Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan, is the story of a photographer in the early 20th Century who chronicled native American tribes.
I had never heard of Edward Curtis, a man who spent his life photographing American Indian tribes. He did his work between 1896 and 1930 and published 20 volumes, The North American Indian, meticulously documenting the lives of Native American people. It is fair to say that he was obsessed with his work, which ended up ruining his marriage and destroying his finances. He died in 1952 at age 82, broke and living in a flop house. While much of his work was subsidized by the J. P. Pierpont family, he failed to sell enough of the beautifully-wrought books to make any money.
Curtis was born in Wisconsin but his family moved to Seattle where he grew up. His father found a camera lens during the Civil War which Edward made into a camera at age 12. After a few years of arduous salmon fishing, he set up a photo studio with a 14” x 17” view camera with glass plates. By age 27, he had become the best photographer in the Northwest, gotten married, and was raising a family. Curtis was known for his incisive portraits. There was one Indian left living in Seattle, a very reclusive old woman, Princess Angeline. Edward went on a mini-quest to get her to agree to a sitting. The resulting portrait was extraordinary, capturing the pride and anguish of the last member of the once-proud Duwamish tribe. Seattle was named after her father, and she was the last Indian in the city.
A bit later, Edward was climbing Mt. Rainier to take pictures of the effect of changing light patterns on the landscape when he came across a group of men and women who were lost. He helped them get off the mountain and found out that two of the lost hikers were George Bird Grinnell, founder of the Audubon Society and an expert on Plains Indians, and C. Hart Merriam, co-founder of the National Geographic Society. These men – met by chance on the highest mountain in the US – would be helpful to Curtis in his professional life.
When he wasn’t doing portraits of Seattle’s best citizens, Curtis kept photographing Indians. His prints won several awards and his reputation grew. Grinnell and Merriman came to his studio and were amazed at the quality of his images. Curtis would spend hours getting the lighting just right, and more hours in the darkroom applying all sorts of esoteric techniques to make his prints glow. Remember, he was a photographer before film and modern processing techniques had been invented, so every picture required arduous labo.
r Grinnell was friends with Edward Harriman, the owner of the Union Pacific Railroad, who was sponsoring a trip to Alaska to study nature. Curtis was invited to spend the summer as the photographer for the group. The trip featured the best and brightest of naturalists, including John Burroughs, who, as you no doubt recall from last week’s Bob in the Basement book summary, accompanied Henry Ford and Thomas Edison as the Vagabonds traveled the US.
On the trip, Edward Curtis had a blast, taking pictures and listening in on lectures and conversations involving some of the most famous people in the country on what essentially was a floating Ivy League university. Curtis had a chip on his shoulder about never having finished high school, but he was eager to learn from his trip mates.
At the end of the trip, Grinnell invited Curtis to accompany him next summer to visit the Plains Indians that Grinnell saw as endangered by modern society. The first tribe on the list was the Blackfeet Nation, with whom Grinnell had a good relationship. Curtis got to photograph many aspects of tribal life and developed his insights into portraying Indians which would shape his distinctive style. Grinnell saw that there was a “Curtiss Indian” look to his pictures and suggested that putting the images into a book would make sense.
After the 1900 census, the federal government announced that the American Frontier was closed; there were no more unidentified spaces. The Indian population was in sharp decline. By the turn of the century, Native Americans possessed only 2% of the lands they had held. As the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville noted about Indians in 1831, “They were isolated in their own country, and their race constituted only a little colony of troublesome strangers in the midst of numerous dominant people.”
At the end of the Blackfeet Summer, Curtis had a Big Idea: photographing all Indian communities in North America before they disappeared. His pictures from that summer sold really well in San Francisco and Seattle, which reinforced his decision. He had to navigate family and studio obligations but he was confident that he could do it all.
He spent the next three summers photographing the Navajo, Mojave and the Havasupai who lived literally in the shadow of the Grand Canyon. The tribes often were in the throes of disease, usually measles, that was killing them. The federal government was limiting their activities and religious ceremonies in an effort to Americanize the Indians.
When Curtis went to a tribe he hired a translator/guide and a donkey to carry his tripod, large view camera and hundreds of photographic plates.
In 1903 Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce was in Seattle to lecture on what needed to be done to preserve Indian culture. He attended the football game between Washington and Oregon, which he thought was silly. Curtis was a supporter of Indian rights so the Chief dropped by the studio for a picture. It was a masterpiece, showing a once-proud man being overwhelmed by life.
Curtis spent summers in the field with the tribes. Even when he was back home, he was obsessed with his Indian prints, to the exclusion of his commercial work and his family. He was also bleeding money since his trips were self-financed.
