[water splashing] [water splashing] [singing in Kwak'wala] ♪ [singing intensifies] ♪ ♪ [singing, rhythmic drumming] ♪ ♪ ♪ [Donald Sutherland speaking as Edward Curtis] Any account of another people, their daily lives, beliefs, and troubles, is bound, to some extent, to be subjective, especially when one has shared that way of life.

The value of my work, in great measure, rely in the breadth of its treatment, its wealth of illustration and information about a people who are rapidly losing their native way of life.

♪ While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically.

Instead, I have sought to bring art and science together in an effort to reach beneath the surface of what appears to be.

[shutter clicking] ♪ [shutter clicking] ♪ [shutter clicking] In 1892, in the coastal city of Seattle, I bought a half interest in a small photographic studio for 150 dollars.

The studio of Curtis-Guptill opened and was shortly doing a good business in portraiture.

But I soon lost interest in commercial photography.

[bell tolling] ♪ Patrick Watson> Seattle was a boomtown filled with exports from mining and logging, it was a jumping-off point for thousands of men infected with the madness of the Yukon gold rush.

It had the excitement of the Old West, a new frontier in the minds of many who sought quick fortunes.

But Edward Curtis, driven by the growing possibilities of photography, set out to discover something different.

Edward> It was then that I really began to notice the Indians living on the Seattle waterfront.

It was a completely different world.

Their squalor and poverty amazed me.

I sought to know who they were and where they came from.

I wanted to capture the feeling of the Indians as they had been.

Princess Angeline, daughter of Chief Seattle, for whom Seattle was named, was one of the first Indian pictures.

The Mussel Gatherer, Homeward Bound , and The Clamdigger followed closely.

These four really began my work with Indian people.

Patrick> In the late 19th century, the Indian was seen as one of two extremes, either destitute and incoherent or romanticized as a part of nature.

An aggressive new world was taking shape.

The rush of immigration westward continued.

Progress was deified.

She appeared as an angel, carrying with her the Bible and weapons of a new technology, the telegraph and the railroad.

The frontier was rapidly disappearing underfoot.

Land was quickly becoming real estate.

The Indians Curtis saw were a dispossessed people.

For Curtis, they were America's conscience, the most visible sign that something was wrong with the dream.

In these early years, Curtis began the search that would preoccupy his thought and work for more than 30 years.

He had to find a way of portraying the life and spirit of the North American Indian, who had been buried under the speculation and greed of Western expansion.

Edward> In 1898, on one of my many trips up Mount Rainier, I rescued a group of men lost on a glacier.

Among them was George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream magazine, who, the following year, was to invite me as an official photographer on a scientific expedition north to the Bering Sea.

My Indian pictures on this trip impressed Grinnell.

Following summer, he invited me to northern Montana, home of the Blackfoot and Piegan tribes, to witness the Piegan Sun Dance.

Hundreds of teepees dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see.

I realized that this would never again be seen by man.

At that moment, the enormous task I had long been contemplating fell into place.

Canyon de Chelly, summer of 1906.

[whip cracking] Great changes are taking place in the Navajos' life now.

The passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some knowledge of sacred rites possessed by no other.

This information must be collected at once, or the opportunity will be lost for all time.

It is in this sense that my work is an exploration, a journey into unknown worlds.

What is it that lies behind this door that history wants to close so suddenly?

The outlines are already dim.

♪ Canyon de Chelly is like no other chasm of the desert and cannot be adequately described.

To the Navajo, it is the rift in the Earth from which the gods emerged to direct and teach men.

The echoing walls send back voices from those who no longer walk the earth, as it is not alone the home of the gods, but of the prehistoric people, the Anasazi, or the "ancient ones."

[men chanting] ♪ ♪ ♪ The way is winding, and there are many side canyons.

And as you ride along you see in the countless niches ruins of the old cliff homes built by the Anasazi before 1200 A.D. ♪ ♪ Antelope Ruin, White House, and Mummy Cave are three of the earliest homes.

Hundreds of pictographs and petroglyphs made by the Anasazi and Navajo are to be seen everywhere in the canyon and caves and on sheltered rock ledges.

[dove calling] Pictographs of horses date from the time since the Spaniards came in the 1500s.

The Navajo, who had arrived a century before, had to defend themselves against the Spaniards and later against the Americans.

In 1864, Colonel Kit Carson came here to the canyon, a Navajo stronghold, with a directive to round up Indians, kill any bearing arms, carry out a scorched earth policy, exterminating their flocks of sheep and burning their cornfields and orchids.

The Navajo made a last stand here, till those who were not killed were finally starved or captured and herded to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

They were held for four years until, in 1868, the Navajo began their long walk home.

Crushed as a nation, the inner strength of the Navajo people endures.

[birds chirping] [pounding] [birds chirping and squawking] ♪ Who are these people?

How shall I manage the portraits and the handling of life?

Conditions cannot be changed.

I must fit myself to them.

It became clear to me that I couldn't make my pictures unless I entered into their inner life and understood it from their standpoint, not merely as an outside spectator.

Some of the portraits can be made in my tent, which is a fair sized one made for photographic work.

Some can be made in the open.

It matters not what are the time and the conditions.

It's not a question of making pictures when one prefers, but when one can, and all possible tact must be used to secure what is needed.

Myers, my assistant, will do the recordings.

My other two helpers will collect the lore, logic, and the history of the people.

The one thing that must never be lost sight of is the purpose of the work.

To record the way of life of as many tribes as I can, to catalog their traditional dress, the foods they eat, their legend, their customs, their handicrafts, and the homes they live in, their natural and spiritual ways.

