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1890s, Curtis photographed the Indians living near
his native Seattle. On the basis of this work, he was
hired by the wealthy businessman E. H. Harriman
to document an expedition to Alaska, and he was
invited by artist George Bird Grinnell to photo-
graph the Sun Dance of the Blackfeet.
Spending nearly a million dollars of Morgan’s
fortune, Curtis will devote the next 24 years to trav-
eling through the West, persuading Indians from a
large number of tribes and groups to sit for him.
Trained as a society portraitist, he will photograph
his subjects in soft focus, often dressing them in
traditional clothing and posing them with cultural
artifacts he has borrowed from museums.
“Instead of the painted features,
the feathers, the arrows and
the bow, we find [the Indian]
in [the] blue jeans and cowboy
hat of semi-civilization.... And
so Edward S. Curtis, of Seattle,
found him.... He unearthed the
fantastic costumes of a bygone
time. He won confidences, dis-
pelling distrust. He took the
present lowness of today and
enshrined it in the romance of
the past.... [H]e change the de-
generated Indian of today into
the fancy-free king of a yesterday
that has long since been forgot-
ten in the calendar of time.”
—from an article on the
photography of Edward S. Curtis
in the November 15, 1903,
issue of the Seattle TimesA selection of the nearly 40,000 photographs
taken by Curtis will be published in the 20-volume
North American Indians. Presented as documents of
a “vanishing race” and its culture, Curtis’s works cre-
ate a romanticized view of Indians with great appeal
to non-Indians. Rather than making whites confront
the disastrous legacy of the dispossession and forced
assimilation of Indian people, his photographs show
defeated but noble savages who are conveniently dis-
appearing to make way for “civilization.”Congress passes the Osage Allotment Act.
With the passage of the Osage Allotment Act, the
Osage become the last tribe in Indian Territory to
agree to the allotment of their reservation. The tribe
negotiates for 500-acre allotments, far larger than
the 160-acre allotments granted most other Indian
Territory allottees. They are also allowed to retain
communally held mineral rights to their land, where
oil has been discovered (see entry for 1897).Geronimo’s Story of His Life is published.
In an “as-told-to” autobiography, the great Apache
leader gives his own account of the Apache’s mili-
tary resistance to non-Indian encroachment on
their homeland. The book is edited by S. M. Bar-
rett, who was allowed to meet with Geronimo,
still a prisoner of war, only by special permission
from President Theodore Roosevelt (see entry for
SEPTEMBER 1901). Barrett is aided in the project
by Asa Daklugie, a close friend of Geronimo’s, who
translates his words. Geronimo refuses to answer
any questions from Barrett, insisting instead that
the white man merely “write what I have spoken.”Angel DeCora heads the art program at
Carlisle.
Painter and illustrator Angel DeCora joins the
faculty of the Carlisle Indian school (see entry for
AUTUMN 1879) as the head of the institution’s De-
partment of Native American Art. A graduate of
the Hampton Institute (see entry for APRIL 1878)
and Smith College, DeCora was trained in non-
Indian art and art history at Philadelphia’s Drexel
Institute, where she studied with illustrator Howard
Pyle. At Carlisle, DeCora instructs her students in
non- Indian art techniques but encourages them to
research and experiment with designs and patterns