Edward Curtis and "The North American Indian": An Exploration of Truth and Objectivity
By Ellie Gascoigne
In 1896 Edward S. Curtis began his life-defining project, The North American Indian. The project spanned four decades, consisted of 40 volumes of image and text, and produced over 40,000 photographs. In undertaking this colossal task, Curtis sought to record the culture and lifestyle of Native American tribes before it was ‘lost forever.’ Today, his photographs face criticism for presenting a romanticised notion of Native American life, while neglecting the harsh reality in which they lived.
By the time Curtis embarked on this project, Native Americans had been subjected to centuries of oppression. European invaders, and the disease they brought with them, decimated indigenous populations. In 1492, the Native American population numbered around 50 million. By 1900, only 237,196 remained. Those that survived faced cultural genocide through a succession of assimilation policies intended to ‘civilise the savage.’ In his introduction to the first volume of The North American Indian, Curtis acknowledged that while treatment of Native Americans ‘has in many cases been worse than criminal, a rehearsal of these wrongs does not properly find a place here.’ Therefore, while he makes occasional reference to the odd massacre or inevitable approaching extinction, this context cannot be found within the photographs. So why did Curtis choose to omit these realities? And how did his choices impact the truthfulness of these images?
An Oasis in the Badlands, 1905, by Edward Curtis
The photography within The North American Indian stemmed from a popular tradition of ethnographic salvage. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Western anthropologists decided to preserve the dying cultures of ‘primitive’ people. Photography, due to its supposedly intrinsic objectivity, was considered an optimum medium for preservation. This approach was rooted in Social Darwinism, the belief that inferior races would inevitably succumb to superior races. As the superior race, it was the anthropologist’s responsibility to document Native American life. Therefore, instead of depicting Native American tribes as they actually were in 1898, Curtis ultimately froze them in a past that no longer existed.
This romanticised portrayal was amplified by Curtis’ Pictorialist style. Pictorialism emerged in the 1880s as practitioners of photography sought to establish photography as a form of art, rather than simply a medium of documentation. Martha Kennedy determines the main traits of Pictorialism to be ‘a strong interest in the picturesque,’ ‘pleasing composition,’ ‘references to symbol and allegory, and signs of the artist’s hand (for example, use of soft focus, blurring of forms, retouching).’ At the same time, these Pictorialist photographs were presented within a scientific context. According to Mathilde Arrivé, when taking portraits, Curtis utilised anthropometric techniques such as ‘frontal view, rigid pose, centripetal organisation, static framing, and decontextualisation’ which allowed for ‘physical invariance and epistemic stability.’ Curtis’ photographs therefore presented a conflict between scientific objectivity and a more artistic, atmospheric approach. This conflict is clearly demonstrated by the words of Theodore Roosevelt in the preface to The North American Indian. He remarked that ‘In Mr. Curtis we have both an artist and a trained observer, whose pictures are pictures, not merely photographs; whose work has far more than mere accuracy, because it is truthful.’ But can truth be beyond accuracy? How truthful can a photograph be without informing the viewer of the full context?
In a Piegan Lodge, 1910, by Edward Curtis
Within The North American Indian, we can find very explicit incidences of information being suppressed. In a Piegan Lodge presents Little Plume with his son Yellow Kidney. In the caption, Curtis writes of several objects that surround them. He makes thorough notes of ‘the ever-present pipe and its accessories on the tobacco cutting board,’ ‘the buffalo-skin shield, the long medicine-bundle, an eagle-wing fan, and deerskin articles.’ But, in the original image, there is another object that Curtis neglects to mention: a clock. This clock acts as a marker of American modernity, and so Curtis removes it. This example demonstrates an obvious violation of truth but, often, the relationship between photograph and truth is more nuanced.