Without the knowledge of their political and religious life, however one cannot do the picture work well.

[rooster crowing] The Navajo are secretive and reticent with regard to religious matters.

Much of their knowledge about ceremonial life will be hard to obtain.

I will have to rely upon my Indian informant as well as the stories that some of the older people are beginning to tell me.

Kenneth> I used to be in that group.

It usually comes to nine groups, which is the Yeibichai dance.

Well, I lost my voice, so I can't hardly much talk louder anymore.

When you sing in the Yeibichai dance, you have to use high voice, loud voice, I mean real loud, because the mask has that little nose that comes out of the head.

It has a little hole in it where the sound has to come through, so you have yell real loud inside, make it come out, so if you lose your voice, you can't participate in it anymore.

[men whooping and yelling] [men chanting in Diné] Edward> I was allowed to participate in these secular aspects of the Yeibichai ceremony.

The Yeibichai, or night chant, is one of the great Navajo nine-day ceremonies for the treatment of mental and physical ills.

It also includes prayers for rain and growth.

The ceremony is intended to restore the harmony between the individual and potentially dangerous supernatural forces.

The dancers are embodiments of Navajo myth characters.

By the second day, a shallow hole is dug to the east of the hogan for the sweating ritual.

At sunrise, the patient takes his place and is then well covered with blankets.

This is probably given more as a spiritual purification than in anticipation of any physical benefit.

On the fifth day, a sand painting is made.

The patient is instructed to sit on the central figure at its wasteline.

Two masked dancers come running in, uttering unearthly howls in which every spectator in the hogan joins, feigning great fear.

Often, the patient actually faints from fright.

The effort of this night is to frighten him enough to banish the evil spirits from his body.

When he finally leaves the painting, it is destroyed.

On the ninth day, the Yebaichai dance begins.

It is a dance of thanksgiving and supplication as well as a celebration of performers and initiates.

[whooping and rattling] [chanting and rattling] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [male speaking Diné] Kenneth> When the Yebaichai get pretty close, they're real scary, huh?

Come right up to you, little-bitty eyes, even scarier.

Especially when they have a real good clown too.

Oh, he good.

Put on a lot of acting.

He's supposed to spank you too, the clown.

He's not supposed to hesitate.

Lot of them just go like that.

[woman laughing] Then he'll whip you.

Then they say that way, you live long time.

Even cold weather, that's what they do it for.

Be strong through cold weather.

[speaking Diné] ♪ Edward> For the first time, I am finding myself inside the ritual.

I must find a way to go further.

♪ I set up camp in an oasis under cottonwood trees.

My whole family has joined me for the rest of the summer.

Charlie Day, a trader's son who has grown up with the Navajo, and spoke their language was my interpreter and guide.

From Charlie, Beth, Hal, and Florence were learning the ways of the desert.

Suddenly, our camp grew still and silent.

[distant chanting] Charlie Day told us that an Indian mother was giving birth and it was proving most difficult.

The medicine men attributed her complications to the fact that White people were camped nearby.

Charlie explained, "You dare not leave until the baby is born."

I knew our lives hung in the balance.

My first thoughts were of my family and the danger I had placed them in.

‘Twas a hot day, well over the 100-degree mark.

My muscles seemed frozen with the tension, but I managed to pack my cameras and photographic supplies, my trunk of reference books, the motion picture machine, my typewriter, the Coleman stove, and my wax cylinder recorder.

The heat was so intense, each minute seemed an hour.

[man chanting in Diné] Chanting continued through the night.

No one slept.

At daybreak, Charlie rode into the camp.

"The baby has arrived."

We moved as quickly as we could.

Suddenly, a pack mule slipped.

My photographic plates were spread out on the mountainside in fragments.

We couldn't stop.

Later, my children told me how frightened they were that day.

And to tell the truth I, myself, have never been more afraid in all the years of my work.

I vowed then, never to include all my family at the same time on any of my trips.

Worlds apart from the Navajo, I left the canyon behind.

[water splashing] [jug thunking] Our object now was to prepare the manuscript and pictures for the first two volumes of The North American Indian .

In order that there should be no interruption, our party of four retired to a remote cabin in the mountains.

I personally seldom went home, and not even my family knew our whereabouts.

Every thought and moment had to be given to the work.

This being our first two volumes, many problems had to be solved.

Our regular working hours were from eight in the morning until 1 A.M., seven days of the week.

I permitted mail to come to our camp at once a week.

And no newspapers were allowed.

For 90 days, every member of our party worked to the limit of his physical strength.

Our greatest worry was over money.

My own resources, the investments made by friends in Seattle, were exhausted.

My photo studio had long been mortgaged.

To continue the work, I must now take a second mortgage on my home.

In the world outside, a financial panic was on.

The Seattle banks which had promised loans for the publication of these two volumes, notified me that they could not keep their promise.

I would have to raise every penny myself.

Because of this, lecturing and writing took me to the East for at least three months of each year.

Through an early exhibition of my sepia prints at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, my luck was to change.

It was well-attended exhibit, which excited the interest of many important people, including President Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was impressed by my Indian work.

I poured forth my consuming desire to photograph and write the history of the tribes of North America while it was still yet possible.

Roosevelt understood, as no other person I've ever known, the great significance of my work.

A few months later, through his help, I met with J. Pierpont Morgan.

This event changed my life.

Katherine> So, my father went with the pictures and was ushered in.

And the portfolio was on the table, and Mr. Morgan said to him, "I'm very sorry, I can do nothing for you at all.

