1904 - Vanishing Tribes of Native Americans

Native Americans were the great casualty of the U.S.’s grand westward advance. As settlers tamed the seemingly boundless stretches of the young nation, they evicted Indians from their ancestral lands, shoving them into impoverished reservations and forcing them to assimilate.

Fearing the imminent disappearance of America’s first inhabitants, Edward Curtis spent more than 20 years crisscrossing North America, recording the histories, legends, songs and language, of 80 different tribes, showing them as a noble people—“the old time Indian, his dress, his ceremonies, his life and manners.”

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