Upshaw - Apsaroke, 1905, by Edward Curtis (Left) and Portrait of Alexander B. Upshaw, 1898, by Frank Rinehart (Right)
To produce The North American Indian, Curtis depended on a vast team which included hundreds of Native Americans. One of these individuals was Alexander B. Upshaw, a member of the Crow tribe who acted as a translator and informant. He was photographed by Curtis in 1905 for the fourth volume of the project. This portrait depicted Upshaw in traditional indigenous attire, bare-chested and wearing a headdress. It stands in direct contrast to a portrait taken by Frank Rinehart seven years prior in 1898. In this instance, Upshaw is shown in a buttoned up suit and tie. While this was a particularly formal outfit, it was true that, by this time, many Native Americans were dressing in European-American style clothing. Upshaw, according to Mick Gidley, could most commonly be found in a pair of dungarees. Based on this information, we might assume that Upshaw has been coerced into participating in this deceptive narrative. But Shamoon Zamir counters this point. By making this assumption, he argues, we downplay the power of indigenous agency.
To determine the degree of truth in this portrait, we must learn more about the individual depicted. The course of Upshaw’s life was shaped by the government’s aggressive assimilation policies. He graduated from the infamous Carlisle Indian School, one of hundreds of boarding schools intended to strip Native Americans of their cultural identity. At the opening ceremony, the school’s founder, Richard Henry Pratt, declared the school’s purpose to ‘kill the Indian and save the man.’ This programme of indoctrination had a profound impact on Upshaw, and shortly after graduating he published an article titled ‘What the Indians Owe to the United States Government.’ While Upshaw maintained a connection to his tribe through his work, he sought to minimise any possibility of being perceived as ‘primitive.’ In another portrait by Rinehart in 1898, Upshaw was photographed in an embroidered buckskin suit. He was accused of dressing as an ‘Indian’ to which he responded with a firm rebuttal in the Carlisle school paper. He wrote that the claim was ‘false and injurious’ and that he ‘would have his schoolmates know that he is trying to be a man.’ Yet, only a few years later, his perspective was transformed and he began to re-engage with his heritage. Zamir argues that Upshaw had the agency to present himself in the manner he wanted to be seen. Perhaps, Curtis’ portrait presents a man regaining ownership of his own image and identity; a truth that had previously been stolen from him. So does this portrait conceal the assimilation forced upon Native Americans? Or does it truthfully depict Upshaw re-embracing his Crow culture?
Cañyon de Chelly, 1904, by Edward Curtis
Crater Lake, 1923, by Edward Curtis
On numerous occasions, Curtis chose to frame Native Americans within the backdrop of nature. The individuals seem to almost form part of the landscape. In Cañyon de Chelly, the small, silhouetted figures are juxtaposed against the imposing grandeur of the rock formation above. In Crater Lake, a Klamath tribal Chief looks out over a vast expanse of water. Martha Kennedy notes that images such as these ‘evoke the Plains Indians’ past freedom within the vastness of nature.’ These photographs mislead the viewer to assume that indigenous tribes have control over their relationship to the land. The reality was that all Native Americans photographed by Curtis were confined to life on reservations.
Son of the Desert, 1904, by Edward Curtis
In one sense, these images do reflect the longstanding reciprocal connection between Native Americans and nature. Native American poet, Paula Gunn Allen of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, once proclaimed ‘We are the land… that is the fundamental idea embedded in Native American life.’ Of course, it is important to note that each Native American tribe has it’s own distinct and nuanced relationship with nature, and these relationships have been constantly evolving over time — yet an overarching belief in the interdependence of man and earth permeated all tribes.