I can do nothing for you."

And Dad said- he thought it was closed, but he said, "Since I've had the kindness of President Roosevelt and his sister and all these people, I would be very pleased to show you some of the prints before I leave, so that you will know when you talk to him."

So they were laid on this big desk or table, and Morgan began looking at them.

And as he went through them, he became more and more fascinated, though he was rather a reticent man, too, I'm sure, and he said, "Now, we could use this one!

We could use this one!

We could use this one!"

And Dad said, "Then I knew... something would come of it."

Florence> Dad said, "I walked out in a daze to the elevator."

One of Mr. Morgan's secretaries and a nephew of his smiled and said to me, "Mr. Curtis, I wonder if you realize what a strange thing happened today."

And Dad said, "What?"

or, "Yes."

He said, "In all the years I've worked with Mr. Morgan, I have never, ever known him to change his mind.

Didn't you know that he had dismissed you?"

Dad said, "Well, but he hadn't seen the Indian pictures."

[typewriter clacking] Edward> To cover my field expenses, Mr. Morgan agreed to set up a fund of 75,000 dollars to be administered over a five-year period.

There was one condition however, that my photographs and notes be made into one of the most beautiful and lasting sets of books ever to be published.

At last, my dream is realized.

I am now in a position to carry on my work rampantly and give my entire life to it and in that way secure all that is possible of the changing Indian life.

The magnitude of the task is overwhelming.

Through the years of trial and anguish I was to face at times, Roosevelt's confidence would sustain me.

In a letter from the White House he wrote, "I regard the work you have done as one of the most valuable works which any American could now do.

Your photographs stand by themselves, both in their wonderful artistic merit and in their value as historical documents.

You are now making a record of the lives of the Indians of our country, which, in another decade, cannot be made at all.

The Indian as an Indian is on the point of perishing."

Patrick> So Curtis found support for his work from the authors of that same industrial progress that was driving the Indian off the continent.

President Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan ironically had become patrons of the cultural lament for the passing of the Indian.

The Roosevelt years were characterized by a profound sense of the need for programs of conservation.

The Indian was a romantic symbol of the natural world they wanted to protect, but as a human being with a way of life he refused to discard, he was an obstacle to American progress.

Edward> Myers, my assistant, has gone ahead.

Preparations are underway for the new season's fieldwork among the Indian Pueblos of the Southwest.” [singing in Native American language] ♪ ♪ ♪ Patrick> The Pueblo Indians include the Hopi and Zuni tribes in northeastern Arizona and western New Mexico.

And the eastern Pueblos- Taos, San Ildefonso, and Isleta, along the Rio Grande River in central New Mexico and Acoma to the south.

Only about 30 Pueblos still survive out of some 70 inhabited at the time Coronado made contact with them in 1540.

[Native American flute music] ♪ ♪ Edward> The country is filled with extremes.

What was an arid desert when you made your evening camp is soon a lake.

Much of the region has never been accurately mapped.

We'll have to reach many of the places on foot.

Everything must be kept on the move, that no time is lost.

Teams have to be bought, supplies secured, and arrangements made for getting and sending mail.

On long stretches, the whole outfit has to be shipped.

While working amongst the Apache one time, I almost lost a wagon in the mud of White River.

Sometimes, such obstacles cloud the importance of the work.

Many have asked me what kind of camera I use.

I can only reply, "I couldn't tell to save my soul!"

It's enough for me to know that I have something that will make pictures and that it's in working order.

Acoma, spring, 1909.

Land of the Enchanted Mesa.

The name pueblo comes from the Spanish word for "villages."

Even before the Spaniards arrived, pueblo territories were growing smaller.

Prolonged drought in the 13th century brought major changes in the landscape and river systems which caused many villages to be abandoned.

Inter-pueblo warfare was behind the destruction of many more.

But under the influence of Christianity, the strong religious life of the pueblos went underground.

Today, both church and kiva are strong rivals.

[rooster crowing] The Pueblo Indians of the Southwest are the most community-minded builders of city-like dwellings America has yet known.

Pueblo is a reflection and response to the mountains and valleys on which it is built.

[dogs barking] Dances held in their plazas are a part of this relationship between the earth and the life that grows out of it.

The assertion has been made repeatedly that the Indian has no religion chiefly for the reason that he recognizes no supreme god.

Yet the fact remains that no people have a more elaborate religious system than the Indian.

[men chanting and singing] ♪ ♪ Much of the everyday domestic detail, so easily taken for granted among White people, has special ritual meaning.

For example, the remarkably smooth pebbles used for polishing the surface of pottery are found in small clusters among or near deposits of fossil bones.

I was told they are the stomach pebbles of dinosaurs.

Tewa women, and probably all Rio Grande Pueblo potters, cherish them inordinately, refuse to part with them, and anticipate very bad luck if one is lost.” Blue Corn> And these are very old polishing stones.

Belongs to my great-grandmother, and it's a very lucky polishing stone for me.

This is what makes it real shiny.

Then when we finish polishing, we start putting the design on.

We just don't put these designs that are on here on the piece of pottery because some people think they just only for decoration or just to look pretty, but we have to put them on to have a meaning.

But this one, the water serpent and the feather, very famous, and very, very old sights to us.

And this is the lightning that's on there.

This is the water serpent that's on there.

But I didn't put the teeth on it yet.

That one we call the raindrops, that's on there.

These are the lightning that's on here too.

They say, long time ago, my father used to tell me that this one is not under the ocean, that when the tail or part of the body moves, that's why we have earthquake.

