Edward S. Curtis and The North American Indian: Shifts in Style and Politics (1907–1930)

Overview

• Edward S. Curtis’s North American Indian (1907–1930): a forty-volume project intended to photograph and describe Indian life “yet in a primitive condition.” It was meant to be a single, unified work of art, but is better understood as a sequence of shifts in style and politics over three decades. 1907–1930; about 40 volumes, with opening plate The Vanishing Race—Navajo as a programmatic statement of aims.

• Central argument (Shannon Egan): Curtis’s project moves from a progressivist, assimilationist stance to a later nativist, explicitly American artistic stance, reframing Indians as a source of a specifically American aesthetics rather than merely subjects to be documented.

• Two fulcra for understanding variation: (1) The Vanishing Race—Navajo (frontispiece) as an early, universalizing vanish-thesis; (2) A Nakoaktok Chief’s Daughter (1914) as a later, modernist-inflected pivot that foregrounds form, abstraction, and Indianness as an American art model.

The Vanishing Race thesis and opening images

• Opening plate (The Vanishing Race—Navajo, 1904/1907) depicts a group on horseback receding into a hazy distance; blur and anonymity erase individual detail, signaling the disappearance of the Indian race.

• This aligns with frontier rhetoric around disappearance at the turn of the century (turn-of-the-century frontier thesis, Turner) and with contemporary art (e.g., Fraser’s End of the Trail; Farny’s Morning of a New Day).

• The Vanishing Race adheres to pictorialist aesthetics (soft focus, pastoral mood) while setting up a political narrative: Indians as relics fading into an American past.

• Curtis’s captions and Roosevelt’s foreword merge ethnography with national myth, tying Indian disappearance to the nation’s own past and to assimilationist policy.

The political and aesthetic framework: progressivism (1900–1910)

• Early decades align with progressivism: assimilation of Native Americans and immigrants into U.S. society were framed as national goals.

• Roosevelt and financiers (notably J. P. Morgan) supported Curtis; a portfolio of approx. 39 photogravures per volume, with leather-bound editions funded by subscriptions and Morgan’s initial money support.

• Roosevelt’s foreword characterizes Indians as on the verge of extinction, linking their fate to the nation’s origins and to an Anglo-American “superior race” narrative; the Indians are depicted as archaic precursors rather than as living communities.

• In photography, Curtis’s early works often echo European antinomies of antiquity and modern civilization, mixing Indian subjects with classical or Arcadian imagery (e.g., The Apache, Life Primeval; Mussel Gatherer; The Mussel Gatherer echoes Millet; The Apache Reaper conflates Indian subject with a European peasant/iconic mode).

• Government policy visuals: images align with a program of “advancement of civilization” through education and farming, promoting assimilation while presenting Indians as potential American workers (e.g., The Mussel Gatherer, The Apache Reaper).

• Curtis’s writings and reviews show ambivalence toward education vs. civilization, yet he often cast Indians as ready for an assimilative model that mirrors Euro-American progress.

Shifts in style and the rise of modernist influence (1910–1920)

• By 1910–1920, Curtis’s photography enters the broader modernist milieu in New York; proximity to avant-garde galleries and critics situates his work among Stieglitz circle tendencies toward ab-straction, geometry, and formal experimentation.

• Kwakiutl House Frame (1914) marks a decisive turn toward architectural geometry and space as formal structure; the rectilinear frame directs the viewer’s eye to a vanishing point, creating three-dimensional recession on a flat plane.

• Dancing to Restore an Eclipsed Moon (1914) and Haida Slate Carvings (1915) fuse Indigenous subjects with modernist notions of rhythm, abstraction, and formal balance; Brancusi’s Maiastra and Matisse’s rhythms are invoked as models, drawing comparisons between ethnography and modern art.

• Aesthetic fusion: Curtis’s photography begins to be seen as a site where ethnography and fine art intersect, with some critics praising the cubist-like, geometric composition and others noting the ethnographic core.

• The Three Chiefs—Piegan (ca. 1900) and later Vanishing Race plates function as early “progress” to “native modern” experiments; Curtis’s early works sometimes align with Millet-like peasant imagery and with Stieglitz/Armory-era pictorialism, but his later work moves toward a distinctly American modernist idiom.

