on the reservation could earn in a
year—if he would show him the skin and explain what the symbols meant. His bribe was
rejected.
“If I showed it to you,” the Apache priest told Curtis, “I would be killed by the
other medicine men.”
“If I would give you $500, what would you say?”
“I would still say no. For if I was dead, the money would do me no good.”
Tribal distrust of Curtis was widespread. Apache threw dirt at his camera, charged
him on horseback, misled him, threatened him, cursed him, ignored him and laughed
at him. They complained to government agents about this intruder in their midst, trying
to record the sacred ways. When he left the Apache homeland in August, the rituals
were unknown to Curtis, the Great Mystery just that, his money useless, his project
among these people a bust. The larger narratives of how the Apache came to be were
protected by the medicine men. Yes, he had written down names and terms that he’d
heard repeated in ceremonies, but had no clue to their context. The few pictures from
that 1903 trip to the White Mountains were taken by a photographer who was never permitted
inside. One shot in particular,
Story Telling—Apache,
shows a half-dozen men at a hillside resting spot, two of them still on horseback.
The picture is notable for the detail of the land—hard ground and scrawny trees, thin
grass and stone trails—but reveals nothing of the people or their inner lives. He
would return.
At home, money was tight. Curtis was bleeding funds, trying to finance an undertaking
of vast anthropological and photographic scope with earnings from his portrait business.
He had a family of five to support and a staff of a half dozen at the studio. He joined
the Rainier Club, the most prestigious in Seattle, in part because it gave him a place
to sleep on nights when Clara was mad at him, and in part because of the access it
gave him to gentlemen who would pay a premium for Curtis to take their picture. The
other way to expand his business was to sell more Curtis Indian prints, at higher
prices. He started a line of Indian postcards for the mass market. When he held the
first major exhibition in Seattle of his native subjects, in late summer of 1903,
people flocked to buy framed photogravures, just as he’d hoped. On display, and for
sale, were images from seven years of work among the Indians of Puget Sound, the Great
Plains and the Southwest.
Another influential man in town, the newspaper publisher Alden J. Blethen, was backing
Curtis with barrels of printer’s ink. A native of Maine, Blethen had come to the Northwest
on a visit, liked what he saw and purchased a small-circulation newspaper, the
Seattle Times,
in 1896. Both men had found their life work in the same year. Using splashy graphics,
color, big headline type, broad photographic display and partisan Democratic Party
editorials in a city dominated by the progressive strain of Roosevelt Republicanism,
Blethen made the paper into a major voice of the Northwest. Curtis gave him perfect
pictures, which set his paper apart in a highly competitive market. Full-page Curtis
Sunday features, with the Indian photos taking up the majority of space in artful
layouts, were a hallmark. In the paper, the Seattle photographer was written up as
a dauntless adventurer, going where no white man had gone, living on his wits and
his guile, charming exotic natives, proving all the experts wrong. Curtis was physically
strong, movie-star handsome and, at a time when the first nickelodeons were being
cranked on city corners, artistically brilliant. “He lived Indian,” the
Times
said in one piece, though in fact Curtis did no such thing. “He was heap white brother.”
Curtis exuded an otherness, a dash of the bohemian “He’s an artist,” the paper said,
but “he doesn’t impress one as being part of the Latin Quarter, really. There isn’t
any long
year—if he would show him the skin and explain what the symbols meant. His bribe was
rejected.
“If I showed it to you,” the Apache priest told Curtis, “I would be killed by the
other medicine men.”
“If I would give you $500, what would you say?”
“I would still say no. For if I was dead, the money would do me no good.”
Tribal distrust of Curtis was widespread. Apache threw dirt at his camera, charged
him on horseback, misled him, threatened him, cursed him, ignored him and laughed
at him. They complained to government agents about this intruder in their midst, trying
to record the sacred ways. When he left the Apache homeland in August, the rituals
were unknown to Curtis, the Great Mystery just that, his money useless, his project
among these people a bust. The larger narratives of how the Apache came to be were
protected by the medicine men. Yes, he had written down names and terms that he’d
heard repeated in ceremonies, but had no clue to their context. The few pictures from
that 1903 trip to the White Mountains were taken by a photographer who was never permitted
inside. One shot in particular,
Story Telling—Apache,
shows a half-dozen men at a hillside resting spot, two of them still on horseback.
The picture is notable for the detail of the land—hard ground and scrawny trees, thin
grass and stone trails—but reveals nothing of the people or their inner lives. He
would return.
At home, money was tight. Curtis was bleeding funds, trying to finance an undertaking
of vast anthropological and photographic scope with earnings from his portrait business.
He had a family of five to support and a staff of a half dozen at the studio. He joined
the Rainier Club, the most prestigious in Seattle, in part because it gave him a place
to sleep on nights when Clara was mad at him, and in part because of the access it
gave him to gentlemen who would pay a premium for Curtis to take their picture. The
other way to expand his business was to sell more Curtis Indian prints, at higher
prices. He started a line of Indian postcards for the mass market. When he held the
first major exhibition in Seattle of his native subjects, in late summer of 1903,
people flocked to buy framed photogravures, just as he’d hoped. On display, and for
sale, were images from seven years of work among the Indians of Puget Sound, the Great
Plains and the Southwest.
Another influential man in town, the newspaper publisher Alden J. Blethen, was backing
Curtis with barrels of printer’s ink. A native of Maine, Blethen had come to the Northwest
on a visit, liked what he saw and purchased a small-circulation newspaper, the
Seattle Times,
in 1896. Both men had found their life work in the same year. Using splashy graphics,
color, big headline type, broad photographic display and partisan Democratic Party
editorials in a city dominated by the progressive strain of Roosevelt Republicanism,
Blethen made the paper into a major voice of the Northwest. Curtis gave him perfect
pictures, which set his paper apart in a highly competitive market. Full-page Curtis
Sunday features, with the Indian photos taking up the majority of space in artful
layouts, were a hallmark. In the paper, the Seattle photographer was written up as
a dauntless adventurer, going where no white man had gone, living on his wits and
his guile, charming exotic natives, proving all the experts wrong. Curtis was physically
strong, movie-star handsome and, at a time when the first nickelodeons were being
cranked on city corners, artistically brilliant. “He lived Indian,” the
Times
said in one piece, though in fact Curtis did no such thing. “He was heap white brother.”
Curtis exuded an otherness, a dash of the bohemian “He’s an artist,” the paper said,
but “he doesn’t impress one as being part of the Latin Quarter, really. There isn’t
any long
Similar Books