I don't know how true that is, but that's the way they used to tell us long time ago.

So, I don't know how true- I guess it is true, you know, because we always believe things, what our old folks tells us, the stories.

[hoe scraping] Careful, it's hot.

A way of starting a fire, though.

[chanting and drumming] Edward> The kiva, a great underground or enclosed room for worship, developed very early into a specialized area for purely ritual use.

Religious life of the Tewa is primarily concerned with bringing sufficient rain and snow for their crops and increasing the supply of game.

To these ends, numerous ceremonies are performed, such as the Corn Dance at San Ildefonso, and feathered prayer sticks and sacred meal are offered not only at shrines of the deities but anywhere in the fields and mountains.

Prayers and feathers are also offered to streams and springs by any who may feel so inclined, that the water, so necessary for the well-being of the people, may not fail.

[water roaring] [water roaring] [water roaring] ♪ I first visited the villages of the Hopi in the year 1900, at which time I made a substantial number of my pictures.

Further visits were made over the following twenty years.

The Hopi villages were established on their present almost-inaccessible sites for the purpose of defense.

Their sedentary, agricultural life made them the constant target of the raiding parties from the nomadic peoples who surrounded them.

Until recently, the Hopi had been the least molested by White Americans.

Their land was seen as worthless desert.

Minerals are the only potential resource of any measurable threat.

The men are farmers and herders and tend to the religious matters of the community.

The wife is the owner of the home.

Descent is traced through her clan, not that of the father.

♪ Unlike the Navajo, weaving is the exclusive occupation of the men.

Pottery and basketry are the work of women.

The women also grind the corn, the mainstay of the Hopi way of life.

♪ [chanting in Hopi] Patrick> The Hopi ceremonies have as their principal object the bringing of rain and the increase of crops corn, beans, squash, melons, chile, and onions.

Norman Qumyintewa, a Hopi farmer and kachina doll-maker, spent ten years in Phoenix, Arizona as a printer, and then returned home to Hotevilla in West Mesa.

Norman> I got lonesome for my home... [laughs] for the people out here, especially for the Indian dancers, who are what we call kachina dancers.

Got lonesome for all this, so I came back.

And I got to participate in most of this.

Well, these kachinas, are so important to the Hopi tribe that...

They bring rain, most these do, bring rain, and some can...

I know all the kachina spirits, they can cure the sicknesses.

That's why we depend on these spirits to bring us everything what we... when we pray.

[chanting in Hopi] [chanting in Hopi] [chanting in Hopi] [speaking Hopi] [speaking Hopi] I'm encouraging these younger ones that are behind, telling them to hurry up and catch up with these taller ones because they are way ahead of them.

We think of these, our cornfields, our crops that we plant... and we don't neglect this field or the corn or the crops.

We keep encouraging them so they'll grow faster like the rest of these.

And have plenty for the kids to eat, or the whole, the people.

Corn is the most important thing to the Hopi tribe.

We use it to have... make the womenfolk make piki out of this when it's harvested.

And we make corn, grind offerings out of these when it's harvested.

So what we need is water on this field.

I believe every tribe or every human being needs water for his crops, without any disease or harm coming to it.

Maybe someday, the whole human race will understand this... as one people.

[singing and chanting] ♪ Edward> Most spectacular of Hopi ceremonial rites is the Snake Dance, which in reality is not a dance, but a complex, dramatized prayer for rain.

I became fascinated and then obsessed with one idea.

If permission could be obtained, I must participate.

To this end I returned over a period of many years, 12 in fact.

Renewing my acquaintance with the Snake Priest as well as my sincere request to be made a priest in the ceremony.

One of many things I had to cope with during this time was the presence of other photographers.

Tourists were everywhere, becoming a serious threat to the devout meaning of the rituals.

The irony of my own presence is a factor I often had to wrestle with.

Finally, however, in the late summer of 1912, permission was granted, and my initiation began.

On the tenth day, the snake hunt begins.

We stripped and smeared our bodies with red paint, which is considered the pollen of the snakes.

At the same time, The chief offered a prayer that the snakes would not harm us.

I was the first to see a snake.

We surrounded it and threw meal upon it.

There was no lack of snakes to be found, but the majority were rattlers.

On the 11th day, the priests sing seven songs to the snakes and mark rhythm with their feather whips.

When the singing is finished, the snakes seem to be in lethargic condition.

Even the Hopi do not manifest eagerness to dance with snakes.

So, it did not surprise me in the least that I was quite unanimously chosen to begin.

For the snake ceremony is not only a supplication for rain, but an exhibition of courage.

[men chanting] The two fraternities, the snake and antelope, line up, facing each other.

While the antelopes sing and shake their rattles, the snake men in trios begin the dance.

[singing and drumming] ♪ ♪ The hugger danced close behind me with his left arm around my neck.

With his eagle feathers, he made a stroking motion over the snake.

Undoubtedly, the fasting prior to the dance brought on a strange, evanescent state.

I followed the dancer four times around the plaza, tossed a snake aside to be picked up by the catcher, and received the next snake for a continuation of the dance.

[drumming and chanting] ♪ ♪ ♪ For the Hopi, there is a natural connection between the snake and rain.

Symbol of lightning is a zigzag line, much like the movement of a snake.

Out of this similarity grew the concept of snakes as messengers of the deities.

[drumming and chanting] ♪ ♪ At the completion of the ceremony, the snakes are returned to the desert as messengers to the gods.

Billowing, dark clouds formed over the mountains.

And the welcome rain began to fall.

