Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty

Edward S. Curtis “wanted to document a way of life that he thought might be erased by the spread of white civilization and industrialization. With his photographs, Curtis told a friend, ‘I want to make [American Indians] live forever.’” This detailed biography focuses on this work, which became a twenty-volume set entitled The North American Indian. After photographing a Suquamish woman known as Princess Angeline in 1895, Curtis spent the next thirty years traveling from the Great Plains to Alaska to record tribes living in the northern and western United States. Filled with striking reproductions of his now-famous sepia and black-and-white photographs, the narrative discusses Curtis’s attitudes toward his subjects, his methods for setting up and taking his pictures, and his difficulties in getting funding for his project. The book also addresses criticisms of Curtis’s work. Each chapter incorporates a relevant sidebar (a particularly interesting one focuses on the views of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was a supporter of Curtis’s), and a map shows the locations of various Native American tribes. Back matter includes a time line, glossary, suggestions for further reading, a link to publisher-selected resources, critical thinking questions using the Common Core, source notes, select bibliography, and an index.