With the endorsement of President Theodore Roosevelt and the backing of J.P. Morgan, Edward S. Curtis set about accumulating one of the most important cultural records of Native Americans ever assembled. He photographed tribes from Indian cultures between 1907 and 1930 covering the Plains to the Southwest, Northwest, and Alaska. These images are not purely ethnographic records. Curtis was an artist and that is evident in the moving impressions and pictorial nature of his portrait images.

Image: Edward S. Curtis, Geronimo – Apache, The North American Indian, volume I, plate 2, photogravure on Dutch Van Gelder paper, copyrighted 1907, Image: 15×10 ½ in., on long-term loan from the Carnegie-Stout Public Library, gift of Mrs. Emma H. Ward. LTL.1999.11.2