• Roosevelt’s and Hewett’s era: indigenous art begins to be valued for its flat, decorative, non-perspective design; Native American art, especially Southwestern, is framed as a primary model for a new American aesthetics distinct from European conventions.

The politics of race, eugenics, and the “vanishing Indian” (1900s–1920s)

• Curtis’s relationships connect to broader racial theories and eugenics debates: Osborn’s influence (American Museum of Natural History) and the 1920s shift toward preserving “native” traits for national strength.

• 1909–1916: Curtis and Osborn engage with “the best spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical traits” as something to be conserved; “vanishing” language is repurposed to legitimate preservation of a national identity.

• The Three Chiefs—Piegan (1900) and later Vanishing Race plates are read as a narrative that rationalizes white anxieties about immigration and the “white race” heritage; Indians are cast as a nonthreatening, ancient stock that validates Anglo-American civilization.

• Curtis’s 1911 publication of The Three Chiefs—Piegan with the caption “A glimpse of the life and conditions which are on the verge of extinction” signals a tie to these eugenic and preservational frameworks.

• World War I: Native American soldiers are depicted as “natural fighters,” used to bolster American military pride; Curtis participates in war-related projects (e.g., In the Land of the Head-Hunters, 1915; How Britain Prepared in 1916) and leverages Indian symbolism for wartime fundraising.

• Late 1910s–1920s: the nativist impulse grows, privileging “Indianness” as a specifically American asset to be cultivated rather than a vanishing problem to be managed.

From progressivism to nativism: two fulcra for reading Curtis (The Vanishing Race vs. A Nakoaktok Chief’s Daughter)

• The Vanishing Race—Navajo (frontispiece, 1907–) embodies the disappearance thesis, aligning with assimilationist policy and the construction of Indians as relics in an American historical narrative.

• A Nakoaktok Chief’s Daughter (1914) embodies a modernist revaluation: foregrounding sculpture-like abstraction, parallel lines, and a new painterly/photographic emphasis on form and texture; foregrounded relationship to totemic sculpture foregrounds Indianness as an aesthetic model rather than a passive object.

• The juxtaposition of these works reveals Curtis’s broader strategy: to stage Indians as both a historical horizon and a living source of form for American art. The project’s later volumes increasingly foreground Indigenous design as a modernist abstraction with national significance, distinct from the earlier sentimental/anthropological framing.

The broader art-world and the “American Place” (1910s–1920s)

• Curtis engages with the New York modernist milieu: 291 Gallery, Stieglitz, de Zayas, and others promote the idea that Native subjects can function as modern art. Critics note that Indigenous design can stand apart from Western perspective conventions; some compare Curtis’s native imagery to cubist and abstract tendencies.

• The Southwestern focus broadens Curtis’s palette: the Pacific Northwest and Arctic works give way to Santa Fe–Southwest subjects, weaving a path toward a distinctly American regional aesthetic.

• The “one hundred percent American” ideal (as articulated by Hewett and others) valorizes Indigenous forms as a core national resource, distinct from European influence and aligned with American modernist experimentation.

• By the mid-1920s, Curtis and like-minded artists (Sloan, LaFarge, Hartley) advocate for preserving Indigenous arts and integrating them into a broader American modernist project, marking a decisive shift from documentation toward cultural activism.

The final decades: 1920–1930 and the Southwest as a laboratory for native modernism

• The Southwest (Santa Fe and surrounding communities) becomes central to Curtis’s late work; he relocates and concentrates on Pueblo and Southwestern Indigenous cultures, seeking to capture what he terms “fi ne picture material” in native arts.

• A Paguate Entrance (1925) pairs the seated figure with architectural space, foregrounding the steps and adobe architecture as a formal, geometric guide to three-dimensional space; this work ties Indigenous design to modernist spatial thinking.

• Wall Painting for the Summer Shiwanna Ceremony, Santo Domingo (1926) exemplifies a tightly controlled geometric design, with axis-centered composition; the subject’s form seems to recede into a shallow architectural plane, echoing Hartley’s interest in Indigenous aesthetics.

