The North American Indian | Page 2

work has far more than mere accuracy, because it is

truthful. All serious students are to be congratulated because he is putting his work in
permanent form; for our generation offers the last chance for doing what Mr. Curtis has
done. The Indian as he has hitherto been is on the point of passing away. His life has
been lived under conditions thru which our own race past so many ages ago that not a
vestige of their memory remains. It would be a veritable calamity if a vivid and truthful
record of these conditions were not kept. No one man alone could preserve such a record
in complete form. Others have worked in the past, and are working in the present, to
preserve parts of the record; but Mr. Curtis, because of the singular combination of
qualities with which he has been blest, and because of his extraordinary success in
making and using his opportunities, has been able to do what no other man ever has done;
what, as far as we can see, no other man could do. He is an artist who works out of doors
and not in the closet. He is a close observer, whose qualities of mind and body fit him to
make his observations out in the field, surrounded by the wild life he commemorates. He
has lived on intimate terms with many different tribes of the mountains and the plains. He
knows them as they hunt, as they travel, as they go about their various avocations on the
march and in the camp. He knows their medicine men and sorcerers, their chiefs and
warriors, their young men and maidens. He has not only seen their vigorous outward
existence, but has caught glimpses, such as few white men ever catch, into that strange
spiritual and mental life of theirs; from whose innermost recesses all white men are
forever barred. Mr. Curtis in publishing this book is rendering a real and great service; a
service not only to our own people, but to the world of scholarship everywhere.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
October 1st, 1906.
[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt]

[Illustration: White River - Apache]
White River - Apache
From Copyright Photograph 1903 by E.S. Curtis

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The task of recording the descriptive material embodied in these volumes, and of
preparing the photographs which accompany them, had its inception in 1898. Since that
time, during each year, months of arduous labor have been spent in accumulating the data
necessary to form a comprehensive and permanent record of all the important tribes of
the United States and Alaska that still retain to a considerable degree their primitive
customs and traditions. The value of such a work, in great measure, will lie in the breadth
of its treatment, in its wealth of illustration, and in the fact that it represents the result of
personal study of a people who are rapidly losing the traces of their aboriginal character
and who are destined ultimately to become assimilated with the "superior race."

It has been the aim to picture all features of the Indian life and environment--types of the
young and the old, with their habitations, industries, ceremonies, games, and everyday
customs. Rather than being designed for mere embellishment, the photographs are each
an illustration of an Indian character or of some vital phase in his existence. Yet the fact
that the Indian and his surroundings lend themselves to artistic treatment has not been lost
sight of, for in his country one may treat limitless subjects of an æsthetic character
without in any way doing injustice to scientific accuracy or neglecting the homelier
phases of aboriginal life. Indeed, in a work of this sort, to overlook those marvellous
touches that Nature has given to the Indian country, and for the origin of which the native
ever has a wonder-tale to relate, would be to neglect a most important chapter in the story
of an environment that made the Indian much of what he is. Therefore, being directly
from Nature, the accompanying pictures show what actually exists or has recently existed
(for many of the subjects have already passed forever), not what the artist in his studio
may presume the Indian and his surroundings to be.
The task has not been an easy one, for although lightened at times by the readiness of the
Indians to impart their knowledge, it more often required days and weeks of patient
endeavor before my assistants and I succeeded in overcoming the deep-rooted
superstition, conservatism, and secretiveness so characteristic of primitive people, who
are ever loath to afford a glimpse of their inner life to those who are not of their own.
Once the confidence of the Indians gained, the way led gradually through the difficulties,
but long and serious study was necessary before knowledge of