Edward S. Curtis: Coming to Light (2001) By Anne Makepeace

It seems appropriate that Coming to Light, the biography of Edward S. Curtis, has been published in “coffee table format.”  Curtis was a photographer who dedicated three decades of his life to capturing for history the culture of Native American Indians in what was clearly a race against time.   The book, by historian Anne Makepeace, is a companion to her PBS documentary of the same name, published by the National Geographic Society.  “Coffee table format” is not normally a compliment in my lexicon, but in this case, Curtis’ photographs coupled with Makepeace’s text is proof that there are exceptions.

At the time of Curtis’ birth a few years after the Civil War, the Anglo-conquest of Native Americans was nearly complete with a just few monumental battles yet to take place:  the Little Big Horn, the Massacre at Wounded Knee, the surrender of Chief Joseph and the jailing of Geronimo.  With defeat at hand, the cultural fate of the vanquished was moving into its final stage, reservation life and forced assimilation.  If documentation of the Indian way of life was to occur, it would have to occur immediately. 

Into this need stepped Edward Curtis, a master of the relatively new technology of photography.  From 1900 to 1930 he made it his life’s work to photograph and document Indian cultures ranging from the Four Corners region to Nome, Alaska, along the way establishing himself as a self-educated ethnologist without peer, befriended and encouraged by President Theodore Roosevelt, and partially bankrolled by none other than J.P. Morgan.  His published work, the 20-volume The North American Indian, remains the classic of its genre.

The presentation of Indian culture by “the white man” has never been without controversy.  Early Anglo attempts ranged from the romanticism of James Fenimore Cooper in print and Albert Bierstadt on canvas (a print of his masterpiece Indian Encampment hangs in my home), to the “scalp” tales of those with a vesting interest in seeing the Indian subjugated -- settlers, gold rush pioneers and “Christian” missionaries.  Curtis’ work covers all of this territory.

His first photographs were often staged to show the majestic power, the serenity and the idyllic – his initial interest being in the “art” of photography.  But as he mastered his craft, he also mastered his topic, expanding his work to recording music, ceremony and spirituality.  He not only photographed The Sun Dance before it was outlawed, but was initiated into the priestly order that put on the Hopi Snake Dance.  In his final years, as Curtis retraced his earlier travels, he recorded the faces of the disillusioned, starved and scarred by reservation life.

Photographs could tell this story alone, but Makepeace’s biography adds a component that is of equal interest and let me emphasize it's a tale of adventure.  She tells of Curtis’ involvement in the glory days of photography, and as a pioneer in the motion picture industry.  If you aren’t impressed with Curtis' connections to T.R. and J.P., then maybe you’ll be impressed with his work for Cecil B. DeMille.