• Jessie Selkinghaus’s 1925 review situates Curtis within a native-nativist circle that rejects “picturesque” labeling for contemporary Indian photography; she argues that Curtis saw Indians as a living element in American citizenship and culture, not as vanishing relics.

• The 1922–1924 period: Curtis helps organize the Indian Welfare League; debates over Indian religious freedom intensify as government policy seeks to regulate ceremonies, while activists push for citizenship and rights. Curtis’s stance oscillates between defending Indigenous autonomy and supporting assimilationist frames.

• In the wake of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act and the 1924 Johnson Immigration Act, Indianness becomes a national cultural resource rather than a demographic challenge; nativist rhetoric reframes Native culture as a core part of American identity.

Conclusion: Curtis’s complex project and its legacy

• The North American Indian is not a single, cohesive manifesto; it embodies evolving political and aesthetic agendas across the decades of its making.

• Early volumes emphasize a vanishing Indian as a foil for assimilationist policy; later volumes reframe Native art as a modernist, American aesthetic and as a model for national self-definition.

• Curtis’s work sits at the intersection of ethnography, art, and politics: a product of progressivist aims and a precursor to nativist, anti-assimilationist currents in American modernism.

• While Curtis’s activism on behalf of Indigenous rights is genuine, his photography consistently negotiates his own position as a Western artist and patron, producing images that serve Anglo-American cultural and political needs even as they engage Indigenous subjects as powerful aesthetic actors.

• Taken together, The North American Indian reveals a continuum from a colonial-inflected, assimilationist gaze to a self-conscious, nationalist modernism that treats Indigeneity as a fundamental, legitimate source of American art and identity.

Key terms and concepts

• The North American Indian (1907–1930): forty-volume project by E. S. Curtis; opening and framing theses around indigeneity and American identity.

• Vanishing Race: narrative that Indigenous populations are disappearing; used to justify assimilation and to recast Indian life as an antique or antiquated antecedent.

• Pictorialism: early photographic style emphasizing soft focus, atmosphere, and artistic interpretation; Curtis’s early images align with pictorialist conventions.

• Modernism and geometric form: 1910s onward; the visual language of Curtis’s later works (e.g., Kwakiutl House Frame) shows an engagement with architectural geometry, space, and abstraction.

• Native American aesthetics as American art: a shift from ethnographic documentation to using Indigenous design as a model for American modernist art.

• Nativism vs progressivism: two political-aesthetic modes governing Curtis’s work and reception in the 1910s–1920s; nativism privileges uniquely American Indianness; progressivism emphasizes assimilation and integration.

• Indian Welfare League and citizenship politics: 1920s activism seeking rights, religious freedom debates, and citizenship, culminating in the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act.

• The Southwest as a site of modern native aesthetics: a late-episode shift toward Southwestern Indigenous arts as a core source for American modernism and national identity.

• Key cross-art connections: Stieglitz, Matisse, Brancusi, Hartley, Sloan, LaFarge, and other modernists who intersect with Curtis’s work in creating a dialogue between ethnography and modern art.

Note on dates and figures (selected references)

• Timeframe of the project: 1907–1930; opening image also used as frontispiece; evolution across three decades.

• The Vanishing Race—Navajo: frontispiece establishing the vanish-thesis.

• A Nakoaktok Chief’s Daughter: 1914 publication; volume 10; demonstrates a modernist aesthetic in photography.

• The Second Decade (1910–1920): Curtis’s exposure to New York modernism; Kwakiutl House Frame (1914) as a key formal experiment; Dancing to Restore an Eclipsed Moon (1914); Haida Slate Carvings (1915); Brancusi, Matisse references.

• The Third Phase (post-World War I): A Paguate Entrance (1925); Wall Painting for the Summer Shiwanna Ceremony, Santo Domingo (1926); 1925 review by Jessie Selkinghaus; emphasis on Indigenous design as a modernist American asset.

• Major political-policy anchors: 1905–1916 eugenics discourse; 1922 Indian Welfare League; 1924 Indian Citizenship Act; 1924 Johnson Immigration Act; Bursum Bill (1922) and religious freedoms debates.

• War-era context: Indians deployed in WWI and wartime propaganda; In the Land of the Head-Hunters (1915) and related fundraising efforts.