By: Madison Horne

Native American History

How Stunning Photos Portraying Native American Life Carry a Mixed Legacy

At the turn of the century, photographer Edward Curtis spent 30 years documenting more than 80 Native American tribes.

Madison Horne

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

Published: November 30, 2018

Last Updated: January 31, 2025

In the early 1900s, photographer Edward S. Curtis set out on an epic mission: to capture the experiences of Native Americans throughout the American West. Over the span of 30 years, Curtis documented more than 80 tribes west of the Mississippi, from the Mexican border to northern Alaska.

After decades of work (funded by financier J.P. Morgan), Curtis and his field team ended up with more than 40,000 photographs, 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Native American music and stories, and stacks of notes and sketches. The collections were compiled into a 20-volume set of books, titled The North American Indian.

Curtis’s photographs command respect for a group of people that had been marginalized over the span of the 19th century. But the work has also been met with criticism. Some have argued the photos, many of which were staged, present a romanticized version of Native American life—by a white photographer.”The Blackfoot Medicine Lodge Encampment of the Summer of 1899.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

Photographer Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) spent over 30 years photographing over 80 tribes west of the Mississippi. In 1912, a show of his work was presented at the New York Public Library, and was later reprised in 1994 on the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas. The work features Curtis’ photos, along with the photographer’s notes (in italics), which he had written on the back of each print.

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“A Blackfoot picture on the prairies of Montana. In the early days and closely following the acquisition of the horse, many of the Northern plains tribes carried their camp equipment on the Travaux. This form of transportation had practically disappeared by the beginning of 1900.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“The Canoe is to the Coast Indian what the pony is to the people of the plains. In these picturesque canoes, built from the trunk of the great cedars, they travel the whole length of the Coast from the mouth of the Columbia to Yakutat Bay, Alaska.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“Navajo Indians emerging from the shadows of the high walls of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona typifying the transition from barbarism to civilization.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“The healing ceremonies of the Navajo people are locally called sings, or in other words, a doctor or priest attempts to cure a disease by singing rather than by medicine. The healing ceremonies vary in length from a fraction of a day to the two great ceremonies of nine days and nights. These elaborate ceremonies which have been so fully described by Washington Mathews are called by him the night chant and the mountain chant.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“A good type of the younger Navajos.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“The Navajo blanket is the most valuable product made by our Indians. Their blankets are now as of old, woven on the simple primitive loom, and during the bleak months of Winter the looms are placed in the Hogans or homes, but in the Summer they place them outside in the shade of a tree or under and improvised shelter of branches.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

A Sioux man.

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“Three Sioux mountain sheep hunters in the Bad Lands of South Dakota.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“A statuesque, picturesque Sioux Chief and his favorite pony at a water hold in the band lands of the Dakotas.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“Red Cloud is perhaps as well known in Indian history, and especially in Sioux Indian history, as was George Washington in the thirteen colonies. At the present time he is blind, and feeble, and has but a few years before him; his mind though is yet keen in spite of the 91 yrs., he enjoys recalling details of the prouder days of his youth.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

An Apache man.

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“An Apache picture. One must know the desert to […] appreciate the sight of the cool, life-giving pool or murmuring stream.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“Showing the typical baby carrier of the Apache people.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“An Apache maiden. The manner in which the hair is wrapped with beaded buckskin is the custom followed by the unmarried Apache girl. After marriage the hair drops loosely down the back.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“A fine type of the Hopi men. These people are best known by their striking ceremony ‘The Snake Dance.’ “

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“A Hopi Snake Priest.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

“The Hopi villages are built on a small high straight-walled mesa where water must be carried up from springs on lower levels. This shows two women at their early morning task.”

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

Hopi women, with their iconic hairstyles, looking out atop their homes. The hairstyle was created with the help of wooden discs which the hair was fashioned around. The style is said to be work by unmarried Hopi women, specifically during celebrations of the winter solstice.

Edward S. Curtis from the New York Public Library

The photographs command respect for a group of people that had been marginalized over the span of the 19th century. But the work has also been met with criticism. Some have argued the photos, many of which were staged, present a romanticized version of Native American life—by a white photographer.

By the time Curtis approached various tribes, their way of life had already been forcibly changed by U.S. government policies, so he staged many of the photos. Curtis had his subjects dress in traditional clothing that most no longer wore. And he photographed people in settings seemingly untouched by time—sometimes even altering photos to remove modern artifacts from view.

As art historian Shannon Egan argues, Curtis may have been driven to preserve what the photographer described as a “vanishing race,” but his staged photos “suppressed the plight of the ‘real’ Indians and replaced it with a narrative of Indianness that served the artistic and political needs of an Anglo-American culture.”

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At the time Curtis traveled throughout the West, Native Americans had already endured a century of encroachment. Since the age of colonization in America, the concept of a “New World” overlooked generations of people who had previously occupied the continent. Colonists' westward expansion accelerated at the start of the 19th century. Indigenous people faced losing their homes as more white Americans wanted, and felt entitled to, the land.

To fix the “Indian Problem,” colonists tried to assimilate different tribes to more European-style ways in their speech, economic practices and lifestyles. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson championed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the government power to take over American Indian-occupied land east of Mississippi and forcibly move tribes out West to the “Indian colonization zone.” The series of forced relocations became known as the Trail of Tears, as thousands of Native Americans died in the long, arduous journey west.

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been moved to land that was promised to be a safe designated space. However white settlement continued to push westward into Indigenous territories and the land that Native Americans once could call their own was soon overtaken.

The images of Native American tribes captured by Curtis and his team may present an idealized perspective, but the work has nonetheless been celebrated for the beauty of the images and their documentary value.

In 1912, 227 of Curtis’s gelatin silver and platinum prints were displayed in the grand venue of the New York Public Library. That year, Arizona became the final contiguous state to achieve statehood in a milestone that was seen as a symbolic conclusion to the country's frontier phase. Native Americans, meanwhile, weren’t granted full U.S. citizenship for another 12 years.

“Taken as a whole, the work of Edward Curtis is a singular achievement,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Kiowa Tribe member, Navarre Scott Momday. “Never before have we seen the Indians of North America so close to the origins of their humanity, their sense of themselves in the world, their innate dignity and self-possession.”

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Madison Horne

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Citation Information

Article title
How Stunning Photos Portraying Native American Life Carry a Mixed Legacy
Website Name
History
Date Accessed
March 21, 2025
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
January 31, 2025
Original Published Date
November 30, 2018

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