Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty
Chapter One THE SHADOW CATCHER The old man sat staring off into space He wore a headband and a blanket surrounded his shoulders His face was deeply creased from age and decades spent outside in the hot dry climate of the American Southwest In front of the old man photographer Edward S Curtis prepared his camera By now early in 1905 Curtis was famous across the United States for his photos of the outdoors His shots ranged from mountain peaks to the huge expanses of the Southwest People eagerly sat for his portraits which seemed to capture the essence of the subjects in a single image Just months before Curtis had taken pictures of President Theodore Roosevelt and his family Now Curtis camera was about to capture the image of Geronimo The Apache warrior had long been resisting the U S government’s efforts to keep Indians on reservations He was the last American Indian to formally surrender to the government As a young man Geronimo had ridden his horse across the vast lands that would become the states of New Mexico and Arizona He battled Mexicans and then the Americans who tried to end his people’s way of life For 30 years he fought to protect his Apache homeland His fame grew as he eluded large forces searching for him in craggy mountains and across wide deserts Finally in 1886 Geronimo and his Apache followers surrendered
The catching of his features while the old warrior was in a retrospective mood was most fortunate wrote Edward Curtis in the caption of his 1905 portrait of Geronimo With Geronimo’s imprisonment some Americans saw him as part of an era that was fading away He appeared in Wild West shows that turned some of that history into entertainment And in 1905 Geronimo was selected to lead the parade at President Roosevelt’s inauguration That grand event was just a day away when Geronimo sat for Curtis at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle Pennsylvania Young Indian children were taken to Carlisle from their reservations to make them more like white Americans and less like Apaches or Crows or whatever their tribe was But as Curtis famous picture of Geronimo suggests even an aged warrior has his pride The portrait shows a man who is still angry at how his people were treated He is also a man
not ready to give up his people’s culture or forget its past After meeting Geronimo near the end of the warrior’s life Curtis wrote The spirit of the Apache is not broken By the time he took Geronimo’s portrait Curtis had spent several years living among and photographing many North American tribes He took formal portraits just as he had done in his studio in Seattle Washington But he also traveled to where the Indians lived and worked He 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 them live forever Curtis camera captured as he wrote in 1907 a scene in the high mountains of Apache-land just before the breaking rainstorm In the Territory of Arizona which was not yet a state an unknown Indian nicknamed Curtis the
Shadow Catcher because his photos captured both light and dark so well Others suggested that the name reflected Curtis ability to see shadows in a person’s heart or soul The trips into the Southwest were needed to achieve Curtis great goal to record the lives of Indians from the Great Plains to the Pacific as far north as Alaska But Curtis wanted to do more than use his considerable photographic skills He planned to learn about the tribes religions and daily lives hear their myths and write down their languages Using a wax cylinder he would record the sounds of the Indians words and music And he used an early movie camera to document even more of American Indian life No one had ever tried to do what Curtis hoped to do to study so many tribes in such detail Curtis wanted to share what he learned in a large set of books he called The North American Indian He felt great urgency to complete this monumental mission before the traditional ways of Indian culture disappeared forever When Curtis described his idea to Theodore Roosevelt the president replied No man could be doing anything more important
