Photos Of Native Americans by Edward Curtis

MA-Caver

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A wonderful collection of photos of Native Americans. While most are clearly "set-ups" because photography in the early 1900's http://licm.org.uk/livingImage/1900Room.html was "ok, hold still....hold it... hold... it... got it!" and the models/subjects most likely had to put up with this white man trying to tell their story, at least their story is being told. Read description and enjoy the photos.

In 1906, American photographer Edward S. Curtis was offered $75,000 to document North American Indians. The benefactor, J.P Morgan, was to receive 25 sets of the completed series of 20 volumes with 1,500 photographs entitled The North American Indian. Curtis set out to photograph the North American Indian way of life at a time when Native Americans were being forced from their land and stripped of their rights. Curtis’ photographs depicted a romantic version of the culture which ran contrary to the popular view of Native Americans as savages.
Born in 1868 in Wisconsin, Curtis moved with his father to the Washington territory in 1887 where he began working at a photography studio in the frontier city of Seattle. Curtis began work on his series in 1895 by photographing Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Sealth and published the first volume of The North American Indian in 1907. The last volume wasn’t published until 1930. In more than three decades of work documenting Native Americans, Curtis traveled from the Great Plains to the mountainous west, and from the Mexican border to western Canada to the Arctic Ocean in Alaska.
Below are selected images of the Native American way of life chosen from The Library of Congress’s Edward S. Curtis Collection. Some were published in The North American Indian but most were not published. All the captions are original to Edward Curtis.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/capture...can-indian-photographs-by-edward-curtis/2551/
 

elder999

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There's a couple of places in Santa Fe that sell Edward Sheriff Curtis prints and originals-the man literally took thousands of remarkable photos. Some of them, even more remarkably, of are of ceremonies-while they were posed, as you say, he often was risking his life just showing up, and the job he did convincing people of his motives was nothing short of Kissinger level diplomacy.

Rita (that's the wife) often gets us one for Christmas...something to look forward to..
 
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MA-Caver

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I wonder if he really was risking his life during this photo-shoot. If my history is correct a vast majority of the Native Americans had been rounded up by 1900 and herded into the reservations and were in effect a broken people. Population nearly decimated, strength gone, pride shattered, heritage being slowly wiped away... plus the knowledge of what would/could happen to the individual(s) who would kill the man... a WHITE man, and just for that fact. The murderer(s) locked away or sentenced to death.
So Curtis was more than likely safe (as well as personally armed). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_S._Curtis#The_North_American_Indian.

This is an interesting little article as well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controversy
 

elder999

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I wonder if he really was risking his life during this photo-shoot. If my history is correct a vast majority of the Native Americans had been rounded up by 1900 and herded into the reservations and were in effect a broken people. Population nearly decimated, strength gone, pride shattered, heritage being slowly wiped away... plus the knowledge of what would/could happen to the individual(s) who would kill the man... a WHITE man, and just for that fact. The murderer(s) locked away or sentenced to death.
So Curtis was more than likely safe (as well as personally armed). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_S._Curtis#The_North_American_Indian.

This is an interesting little article as well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controversy

He fell into freezing water from a seal skin kayak in Alaska, suffered through desert exposure, freezing temperatures, unsanitary conditions, high mountain passes, cliffs, storms, raging rapids, blizzards, wild animals and yeah, the chance that someone might take offense and go ahead and kill him, given the relative distance and isolation....(people still get killed out on reservations or in the wilderness, and most murderers aren't thinking of consequences when they do so....)

yeah, I'd say he was risking his life.
 
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MA-Caver

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He fell into freezing water from a seal skin kayak in Alaska, suffered through desert exposure, freezing temperatures, unsanitary conditions, high mountain passes, cliffs, storms, raging rapids, blizzards, wild animals and yeah, the chance that someone might take offense and go ahead and kill him, given the relative distance and isolation....(people still get killed out on reservations or in the wilderness, and most murderers aren't thinking of consequences when they do so....)

yeah, I'd say he was risking his life.
:asian:
 

dbell

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There's a couple of places in Santa Fe that sell Edward Sheriff Curtis prints and originals-the man literally took thousands of remarkable photos. Some of them, even more remarkably, of are of ceremonies-while they were posed, as you say, he often was risking his life just showing up, and the job he did convincing people of his motives was nothing short of Kissinger level diplomacy.

Rita (that's the wife) often gets us one for Christmas...something to look forward to..

Nice job! Bet they are not $15.00 anymore!!
 

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