In 1904, Audubon leader Grinnell arranged for Curtis to meet President Theodore Roosevelt. They hit it off since they were both outdoors types who loved adventure. Curtis took pictures of TR’s kids and did a superb portrait of the president. The picture is still a classic. Although TR had no use for Indians (“savages”), he liked the pictures and agreed to support Edward’s work in any way he could.
In July, Curtis was off to Arizona to take pictures of the Navajo and Hopi. He took a new-fangled motion-picture camera with him (Thank you Vagabond Thomas Edison!), and roamed all over the 14,000 square-mile reservation. He took over 600 pictures.
Back in Seattle, he still had no money and Clara was getting more frantic. He needed a benefactor and figured his best bet was to ask President Roosevelt for help. Teddy wrote him a letter of support which was sent to John Pierpont Morgan, purportedly the richest man in the nation.
The letter got Curtis a meeting with Morgan’s gatekeeper and then with the great man himself, who promptly rejected the pitch. Edward was not going to leave without funding so he brought out his portfolio of Indian pictures which JP loved to the tune of pledging $75,000 over 5 years for 20 volumes.
The irony here is that JP Morgan made his fortune building and expanding the transcontinental railroad, which by 1900 had destroyed what was left of many native tribes.
Curtis profusely thanked TR who quickly hit the photographer up to shoot the wedding of his daughter, Alice. The national press loved the pictures, further enhancing the reputation of the nation’s most famous photographer.
In 1906, the crew took off to Arizona and the Apaches. Before the trip, using JP Morgan’s money, he staffed up hiring several impressive young men. William Myers was a Northwestern graduate and a language savant. He could pick up Indian dialogues. Bill Phillips was a University of Washington alum who was a very organized jack-of-all trades. Frederick Webb Hodge was a Smithsonian ethnologist and scholar of American Indians. Curtis, using JP Morgan’s money, had hired an impressive stable of retinues, not bad for a high school dropout.
Curtis was going high tech. He was using the new 6.5 x 8.5-inch camera now, which was a lot smaller than the 14” x 17” monster he had been using. In an effort to save his marriage, he brought his family to his shooting sites. The kids loved it but Clara was not happy with the rough and tumble of the frontier. She took the family back to Seattle.
Curtis was back with the Hopi, trying to participate in and film their snake dance with real rattlers. This was a nine-day ceremony and Curtis was the first non-Indian to be allowed into the ceremony, although he was not allowed to complete it. He got some great pictures.
In the winter of 1907 Curtis started writing his first volume and he was terrified. He had little formal education and no literary training. He chose to leave home for the winter to write the book with his crew. Clara was delighted. Not really.
In the spring, Curtis went to New York City to sell subscriptions to his upcoming book series. He didn’t do well. He had no educational pedigree and that was a problem when trying to impress the highly educated swells of the big city. He did publish his first volume, which was a smash hit with the critics, not so much with the buyers. He still needed money.
From 1908 to 1909, Curtis and his most reliable employee, Alexander Upshaw, who was an Indian, explored the Plains Indian societies. Upshaw’s native heritage and language facility opened doors for Curtis and his camera. They recorded the secretive sacred turtle ritual, whatever that was. Curtis was publishing more volumes of his work, which continued to be well received. The Washington Post wrote glowing reviews. Later that year, Upshaw, who was 38 years old, went on a drinking spree and froze to death, depriving Curtis of a good friend and an invaluable aide.
By 1910, the good news was that Curtis had published seven volumes. The bad news was that his marriage was a joke. They had no money, and Clara was stuck with the bills. She filed for divorce. Edward had no home now, so, when he was in Seattle, he stayed at the downtown Rainier Club – room and board in exchange for taking pictures of club members.
Despite his lack of money and disastrous home life, Curtis was still considered a star because of his extraordinary Indian pictures. Newspapers published them, and critics fawned over his art.
In 1911 Curtis took his show on the road, including Carnegie Hall, where he presented his pictures as projected slides, some of which had been hand-colored, the high-tech of the day for images. He also showed movies he had taken of various tribal activities. “The Story of a Vanishing Race” was a picture opera – complete with a live orchestra – that everyone loved.
Tickets were expensive but shows sold out. JP Morgan had given Curtis another $60,000 beyond his initial pledge. Edward scheduled shows all over the country and continued to pack the house wherever he went. A lot of money was coming in but he owed so much that he saw none of it. Morgan had set up a board of directors to try to get a handle on the photographer’s finances. Despite the tour’s success at selling tickets, it was still losing money. Also, Curtis had sold only a fraction of the 500 subscriptions at $3,000 each (a lot of money back then) that had been promised in the initial deal. He was a great photographer but a terrible salesman and businessman.
