356
$15,000 per annum for fi ve years. This allowed for the
construction of a team of Native American guides and
the recruitment of an on-staff ethnologist. However,
Curtis was unable to fi nd a publishing house for the
serial, which sold for $3,000 a subscription, and he
was subsequently forced to take on the publication and
marketing of the series himself.
By the 1910s, Curtis found it necessary to raise
money and renew enthusiasm for the project. Between
1912 and 1914, while only midway through the publi-
cation of the complete twenty volume series, he spent
$75,000 producing a fi lm about Kwakiutl culture, titled
In the Land of the Headhunters. It was a commercial
failure and left Curtis in debt. During this time, Curtis
also wrote several books for the popular market, one
of which was Indian Days of Long Ago, published
in 1914. In 1920, after a fi nancially ruinous divorce
settlement, Curtis moved to Los Angeles and worked
as a cameraman for Cecil B. de Mille on several fi lms,
including The Ten Commandments before returning to
fi eldwork in 1921.
Over the thirty years Curtis worked on the North
American Indian project, he traveled 400,000 miles,
made 40,000 photographs, studied nearly 80 tribes in
the western United States, Canada and Alaska, and
transcribed, with the help of his linguistically talented
ethnologist, Seattle newspaper reporter, William E.
Myers, 350 myths and legends, 75 languages, and some
10,000 pieces of music. The total cost of the Project
ultimately ran to over $1.5 million dollars.
While lionized by the popular media for his aes-
thetic sensibility, technical prowess and the regality with
which he captured an enervated and ‘vanishing’ culture,
Curtis’ work also met with a host of denunciations from
ethnographers regarding its authenticity, casting him as
a dubious fi gure in contemporary studies of photography
and ethnography. Curtis believed that the most truthful
depictions of Indians were those manifesting no vestiges
of Anglo interference. He therefore manipulated his im-
ages through the process of photogravure or by burning
or crosshatching away with the retouching stylus ele-
ments not commonly recognized as part of indigenous
Native American culture. He also posed his sitters and
provided them with props, which may not have been
part of their tribe’s customary dress or natural demeanor.
With his knowledge of ethnology largely self-taught,
Curtis still operated under a generic conception of Na-
tive American ‘otherness,’ which critics feel is evinced
by the North American Indian representations.
By 1930, with the publication of volume XX, the
North American Indian project was complete. With
less than 300 subscriptions sold, the bankrupt North
American Indian Corporation dissolved and the project,
dubbed by the New York Herald in 1907 as “the most
gigantic undertaking in the making of books since the
King James edition of the Bible” ultimately met with
little critical or public fanfare. The Moroccan leather,
Japanese vellum and Van Gelder etching stock used for
each volume made the cost of each set prohibitive, and
America, mired in the depths of the Great Depression,
had long since turned its gaze away from the roman-
ticized conception of the West. Plagued by exhaustion
and depression, Curtis landed in a Denver osteopathic
clinic in 1932. Four years later, he returned to Los An-
geles, where he worked for Cecil B. de Mille on The
Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper. The 1940s brought a
fl ush of enthusiasm for new projects, and Curtis began
another mammoth historical chronology on gold mining,
which was never completed. Although suffering from
the bodily injuries sustained while conducting fi eldwork,
Curtis remained mentally active and productive until his
death on 21 October 1952.
Savannah SchrollBiography
Edward Sheriff Curtis was born in February 1868 in
Whitewater, Wisconsin, the eldest son of Reverend
Johnson Curtis. In 1887, after moving to the Washington
territory, Curtis’ father died and Curtis was forced to
support the family through clam digging, farming, and
odd jobs. He purchased his fi rst photographic studio
in Seattle in 1891 and married Clara Phillips one year
later. In 1898, he rescued three scientist-explorers,
Grinnell, Merriam, and Pinchot on Mt. Rainier and
was consequently invited to join the Harriman Alaska
Expedition as its offi cial photographer. Using his own
monetary resources, Curtis formally embarked on The
North American Indian Project in 1901. Impressed with
Curtis’ work and the enthusiastic endorsement given
Curtis by President Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan agreed to
provide fi nancial support for the Project for fi ve years
in January 1906. Volume I was published in 1907. Vol-
umes II and III were published in 1908. Volumes IV
and V were published in 1909. Volumes VI, VII, and
VIII were issued in 1911. Volume IX was published in- To generate capital and renew public interest in
the Project, Curtis produced the fi lm In the Land of the
Headhunters between 1912 and 1914. In 1915, Volume
X was published, and Volume XI was released in 1916.
In the same year, Curtis’ wife Clara fi led for divorce,
citing spousal neglect. The divorce settlement was fi nal
by 1919, and, as Clara was awarded Curtis’ studio,
Curtis and his daughter Beth smashed his glass-plate
negatives so that she could not profi t further from them.
In 1920, Curtis moves to Los Angeles, opened a new
photo studio, and worked briefl y for Cecil B. de Mille
on the Ten Commandments. In 1922, Volume XII was