known then) enough. According to critics from recent decades, his goal was to create a romanticized image of “noble” Native Americans and their cultures as they supposedly were in times preceding contact with Europeans. To this end, he is even said to have removed many, if not all, Western influences from his photographs.

In addition, he used a combination of artistic and scientific photography that earned him the accusation that his photographs were not suitable for scientific research. Furthermore, he ignored the poverty that existed on the reservations at that time. Reactions to his work from Native Americans themselves have been mixed. Some are decidedly critical because of his manipulations and romanticizations; others appreciate the photographs because they paint a picture of an earlier life, and because people recognize their ancestors in the photographs. In my book, Unraveling Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian, I discuss these and other aspects of Curtis’s work in detail, with the use of a fair number of photos and graphs. My quantitative and additionally qualitative analysis of the photographs and texts of the entire NAI, set against the background of the US government policy of the time which aimed to ensure that Native Americans would be fully assimilated into American society, shows that much more needs to be said about Curtis and the NAI.For example, it turns out that Western influences can be seen very frequently in the NAI (in no less than 41.3% of all 2,234 NAI photos), both in clothing, of which my book shows remarkable examples, and through – occasionally very surprising – objects that are present in the environment, some of which have wheels. Furthermore, Curtis’s portraits turn out to show only few "noble" individuals – but, contrary to popular belief, he did show smiling people. In addition to artistic-scientific portraits, he also produced purely scientific portraits, as well as entirely artistic ones. However, photos showing the situation of hunger and want on reservations, or images of now infamous boarding schools, are not found at all in the NAI – this criticism is justified.It is also notable that NAI texts are replete with descriptions of relations and confrontations of Natives with Western invaders, Spaniards, but mostly Americans. Curtis discussed at length many abuses and the myriad ways in which Westerners disadvantaged, displaced and killed Native Americans. My book lists a number of examples, such as the way he describes, in almost emotional terms, the events at Sand Creek where a Cheyenne village was massacred in 1864, and the unprecedentedly cruel way in which the California Native Americans were treated. It provides a large number of very remarkable quotes, which clearly show Curtis’s almost palpable anger at the course of events. He was also critical of the implementation of government policy, and strongly denounced the poor quality of many pieces of land that had been declared reservations.Curtis’s use of words is also discussed, and with it the image of Native Americans that ensues. A number of terms he used are now considered overtly racist. There are some surprising conclusions to be drawn. For example, the relationship between the two different meanings of primitive, undeveloped and original, turns out to be quite remarkable. As for the highly controversial point of the "vanishing race," the idea (nowadays considered reprehensible) that Natives are confronted with to this day: Curtis, who considered his own photograph ‘The Vanishing Race’ to be symbolic of his entire series, has been proved completely wrong by history in this regard. NAI texts show, however, that in his time his conviction was not altogether unfounded: they contain over a hundred examples of peoples and customs that had been lost over the course of many years. One of the most striking findings, especially in light of Curtis’s aforementioned criticism toward Americans and US government policy, is the fact that he, who had set himself the goal of recording “vanishing” Native American cultures, advocated several times in the text of the NAI that they should disappear. The book provides some telling examples.All in all, the NAI turns out to paint a complex picture of both the situation and the future of Native Americans. In addition, there is quite a bit to be said about the widely held picture that exists today of Curtis and his work, the most salient observation being that the ubiquitous idea that he removed many, if not all, Western influences from his photographs turns out to be an utter misconception. He gave much attention to the many atrocities and injustices against Native Americans as committed by Americans, and even retroactively sided with Lakota leader Red Cloud, who opposed the construction of a railroad through Lakota territory – an audacious stance, given the fact that Curtis’s main financier was the banker and railroad tycoon J.P. Morgan. Unraveling Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian presents a comprehensive and often surprising picture of one of the largest projects in ethnology and Native American photography ever undertaken, and of the convictions of its creator.

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