In late 1912, Curtis decided that he needed to produce a full-length film on Indians, so he set up a company and decided to head north to film tribes in British Columbia. He felt that the “myth, mystery and magic” of Indians would ensure the movie’s success and that he would earn $100,000 per film, which was delusional. He did get some investors and took off for the shoot. He hired good local guides and proceeded to film ceremonies that had been outlawed by the Canadian government in an attempt to Canadianize the natives. He shot some film and returned to Seattle to raise money and tend to his affairs.
His kids still liked him but he and Clara were not talking. He and his brother, Asahel, had a falling out years before, and they were still at odds with each other. Curtis was called to New York City to discuss The American Indian project with the board of directors. Right about now, JP Morgan died, casting doubt on any future support for the project. JP’s son, Jack, took over the business and agreed to keep supporting Curtis, at least for now. Despite the financial disasters that plagued Curtis, he produced great pictures and books and shows that people really enjoyed.
Curtis published two more volumes and in 1914, he went back to British Columbia to film the natives. By now, most North American Indians had lost most of their tribal heritage; they dressed like everyone else and weren’t enthusiastic about performing tribal rituals. No problem – Curtis dressed them up in native garb and directed them in their dances and ceremonies. The film crew survived horrible storms and an investigation by the Canadian government.
In December of 2014, <em>In the Land of the Headhunters </em>(yes, the tribes had done a bit of that) opened in New York and Seattle and was a huge critical success. As always, Curtis had not figured the numbers correctly and had gone way over budget. A deal with the distributor fell apart so he had no way to get the film out to the public. He sold copies to the Museum of Natural History so that was that.
In 1916 Clara filed for divorce. Court filings showed the world how broke they were, a huge surprise to people who had only seen the beautiful pictures from the Curtis Studio and the Indian project. For the next 6 years, Curtis did publish two more volumes, but World War 1 got in the way of any further adventures. Clara won the divorce settlement but didn’t get much except the studio. Teddy Roosevelt died in 1919, depriving Curtis of his most important backer.
Curtis moved to Hollywood and made some money on photography. He also was hired by director Cecile B. DeMille to be the official photographer for <em>The Ten Commandments</em>, which became a huge hit in 1923. But these were bad days for Edward who was depressed and lethargic.
By the mid-1920s, Curtis had bounced back. He published the 12th volume. His Hollywood studio was making money, so he was off to do more pictures of Indians, this time in California. He was joined by his daughter, Florence, and by all accounts they had a fine time driving an old Chevy all over Northern California, finding and taking pictures of hidden tribes. He used pictures from his earlier days in Oregon and Nevada plus the new ones and put out three more volumes. He also finished volumes XVI and XVII, which highlighted tribes in the Southwest.
Jack Pierpont called Curtis to New York to negotiate the terms of further support which would involve signing the copyright over to the Pierpont company, a hard pill to swallow.
In 1925, Curtis and crew took off for the Northern Plains in the US and Canada to photograph the Cree and Comanche tribes. Right around now, Curtis lost two of his best employees who were sick of not getting paid. William Myers and Frederick Hodge, hired in 1906, left around the same time to pursue activities that would actually pay them. Curtis dedicated his XVIII volume to Myers who had written a lot of the copy in the books.
In 1927, Edward Curtis was almost 60 years old, broke, and exhausted. It was clearly time for one more adventure, this time to Alaska accompanied by his daughter, Beth, who had taken over the Seattle studio after the divorce and done well. In June they took a ship to Nome and then purchased a 40-foot boat to go further north. In August they reached a small group of Eskimos and took pictures. By late September they had gone further north and found more natives to shoot. They were blasted by a multi-day blizzard but at the end of the month they headed back to Seattle. Curtis returned to his beloved city with no press waiting for him. He was yesterday’s news.
Clara sued him for not paying alimony and he spent some time in jail. At the hearing, he pleaded poverty, which the judge at first found hard to believe, but Curtis was released because he indeed had no money.
He still had the support of Jack Morgan to finish the last two volumes. The Wichita and Comanche Indians of Oklahoma were next up for volume XIX with the Alaska trip finishing up the project in volume XX. The Morgans had given him $2.5 million dollars ($40 million dollars today) over 25 years, none of which went to Curtis as salary.
In 1932, Edward wanted a new adventure so he reached out to the Morgan company for funding. There was no reply. Curtis did a little gold prospecting around Seattle, and in 1936 DeMille hired him to do photography for a movie he was filming in Montana.
