stretched to the horizon. The sandpaper-colored walls of the houses looked as if they
sprouted from the tabletop of rock. Walpi could have been a Tuscan hill town lost
to time but for the absence of a church on the village skyline. The location and building
style of Walpi gave it two strategic advantages for protection from enemies: it was
camouflaged, appearing from a distance to be just another stone mesa, and it was an
impossibly steep ascent, making it difficult to attack. In Walpi, Curtis found a Hopi
man with feminine good looks, wearing hoop earrings, hair cut just at the shoulders,
deep-set black eyes. Curtis had him sit with a simple army blanket around his shoulders;
the austerity of the cloth brought out the attractive features of the face. The resulting
picture, titled
A Walpi Man,
was developed as a platinum print, a rare and costly process with superb resolution.
As satisfied as he was with this and other Southwest portraits, Curtis slipped into
periods of insecurity, at times panic, pressed by the urgency of time and the drain
on his bank account. Perhaps he
had
taken on too much. He was shooting contemporary photographs, but the pictures looked
like historical documents even before he developed them; the present seemed to morph
into the past inside his lens. Next year, he wondered, how difficult would it be to
find a young Hopi who could speak the language? “There won’t be anything left of them
in a few generations and it’s a tragedy,” he wrote Bird Grinnell. “A national tragedy.”
Curtis picked up his gear and raced east, to the White Mountains of Arizona, where
he hired an interpreter and went in search of Apache life. These Athapaskan-speaking
people were epic wanderers over a broad swath of the arid West. Their name bespoke
their reputation: Apache meant “fighting men,” but was also translated as “enemy.”
After the Comanche had pushed them out of the high plains of Texas in the early 1700s,
the Apache’s mobile societies were sustained by thievery, trading, raiding and hunting.
They never farmed. They preyed on sedentary Indians, feckless whites and unwary Mexicans
in an area almost as large as Great Britain, from the Sonoran Desert to northern New
Mexico. The White Mountain Apache were now confined to a reservation in the juniper-
and pine-forested land of a sparsely settled American territory, far removed from
any sizable Anglo town. It took days for Curtis, traveling first by horse-drawn carriage
and then on his own mount, to find the Indian communities. When he met a stagecoach
exiting the reservation, he was encouraged to find a dispirited missionary on his
way out—the preacher’s despair was a promising sign. He also ran into a government
farm instructor, who complained that “teaching the dirty Indians” to till the ground
was a hopeless task. Once among the Apache, Curtis found that Indian lips were sealed.
Those well-meaning men of the cloth and the plow had certainly done him no favors—poisoning
the well, as it were. Curtis devised a strategy: he would feign indifference.
“I asked no questions and indicated no special interest in more than casual externals,”
said Curtis. Every day in the field he watched—from first light until late at night.
“They were up at dawn, and bathed in pools and streams that their bodies might be
acceptable to the gods,” he wrote. “Each man, in isolation, greeted the rising sun
in fervent prayers.” After several weeks, he was allowed to follow Apache women as
they harvested mescal, roasted it in a pit and mixed it with other juices for a drink.
Still, he was only scratching the surface—an embedded tourist. He wanted detail, detail
and more detail. He heard whispered talk about a painted animal skin, a chart of some
kind that was the key to understanding Apache spiritual practices. Curtis offered
a medicine man $100—a fortune, more than anyone
sprouted from the tabletop of rock. Walpi could have been a Tuscan hill town lost
to time but for the absence of a church on the village skyline. The location and building
style of Walpi gave it two strategic advantages for protection from enemies: it was
camouflaged, appearing from a distance to be just another stone mesa, and it was an
impossibly steep ascent, making it difficult to attack. In Walpi, Curtis found a Hopi
man with feminine good looks, wearing hoop earrings, hair cut just at the shoulders,
deep-set black eyes. Curtis had him sit with a simple army blanket around his shoulders;
the austerity of the cloth brought out the attractive features of the face. The resulting
picture, titled
A Walpi Man,
was developed as a platinum print, a rare and costly process with superb resolution.
As satisfied as he was with this and other Southwest portraits, Curtis slipped into
periods of insecurity, at times panic, pressed by the urgency of time and the drain
on his bank account. Perhaps he
had
taken on too much. He was shooting contemporary photographs, but the pictures looked
like historical documents even before he developed them; the present seemed to morph
into the past inside his lens. Next year, he wondered, how difficult would it be to
find a young Hopi who could speak the language? “There won’t be anything left of them
in a few generations and it’s a tragedy,” he wrote Bird Grinnell. “A national tragedy.”
Curtis picked up his gear and raced east, to the White Mountains of Arizona, where
he hired an interpreter and went in search of Apache life. These Athapaskan-speaking
people were epic wanderers over a broad swath of the arid West. Their name bespoke
their reputation: Apache meant “fighting men,” but was also translated as “enemy.”
After the Comanche had pushed them out of the high plains of Texas in the early 1700s,
the Apache’s mobile societies were sustained by thievery, trading, raiding and hunting.
They never farmed. They preyed on sedentary Indians, feckless whites and unwary Mexicans
in an area almost as large as Great Britain, from the Sonoran Desert to northern New
Mexico. The White Mountain Apache were now confined to a reservation in the juniper-
and pine-forested land of a sparsely settled American territory, far removed from
any sizable Anglo town. It took days for Curtis, traveling first by horse-drawn carriage
and then on his own mount, to find the Indian communities. When he met a stagecoach
exiting the reservation, he was encouraged to find a dispirited missionary on his
way out—the preacher’s despair was a promising sign. He also ran into a government
farm instructor, who complained that “teaching the dirty Indians” to till the ground
was a hopeless task. Once among the Apache, Curtis found that Indian lips were sealed.
Those well-meaning men of the cloth and the plow had certainly done him no favors—poisoning
the well, as it were. Curtis devised a strategy: he would feign indifference.
“I asked no questions and indicated no special interest in more than casual externals,”
said Curtis. Every day in the field he watched—from first light until late at night.
“They were up at dawn, and bathed in pools and streams that their bodies might be
acceptable to the gods,” he wrote. “Each man, in isolation, greeted the rising sun
in fervent prayers.” After several weeks, he was allowed to follow Apache women as
they harvested mescal, roasted it in a pit and mixed it with other juices for a drink.
Still, he was only scratching the surface—an embedded tourist. He wanted detail, detail
and more detail. He heard whispered talk about a painted animal skin, a chart of some
kind that was the key to understanding Apache spiritual practices. Curtis offered
a medicine man $100—a fortune, more than anyone
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