I left them at dawn on the last day, and if anyone had tried to pick up my trail, he would have found it 40-feet wide, though I was trying to walk a straight line.

Dancing, fasting, and all the rest of it, it was not easy.

The Hopi have become a spiritual crossroad in my work, a still place in the middle of the continent.

These events are beyond words.

But the urgency of my work carries me forward.

[thunder rumbling] [wood splitting] We closed the moving camp only when severe winter drove us from the field.

Plans have been made for a season of uninterrupted writing.

I settled down in a log cabin to take up work on Volumes Three and Four.

The everlasting struggle to do the work, to do it well and fast, goes on seven days a week, 24 hours in each day, thirty-one days to most months.

[metal squeaking] Our work this season was among the Plains Indians, Absarokee and the Sioux.

♪ Absarokee country, severe winters, mountain streams, prairies and pine forests of Montana.

A.B.

Upshaw, an educated Absarokee from the Carlisle Indian School, son of Crazy Pend d'Oreille, was of inestimable value while assisting me with my fieldwork and collecting material of the northern Plains Indians.

He got me into the heart of northern Plains Indians in such a way that I personally feel it is a picture of Indian life closer than anything most White men will see.

It was not a matter of mere questioning for me, but one of discussion, conversation, and argument.

If I find a man who won't talk, even after all this I have a way which seldom fails.

I begin talking to them about the religion of another tribe, or perhaps it is his own, but I pretend it is another.

In the course of my talk I purposely make some theological error.

It irritates him.

"That isn't so!"

he blurts out, and before he knows it, he's telling me why it isn't so and going on to other points in his creed.

Bull Chief was the best Indian storyteller I've ever known.

With clear, keen memory, he traced back the Crow history through the lives of ten reigning chiefs.

At 85 years of age, he was still good for a 40-mile day in the saddle.

Shot in the hand, was quite a few years younger but old enough to know a great deal of the former ways.

Our tent's are where the Indian lodge is.

At nighttime around the lodge fire, these two told me many stories.

The pictures are the meaning of my work.

I'm uncertain as to how to explain them.

There is something beyond me in the natural world, something which the Indians and sometimes my pictures seem to merge with.

This I find exciting, but it is small reward when I realize we are witnessing the disappearance of Indian ways.

It is doubtful if, in the history of the world, any people were ever brought so suddenly to such radical change in their manner of living.

♪ There have been long, despairing periods in my work.

I feel sad and sometimes desperate.

[owl hooting] [wind howling] Occasionally I take a Sunday off and visit my family.

We had one visitor during the winter.

He stayed only a few minutes.

We sleep, when we can no longer work.

The long strain of the winter was such that I was seriously worn out at the end.

The last week of the final reading and correcting of the manuscripts...

I could not leave my bed.

[motor churning] Patrick> By 1914, Edward Curtis was back at work in the mountainous terrain of the Northwest coast.

Edward> I am most at home here and the water as unpredictable as the coast can sometimes be.

Travel is next to impossible, except by the numerous waterways frequented by the native peoples for centuries before the arrival of any White man.

[birds chirping] The Nootka, Cowichan, Salish, Kwakiutl, and Haida all were experienced, seagoing peoples.

One culture above all others drew me.

My early photographic expeditions led to intense work among the Kwakiutl.

With most other coastal tribes, the first thing to disappear was their ritual life after the fur traders, the missionaries, settlers, and government did the work of bringing civilization to the wilderness.

The Kwakiutl have remained the most resistant.

Their isolated island life, away from major trade routes and centers, has encouraged this.

The coast was plentiful with food.

Kwakiutl culture flourished and surpluses were collected.

Wealth was measured by an abundance of coppers, abalone shell blankets, and other trade goods.

This wealth was used to enhance one's lineage and tradition through the potlatch.

The potlatch is a whole program of theatrical dances with intricate masks and meanings, culminating in the distribution of food and goods.

For example, whenever a man accumulates a considerable amount of property and wishes to secure honor for his name, a potlatch, or a distribution of property, is made.

Privileges are attached to ritual.

Songs and dances are owned.

And their performance is an event which enhances the prestige of the owner.

By the time of my arrival, the potlatch had incorporated many of the commodities of the White world.

For this reason, I chose to photograph and film reconstructions of this event organized for me by the Kwakiutl people.

♪ By correspondence, arrangements had been made with George Hunt to act as our interpreter and guide.

Much of what I have come to know of the customs, language, and beliefs of the Kwakiutl people has been through George.

We headed for Fort Rupert, where George Hunt lived.

As we dropped anchor, in the shoal bay we saw below us the single line of dwellings comprising the settlement.

They were large, rough-board structures with their gable ends facing the shore.

There were also a few scattered totem poles and carved house posts.

Many large and beautiful canoes were drawn up on the beach.

A small island off the coast near Fort Rupert was an ideal site for the film.

I wanted it to be a popular story seen by many people, but one that would remain close to the findings of my long work for the North American Indian volumes.

At the same time I had hoped it would further subsidize my photographic fieldwork.

Finally, it took some three years of preparation till we were actually underway.

Women wove cedar bark capes and prepared the costumes while the men were busy painting the designs on housefronts and carving masks, poles, implements, and canoes.

On a protected beach on Deer Island, we assembled the Kwakiutl housefronts characteristic of the period before the White man.

Many people joined in the work to make the film as much a document of the old times as we could.

My film is a love story between Motana, son of a great chief, and Naida, a beautiful girl of high caste and the maid of his dreams.

But Naida is promised to another, the fearful sorcerer.

Motana must prove his love for Naida.

