Timothy Egan has followed up his Worst Hard Times with a
biography of a significant photographer who, like Ansel Adams, left us with
images that will stand forever. These
are images that speak more than the image.
If Adams taught us the power of wildness – Curtis taught us the beauty
and depth of the American Indian.
Edward Curtis found himself in photography and in
photography he found the skill to capture what others walked by or missed all
together, beginning with his photo of the daughter of Seattle – who lived in squalor
at the edge of the city named after her father.
The difficulty of her situation coming from the law that prohibited
Indians from living in the community named after their chief.
At that time she was an interesting subject and he had a
great career going in photography. A
school drop-out, he was becoming an important entrepreneur.
Thanks to a climbing encounter with C Hart Merriam and Bird
Grinnell Curtis developed connections and mentors. Bird Grinnell had a cause – the preservation
of the traditional life of plains Indians who were going the way of the
bison. It was 1900 and America had
defeated, stolen from, and destroyed as much of the American Indian cultures,
land and life as it could so far. Now it
was intent on going the last step and the unholy alliance of religion and
politics would take that next step.
Grinnell wanted a record before all was lost and Curtis and his camera
were the best hope.
Through a lifetime of persistence he became more than a
recorder of images. He found the time to
become accepted, to hear and understand their stories and to respect their
beliefs and culture.
The following passage describes the forces that Curtis and
the Indian people had to fight against:
“The Sun Dance was considered savagery, matching the law’s
description of an ‘immoral dance.’ Under
the Indian Religious Crimes Code, anything deemed unwholesomely pagan could be
banned – dances, feasts, chants led by medicine men. The regulations were
specific: ‘any Indian who shall engage in the sun dance, scalp dance, or war
dance, or any other similar feast, so called, shall be deemed guilty of an offense.’ As punishment, the agents could withhold food
rations and imprison participants of traditional religious ceremonies for up to
ninety days.
“The churches had been given broad discretion from the
government to spread doctrine and charity among the Indians, a clear violation
of the First Amendment’s religious establishment clause. Few politicians seemed to mind. ‘The Indians,’ said Thomas J Morgan, the man
appointed by President Benjamin Harrison in 1889 to oversee their affairs, ‘must
conform to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, forcibly if they
must.” The churches would give them
spiritual sustenance; the government agents must dole out food and goods. The
system was fraught with corruption and enforces by patronage hacks and militant
missionaries. ‘This civilization may not
be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get,’ said
Morgan. ‘They cannot escape it, and must
either conform to it or be crushed by it.’
Forced assimilation never had a more clearly stated goal.”
Writing the first volume of his North American Indian Curtis
tried to avoid talking about all the wrongs that had been visited upon the
Indian nations. He did not want to
rehash all these events, his goal was to capture a disappearing set of cultures
while they were still with us and he had a race against the government and
church that was taking away the basic first amendment rights just as they
insisted that the Indians meld with American society and become
assimilated. But even with his archivist
goals he had to state one basic truth,
““Through the treatment accorded the Indians by those who
lay claim to civilization and Christianity has in many cases been worse than
criminal, a rehearsal of those wrongs does not properly find a place here”, he
wrote in Volume I. He saved his loftiest
passages, as in his magazine journalism for native spirituality. “Ever since the days of Columbus the
assertion has been made repeatedly that the Indian has no religion and no code
of ethics, chiefly for the reason that in his primitive state he recognizes no
supreme God. Yet the fact remains that
no people have a more elaborate religious system than our aborigines, and none
are more devout in their performance of the duties connected therewith. Thre is scarcely an act in the Indian’s life
that does not involve some ceremonial performance or is not in itself a
religious act.””
Then Curtis added this poignant capsule of truth: “The
passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some
knowledge of sacred rights possessed by no other; consequently the information
that is to be gathered, for the benefit of future generations, respecting the
mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or
the opportunity will be lost for all time.
It is this need that has inspired the present task.”
Curtis ended up with 20 volumes of magnificent
anthropological images and stories. He
saw the true spiritual depth of his subjects and attacked the myths that
denigrated the Indians. His passion and
commitment ruined his business, destroyed his marriage and made his years an
odyssey of finding support and wandering the mountains and deserts to find the
remnants of magnificent tribes.
During this time he even worked in Hollywood where he filmed
the Elmer Lincoln Tarzan series – this silent film was the beginning of the
Tarzan franchise that would last for decades, but he was not interested in
pursuing it. He just wanted the money to
follow his dream.
Egan does a good job of showing us the lifestyle and the
challenges that Curtis was facing and the greatness of the final product.
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