Edward S Curtis - Native American Pictures

Native Americans - Art and Pictures of The North American Indian

The American Indians were the first to live in America – the real Native Americans.  They lived in North and South America thousands of years before Christopher Columbus reached the Western Hemisphere.  Where cities now stand, the American Indian hunted his game.  Rivers that are today crowded by ships and harbors were once fished and canoed by the Native American Indian.

Some lived simply, some developed advanced civilizations.  They created beautiful arts and crafts, invented calendars and systems of mathematics, and organized great empires.

The drum beat of the early American Indian has grown silent, and the “Indian’s way of life” has all but disappeared as predicted by George Bird Grinnell in 1900.  But the historical picture art left to us by Edward Sheriff Curtis in “The North American Indian” preserves the magnificence, the beauty and the heritage of these wondrous Native Americans.

In the 1890s, Edward Curtis began his career photographing Puget Sound Native Americans digging for clams and mussels.  One of his earliest American Indian models was Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Seatlh, the Suquamish chief after whom Seattle was named.

In 1900 Edward Curtis was inspired to photograph The North American Indian while he watched the Sun Dance gathering of the Blackfeet, Bloods, and Algonquin on the Piegan Reservation in Montana.  He estimated that his picture history would take fifteen years to complete.  It took thirty.

Curtis studied more than eighty tribes taking more than 40,000 photographs.  He published twenty volumes in The North American Indian collection between 1907 and 1930.

Take a moment to visit the pages of this site and experience the magnificent spirit of a people, a culture, a way of life that has vanished.  Experience what Edward Sheriff Curtis experienced while gathering his picture history of The North American Indian.