But could there be another reason for this emphasis on nature? To produce The North American Indian, Curtis relied on funding from the nation’s financial elite. Collectively, his patrons owned over half of America’s railway network. These railways provided access to the American West, the development of which, William Goetzmann notes, ‘depended in part upon replacing the threatening image of American Indians with a pacific one.’ By funding the production of these images, patrons could claim a sense of ownership over the individuals depicted. Yet these images act not only to tame Native Americans, but also to indicate difference. Curtis’ target clientele were people like J.P. Morgan, who provided $75,000 of funding to the project. They were perceived as leading sophisticated, complicated lives consisting of commercial pursuits and urban settings. By contrast, Native Americans were perceived as an embodiment of their own ‘primitive’ ancestors. By intertwining the lives of Native Americans so closely with nature, Curtis is highlighting his perception of cultural distance between viewer and ‘subject.’ This is clearly demonstrated through a portrait, titled Son of the Desert, in which we see a young boy looking up at us. The caption describes an interaction between Curtis and the boy. He recalls that ‘this boy, as if springing from the earth itself, came to the author’s desert camp. Indeed, he seemed a part of the very desert. His eyes bespeak all the curiosity, all of the wonder of his primitive mind striving to grasp the meaning of the strange things about him.’ This revealing description shows Curtis explicitly tying the boy’s connection to nature to intellectual inferiority. So when looking at the photographs in The North American Indian, how far can we trust the objectivity of the photographer?
The Vanishing Race, 1904, by Edward Curtis
This photograph, titled The Vanishing Race, is the first plate of the first volume of The North American Indian. The accompanying caption explains that ‘The thought which this picture is meant to convey is that Indians as a race, already shorn of their tribal strength and stripped of their primitive dress, are passing into the darkness of an unknown future. Feeling that the picture expresses so much of the thought that inspired the entire work, the author has chosen it as the first of the series.’ The photograph presents a line of indigenous horsemen riding into a dark and indistinct distance. The faces of each figure are obscured and so they cannot be distinguished as individuals. This anonymity combined with the enveloping darkness of the image creates a sense of solemnity and foreboding. The photograph presents a damaging visual trope that was repeated in a variety of forms throughout The North American Indian. It is a pervasive trope that still has a destructive impact on Native Americans to this day.
It might be tempting to believe that these ethical issues remain in the past, to think that lessons have been learnt. However, this is not the case. Even today it is easy to find instances of exoticising and othering. The Omo Valley, in Southern Ethiopia, is home to numerous tribes. These tribes have attracted international attention and, with that, the interest of many photographers. A quick Google search brings up a number of results for photography tours to the area. One, ORYX Photo Tours, advertises the Omo Valley as a ‘see it while you can destination.’ Such terminology has dangerous echoes of ethnographic salvage. Writing for The Observer, Matilda Temperley describes her experience visiting the people of the Omo Valley. She writes that ‘The fancy-dress parade I witnessed… fuels fantasies of exoticism, but is performed solely for the benefit of the visitor who pays for the privilege of photographing it.’ Natterre, a woman of the Suri tribe, claimed ‘We do it for the tourists because they ask us to, when the tourists leave we wash our faces and go to the town.’ In 2013, photographer Jimmy Nelson, inspired by Curtis himself, published a photo book titled Before They Pass Away. The book presents photographs of 35 African, Asian, and Amazon tribes, all dressed in traditional attire. Nelson claims that he ‘wanted to create an ambitious aesthetic photographic document that would stand the test of time. A body of work that would be an irreplaceable ethnographic record of a fast disappearing world.’ The book faced criticism from Survival International, a nonprofit focused on protecting the human rights of indigenous groups. The charity’s director, Stephen Corry, has described some of the book’s photographs as ‘just a photographer’s fantasy, bearing little relationship either to how these people appear now, or how they’ve ever appeared.’
A photograph is created by a human being and so can never be entirely truthful or objective. A photographer must decide what elements of a story to tell, what to physically frame within their composition, the context in which a photograph should be presented. The issue of truth, and its manipulation, is often not straightforward. When creating or consuming work, we must consider; how might this photograph conceal information and mislead the viewer? What might the consequences be for the people photographed? The North American Indian exemplifies the importance of remaining vigilant in our ethical practices, aware of the motivations behind the imagery we are consuming, and cognisant of the impact photographs can have in creating a damaging visual narrative.