The story includes war and revenge, and the grasp for supernatural power, dances from the winter ceremonial, and a wedding potlatch.

Finally, we were ready to begin filming In the Land of the Head Hunters .

[water splashing] [water splashing] [water splashing] [water splashing] Motana has beheaded the sorcerer, and his marriage proposal is accepted.

His father, Kenada, and the whole tribe come for the bride.

The Thunderbird, Wasp, and Grizzly Bear dance on the prows of the canoes.

[men singing, water splashing] ♪ ♪ ♪ [singing and drumming] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [rattling and chanting] Kenada distributes blankets to the chiefs of the bride's tribe, and her father leads a dance of acceptance.

[drumming and chanting] ♪ [drumming and chanting] ♪ [drumming and chanting] ♪ A contest of drinking ooligan oil develops between the speakers of the two chiefs, and the dance privileges to be given in the dowry are displayed.

[shaking, drumming, and rattling] ♪ [yelling] ♪ [crowd whoops] ♪ [loud, thudding drumming] ♪ ♪ ♪ [heavy drumming and singing] ♪ ♪ ♪ Naida appears to Motana in a dream.

To prove himself worthy of her love, he must test his courage, one test being the spearing of sea lions.

So we needed photographs and footage of the Steller sea lion, largest species in the world which can be found on isolated rookeries off the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Parted from Grief Bay.

I had a keen liking for the thrills of rough water, but many had met disaster here.

Just three of us were planning to stay overnight on the rock.

My assistant, W.E.

Myers; my Kwakiutl guide, Stanley Hunt and me.

When cameras and supplies were put ashore, our boat, The Hesperus, would return to safe anchorage and pick us up the following morning.

The approach of our boat started a restless movement of the herd.

The bulls bellowed and barked in protest.

[bellowing and barking] [bellowing and barking] At the pinnacle of the rock sat a gigantic bull who towered above the others.

We dubbed him "The Mayor."

At nightfall, we would make our beds on top of the rock.

At daylight, we would be in the center of the great herd, affording a marvelous opportunity to photograph the tremendous animals at close range.

Cameras and film were wrapped and well padded and then placed in watertight bags.

A line was thrown ashore in which we conveyed our bundles of blankets, food, water, harpoons, cameras, and film.

Once we had landed, The Hesperus returned to Grief Bay.

I checked the chart carefully it had shown these rocks to be 40 feet above water at high tide, but when I reached the top, one glance revealed the awful truth.

And Myers called out to me, "Chief, do you realize there's no driftwood on this island!"

Simultaneously, we had made the terrible discovery, The government chart was wrong.

We would be underwater at high tide, we were more than 30 miles from shore, and unable to apprise anyone of our plight.

We gathered our equipment at the extreme high point of the rock.

Perhaps luck would be with us, and we would survive.

[waves crashing] [sea lions bellowing] [waves crashing] [sea lions bellowing] [sea lions bellowing] [waves crashing] [waves crashing] Edward> Through the night, I knew our lives hung in the balance.

[waves crashing] At dawn, the high tide hit us.

[waves roaring] [waves roaring] [waves roaring] [waves roaring] Our lash lines held, preventing us from being swept out to sea.

But today I cannot read about a human being sentenced to death without recalling that moment on Devil Rock.

Motana's test had, in fact, become ours.

Motana had proved himself.

[water splashing] [waves crashing] [waves crashing] [sea lions groaning] [sea lions groaning] [waves crashing] [sea lions groaning] Patrick> In the Land of the Head Hunters did not fulfill Curtis' commercial expectations.

It was shown at least once in 1914 at the Moore Theatre in Seattle, complete with live orchestra.

A little later, it opened in New York.

The film then seems to have dropped from sight until 1947, when it came to the attention of Professor George Quimby, who recognized it immediately as an early Curtis documentary.

The film has recently been restored with a soundtrack made by the Kwakiutl with Professors Bill Holm and George Quimby.

Prof. Quimby> I think that, if it isn't a documentary, it's at least a pseudo-documentary, and it's a good cultural reconstruction by people who knew what the culture was they were reconstructing.

This is what makes it unusual.

And in that way, it's analogous to what Robert Flaherty did with Nanook of the North .

Nanook of the North made... A second version, the one that now exists, was made at least four years after this one.

It was made in much the same way- That is, Flaherty assembled the costumes and got the Eskimos to get out of their Scottish woolens, those who were wearing any of them, and created in the same way half of a snow house so he'd have the light in order to make his motion picture, the same way that Curtis did.

Prof. Holm> And Curtis has had the reputation of reporting these things in a romantic way.

I suppose that there's some justification for this because he certainly went to great lengths to return... to pre-contact times in his photographs.

In the film especially, he made great effort to remove any evidence of trade or contact material.

I really think his efforts were toward reproducing the old ways as he understood them from his Indian informants.

I don't think he invented any of this, and if there seem to be romantic poses and romantic combinations of costume material, I think the romantic idea might come from his attempt to reproduce the old ways.

And consequentially, he was costuming people and was putting wigs on them, and he may have carried around costumes, but personally I feel he doesn't deserve that reputation.

The Kwakiutl are pretty much masters of drama.

That's a very important part of their ceremonial life.

They recognize it themselves.

They recognize that the dancers who participate are actors.

The name for their most important ritual complex means "acting" in their language.

And so, I think Curtis was fortunate to find people who had this great acting tradition.

And I don't mean that he didn't show a great deal of skill and ability in directing them and bringing out the things that he wanted to bring out.

But the Indians were acting at the time of the film.

