Collection Spotlight

Edward S. Curtis and The North American Indian

Edward S. Curtis, Indian Girl, c. 1900, photograuvre, de Saisset Museum permanent collection, museum purchase, 6.250.
Photo credit: Charles Barry

This winter the Fresno Art Museum borrowed an important portfolio of photogravures by Edward S. Curtis from the de Saisset Museum’s permanent collection. Edward S. Curtis: Sacred Legacy Portraits of the California Indian, on view from November 20, 2003 through January 18, 2004, presented 32 photogravures from Volume 14 of Curtis’s The North American Indian, published in 1924.

Curtis published the twenty-volume The North American Indian as a limited edition between 1907 and 1930. Eighty Native American tribes are represented in the illustrated volumes and accompanying portfolios, which are organized by cultural area: Alaska, California, Great Basin, Great Plains, Pacific Northwest, Plateau Region, and Southwest. Volume 14 of The North American Indian includes images of Native Americans from the California region, including the Kato, Maidu, Miwok, Pomo, Wailaki, Wintun, Yokuts, and Yuki tribes.

Curtis’s ambitious intention was to fully document “traditional” Native American customs, dress, and ceremonies through text and photographs. The resulting 2226 published images were highly controversial, as Curtis was more focused on past customs and “lost” traditions than on portraying the Native Americans as they lived at the time. For instance, he did not permit his subjects to wear their everyday clothing if it looked too “European”— he asked them to wear their best traditional clothing or supplied them with custom-made costumes that he considered more appropriate. Curtis also photographed ceremonies and objects that the various tribes consider sacred and not intended for the eyes of outsiders. Such practices do not endear Curtis to contemporary audiences, yet The Native American Indian remains a vital document of Native Americans in the early 20th century, and Curtis’s imagery continues to influence popular culture’s portrayal of Native Americans.

Curtis’s detractors have also criticized the soft focus of the sepia-toned photogravures as helping to mythologize Native Americans as a “vanishing race,” yet it is the undeniable romantic beauty of these works that has made them so popular. We are proud to have shared the remarkable and dialogueinspiring images from The North American Indian with the Fresno Art Museum’s audiences. Four of the photogravures from Volume 14 are currently on view at the de Saisset Museum in the California History exhibit: Gathering Tules—Lake Pomo, The Fisherman—Southern Miwok, Canoe of Tules—Pomo, and A Summer Camp— Lake Pomo.

For more information on Edward S. Curtis:

Smithsonian Institution Libraries:
www.sil.si.edu/exhibitions/curtis

Library of Congress:
memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ ienhtml/curthome.html

For more information on the Fresno Art Museum:
www.fresnoartmuseum.org

past spotlights

The de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053
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