Edward S. Curtis and His Record of Native Peoples

The offering-San Ildefonso

Loretta reports:

Currently I’m in Florida, living around the corner from an ancient Native American site (about which I’ll post later), which has made me conscious of how much has been lost of our history, as native peoples and their cultures were decimated or wiped out entirely, thanks to not only to Europeans, but sometimes, other Native Americans. We’ll never see photos of Southwest Florida’s Calusa tribe members, but thanks to the photographer I’m featuring today, we have thousands of images of other Native Americans.

Edward Sheriff Curtis built his own camera when he was twelve and became a professional photographer in his late teens. In the early 1900s, he embarked on a project of photographing Native Americans that lasted more than 20 years.

Lucille

The Library of Congress has a large collection of his photographic prints. Above and below are examples from the online images. But before searching for Edward S Curtis at the Library of Congress, you might want to take a look at these large- scale images at LightStalking, some of which I found deeply moving as well as breathtaking.

Images all by Edward Sheriff Curtis:

The offering--San Ildefonso c 1927

Lucille c 1907

Cheyenne Belle c 1904

all courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Cheyenne Belle

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.