Gloria> The film was being made in some... in some way that Curtis had imagined people to live.

And...

I saw the handbill from the Moore Theatre in Seattle, where it made it sound as if, you know, 1914, these people are still living like this, and it wasn't true at all because most of them had... already become part of the workforce for White logging camps or White canneries, this kind of thing, but you don't get any feeling of that in the film at all.

And that it's... it's very much a...

I keep thinking of it as a very hokey kind of film because of the way it shows Kwakiutl people.

I think it's...

The most important thing about it is that it's one of the few films where you see... those magnificent canoes moving.

There's a few of them around, sitting in museums, but in the film, you get some idea of the way they moved in the water.

The use of the masks I think is something that's very important because, again, you see a lot of masks, but they're sitting on museum shelves.

The costumes.

I think those are...

If you forget about the story altogether, it's a very important film because of the kinds of things that it shows.

But the story, it just really doesn't make very much sense.

One of the things I can't figure out still is why people were willing to be part of this film.

And from talking to some of our older people who were part of it, it seems to me simply that they had... that they really had a lot of fun.

[drumming] [drumming and yelling] [drumming and atonal yelling] [drumming and howling] Edward> Revenge.

The sorcerer's brother, Yaklus, kills Naida's father.

And Motana is wounded, and Naida is taken captive.

The killing of the enemies brings on the winter ceremonial power of the warriors.

The ceremony of the first appearance of the masks in the house is followed by the performance of the masked dancers.

[drumming and singing] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [drumming] [drumming and singing] ♪ ♪ Motana learns Naida is still alive and goes to her rescue.

[waves lapping, gulls crying] [waves lapping, gulls crying] [waves lapping, gulls crying] [waves lapping, gulls crying] [waves crashing] Yaklus and his crew follow them through a surging gorge and drown.

[waves roaring] [waves roaring, gulls crying] [waves roaring, gulls crying] [waves roaring, gulls crying] [chanting] ♪ [plane engine humming] Patrick> On the north end of Vancouver Island, there are three Kwakiutl people still living who participated in The Land of the Head Hunters and who helped make the soundtrack for the film.

They live in Fort Rupert, where a lot of the original filming was done.

Today, Mrs. Helen Knox, Johnny Hunt, and Bob Wilson vividly recall their experience in making the film more than 60 years ago.

[Knox speaking Kwak'wala] Interpreter> She said they had fun, but they weren't allowed to laugh on account of the film.

If they laughed, then they get a falling out.

Then they have to reshoot the film because it was serious.

They were copying what the old people had done in former time.

[speaking Kwak'wala] Interpreter> When the people were coming into the beach, Mr. Schwinke would go out into the water and, take pictures of them coming in or when they were going out.

He'd walk right out into the water.

[speaking Kwak'wala] [Hunt speaking Kwak'wala] Interpreter> He remembers Mr. Curtis as a gray-haired, tall man with a goatee.

And he said he used to have quite a temper.

He said when Mr. Schwinke would be taking pictures and the film would jump off the reel or something, Curtis would nearly hit him, he would be so angry.

[laughter] Interviewer> How did everyone get back and forth to the island?

[interpreter speaking Kwak'wala] [speaking Kwak'wala] Interpreter> Johnny Hunt owned a gas boat, with a three-horse Palmer engine and it was Mr. Wilson's responsibility to use this gas boat and tow the actors in the canoes back and forth between Fort Rupert and Deer Island, where the film was being made, and he was told by Mr. Curtis to use his own discretion, weatherwise.

If it was raining, he said he spent the whole day in bed.

[laughing] Interviewer> Did Curtis have the people dress up or change their appearance in any way?

Other than the way they were living at the time?

[speaking Kwak'wala] Interpreter> They used the old-fashioned cedar bark costumes.

And when they got across to the island, they would put on the cedar bark costumes and their wigs.

[speaking Kwak'wala] Interpreter> They had to wear wigs and shave if they had any whiskers on because they were reaching back to how the older people, older generations, have been before then, before 1914.

Interviewer 2> Did Curtis pay the Kwakiutl people for their work in the film?

Mr. Hunt> Fifty cents an hour.

Interviewer 2> Ohhh.

[speaking Kwak'wala] Interpreter> Mr. Hunt said they were paid 50 cents an hour.

When they pretended to have a capsizing of a canoe, they were paid $5.

And I think the reason they had wigs on some people, because their hair wasn't the right color.

They had kind of brown hair, and he wanted them to really look like Indians.

[laughter] Interviewer 2> Indians in Curtis' time were seen as a vanishing people.

Curtis himself believed this to be true.

Could you tell us what you feel about this?

[Gloria speaking Kwak'wala] [Hunt speaking Kwak'wala] [speaking Kwak'wala] Gloria> Mr. Hunt says, in a way, Curtis was right.

Perhaps not at that time, but now... the young people today don't speak their own language, but speak only English, and he blames this on residential school.

He said the early missionaries who came to this area made a point of learning our language, so that when young people, Kwakiutl people, went into the school, they were spoken to in Kwak'wala, but later, the principal of the residential school didn't take the time or the trouble to learn our language.

From there on, Indian children who went into that school forgot their language and came out speaking only English.

Mr. Wilson disagrees and says we will not disappear.

[speaking Kwak'wala] Gloria> Mr. Wilson says in this village, language classes will begin for the children, and this is happening in many other reserves throughout the country, and we will not disappear.

[singing in Kwak'wala] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [chanting] [laughing] ♪ Patrick> In 1916, Curtis returned to Seattle.

His complete absorption in his work had broken up his marriage.