There were 222 sets of The North American Indian produced for subscribers. Most were lost over the years, but a few still survive. Bookseller Charles Lauriat of Boston purchased a treasure trove of prints and photographic plates for $1,000.
In 1948, Curtis was living in Los Angeles and starting to write his memoir. He sold some photos and his daughter, Beth, helped him out. His health was failing, and many of those who had worked with him on his quest had died. Edward Curtis passed away on October 19, 1952, of a heart attack. He joined his fellow legendary photographer, Matthew Brady, who began his career documenting the Civil War, in dying penniless and virtually unknown. Curtis had a modest 6-paragraph obituary in the Seattle Times, which had enthusiastically promoted his work for 20 years during the glory days.
But wait! There is a better ending!
In the early 1970s, there was a revival of interest in native peoples. Some of the interest was faddish but much was based on a genuine curiosity about what had happened to the people who really settled the continent. A photographer from the Southwest, Karl Kernberger, found out about Lauriat’s collection of Edward Curtis’s work and traveled to Boston to check it out.
He banded together with other sponsors and bought the collection and moved it to Santa Fe where it was displayed and made into coffee-table books. Lois Flury, a collector in Austin, TX, acquired Curtis’s material and moved it to Seattle to open a gallery that was literally within a block or two of where Edward Curtis took his first picture of an Indian, Princess Angeline, in 1896.
Curtis’s work product is almost priceless today. A print of Chief Joseph went for $169,000 in 2010. Complete sets of his work run into the millions of dollars on the market for collectors.
But the greatest value of Curtis’s work had nothing to do with money. He recorded 10,000 Indian chants and songs, wrote dictionaries of hundreds of native languages, recorded hundreds of motion pictures, and took over 40,000 pictures of the first Americans. His life’s work set the foundation for a renewal of curiosity about these past cultures, especially from Native Americans themselves, Schools on reservations feature tribal chants and teach students the old languages. Even Curtis’s movie flop about headhunters got revitalized in a new cut with a better title, In the Land of the War Canoes.
Native Americans did not vanish from the land as Curtis feared. They comprise about 1% of the population, up 18% in a decade. They still face systemic unfairness and discrimination, but Curtis would be pleased that his people are still very much with us.
Bob’s Take
This was a very interesting and enjoyable book for me for many reasons. First, both the text and the pictures are printed in brown ink. That gives a nice look to it, especially for the pictures which beg to be printed in sepia ink.
Second, I really enjoyed being a photographer in my wayward youth. It was fun, and people were impressed and amazed that I got paid decent money to take pictures. Edward Curtis was a consummate photographer, although he didn’t get paid to take pictures on the project of a lifetime.
Curtis was way ahead of his time in his use of cutting-edge technique. He was one of the first commercial photographers in the Northwest, and he became a media sensation and a darling of the art patrons. He invented lots of photogravure techniques (a fancy word for printing). He used recording devices and motion picture cameras, and he converted prints into slides for shows. He employed technology well.
He initially used a 14 x 17-inch camera with glass plates that needed to be kept in the dark.
The camera was big and heavy as was the tripod. Even the “new” 6.5 x 8.5-inch camera that he ended up using during the second half of the project was big. Back in the 1970s, I occasionally used a 5 x 7-inch view camera that was awkward and hard to move around. I needed to hand-develop each 5x7 inch negative. That was easy compared to what Curtis had to do to get a print.
He would take 500 to 600 pictures on a shoot. That’s a lot of glass plates to lug around. That would be nothing on a smartphone.
He took no salary for over 20 years of working on the tribes’ project. Who would do that today?
Twenty years after his death, the value of his art was appreciated. But his main achievement was to provide tens of thousands of pieces of primary sources to scholars and tribes. He literally provided the raw material needed to understand Native Americans.
Curtis was upset that, as time went on, the tribes lost their native identity. He could do nothing about the Americanization and Canadianization of the tribes, but his body of work provided the motherlode of documentation on how Indians lived for most of their time on our continent. Those recordings, movies, writings, and photographs enabled modern researchers and just regular people to look back and recreate the tribes of yore.
Author Timothy Egan summed this story up nicely:
Though Edward Curtis never made a dime producing what was arguably the most expansive and comprehensive publication undertaken by a single citizen of the United States, though he went to his death without the acknowledgement he so wanted in life, and though he paid for his obsession with the loss of friends, a marriage and the irreplaceable hours of watching a family bloom, he always believed his words and pictures would come to life long after he’d passed - the artist’s lasting reward of immortality.