His wife Clara divorced him.

She was granted legal possession to all his work.

He left Seattle.

He took three of his children south to Los Angeles and set up a new studio.

Edward Curtis' commitment to producing an encyclopedic work on the North American Indian would consume his life for the next 10 years.

He retraced his travels in the Southwest, Colorado, Montana, California, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

By this time, he had recorded the lives of more than 80 tribes.

He had taken 40,000 photographs, 10,000 sound recordings, miles of motion picture film.

In 1927, he set out for Alaska with his daughter Beth.

It would be his final voyage.

On June 2nd, they sailed from Seattle on the steamer Victoria heading for Nome.

Curtis was 60.

His last field trip would take him to the Arctic where the final, 20th volume of The North American Indian , devoted to the Eskimo of the North Pacific, would finally be completed.

A daily log was kept of this last field trip, and Beth took 16-millimeter film.

Edward> The deck was crowded with passengers.

Our party is Stewart, my assistant Eastwood, and my eldest daughter, Beth.

[wind roaring] [ice cracking] We have passed the cannery, and now at the whalery of the Aleutian Islands.

The old familiar smell of the whales is in the air.

We are still fighting ice.

Progress is slow, and the direction is uncertain.

The owners are on the deck and are very anxious.

Ice fields are ice fields.

[wind roaring] [ice scraping ship] [wind roaring] June 27th, we've arrived at Nome and purchased the Jewel Guard.

"Hell, you can't die but once!"

was Eastwood's exclamation when he first viewed the Jewel Guard.

June 28, it's 300 miles to Nunivak Island.

All going well, we should make it in three days.

July 6th, 7:30 P.M.

The seas break over the deck constanly and everything awash.

From time to time, Beth passed lighted cigarettes up to me.

I think, I must have been some picture, standing at the wheel fighting the breakers and smoking endless cigarettes.

Everybody cheerful, but would rather be home.

Eastwood insists that he will do the balance of his Arctic exploring in California, and far from the sad sea waves.

I quite agree.

July 7th, 11 P.M. Well, we have had a hell of a time.

We've hit a shoal, and the engine's gone dead.

The swells continue to beat us further on up the flat.

We were soon solidly ground parked on the floor of the Bering Sea until the next high tide.

We're 15 to 20 miles from shore.

The condition of my lame hip is causing me a lot of anxiety, as I can only go as far as we can get by boat.

The wind is howling out there.

7 A.M., the tide has been in and is falling, and we are still parked on the sandbar.

We only moved her 100 feet.

Fifteen more and we would have been free.

Beth is a brick.

If she's worried, she's not letting anyone know it.

6 P.M., We got the craft afloat.

What a relief it was to feel her floating free.

Wind's still blowing a gale.

We had a celebration supper of eider duck with dumplings and tapioca pudding with apples.

Well, we know what the floor of the Bering Sea looks like.

[wind howling] We are at Nunivak.

It has certainly been 12 days of grief and some trying moments.

Out of the 12 days, we had 10 days of storm.

We worked ashore all day and made a good start.

The natives here are a happy-looking lot.

We should get some good material.

We know now, our decision to visit this island regardless of the problems was a wise one.

Think of it, at last, and for first time in all my 30 years work with the natives, I have found a place where no missionary has worked.

I hesitate to mention it for fear that some overzealous sky pilot will feel called upon to labor with these unspoiled people.

So happy and contented as they are, that it would be a crime to bring upsetting discord to them.

Should any misguided missionary start for this island, I trust the sea will do its duty.

[waves crashing] Paul Ivanoff, my interpreter, is about king of the island.

He has the confidence of the natives and can get almost anyone to talk to us.

He's in charge of the reindeer herd.

Through his help, our work on the island has been a great success.

July 22, Beth hopes to catch a small boat home via Seward and the Inside Passage.

Gives me a heartache to think she is so soon to leave me.

She has been the sunshine of our troublesome cruise.

My fear from the start has been that I might become completely disabled, but I am keeping up well, and I do not think my hip is much worse than when I started.

Last year's work in Oklahoma was a hard one on my hip.

I suspect it is fortunate, that this is the last volume, as I have a feeling that this thing may be permanent.

Let us hope not.

August 7, 5:40 P.M.

Sighting King Island, just a pinhead spot on the horizon line.

King Island is one of the most picturesque spots in all the North.

The island is but a rock pinnacle standing out of the sea.

Calm, quiet, day, great luck this time, as it is rare that one can make a landing on this storm-beaten rock.

It is noon now.

We are through and almost exploding with joy at our success in getting our pictures of the village.

These are my last pictures.

Nothing said, but a good deal of thinking done.

Patrick> Following his voyage in the Arctic to collect final material for Volume 20, Curtis suffered a complete physical breakdown.

Ill health and uncertainty about the future sent him into a crushing depression.

♪ The Indians first called photographers "shadow catchers."

They stood between the Indian and the sun.

Curtis was looking backwards through the present to fix an image that would remain for years to come.

He was standing inside the shadows with them.

His work, tinged with the idealism of conservation, placed the Indian in a personal museum, leather-bound.

It was, ironically, more a part of the character of those Frontier years than a difference.

♪ This was the final achievement.

Twenty volumes with their accompanying portfolios, only 272 sets in all, so costly, so monumental, and massive that they sank into the protected sections of a few libraries and the inaccessible private collections of the rich.

Curtis' dream of recording Indian life for everyone to see lay hidden under the weight of the work itself.

It would be 40 years before the work would reemerge.

Curtis died in 1952, unknown.

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