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    Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty
    Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty
    Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty
    Ebook83 pages43 minutes

    Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty

    By Michael Burgan

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    About this ebook

    At the turn of the 20th century, photographer Edward S. Curtis devoted his life to learning all he could about American Indians and sharing it with world. He took his first photo of an American Indian in 1895, and for the next 30 years he traveled the West and north to Alaska to chronicle traditional native culture. The result was a magnificent—and controversial—20-volume project, The North American Indian. While some scholars and American Indians found fault with the work Curtis published, many others greatly appreciated it. His grand endeavor was nearly forgotten when he died in 1952, but Curtis' rediscovered photographs are now recognized as treasures that will live forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCapstone Young Readers
    Release dateJan 7, 2015
    ISBN9780756552718
    Shadow Catcher: How Edward S. Curtis Documented American Indian Dignity and Beauty
    Author

    Michael Burgan

    Michael Burgan has written numerous books for children and young adults during his nearly 20 years as a freelance writer. Many of his books have focused on U.S. history, geography, and the lives of world leaders. Michael has won several awards for his writing, and his graphic novel version of the classic tale Frankenstein (Stone Arch Books) was a Junior Library Guild selection.  Michael graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor’s degree in history. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his cat, Callie.

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      Book preview

      Shadow Catcher - Michael Burgan

      Index

      Chapter One

      THE SHADOW CATCHER

      The old man sat staring off into space. He wore a headband, and a blanket surrounded his shoulders. His face was deeply creased from age and decades spent outside in the hot, dry climate of the American Southwest.

      In front of the old man, photographer Edward S. Curtis prepared his camera. By now, early in 1905, Curtis was famous across the United States for his photos of the outdoors. His shots ranged from mountain peaks to the huge expanses of the Southwest. People eagerly sat for his portraits, which seemed to capture the essence of the subjects in a single image. Just months before, Curtis had taken pictures of President Theodore Roosevelt and his family. Now Curtis’ camera was about to capture the image of Geronimo. The Apache warrior had long been resisting the U.S. government’s efforts to keep Indians on reservations. He was the last American Indian to formally surrender to the government.

      As a young man, Geronimo had ridden his horse across the vast lands that would become the states of New Mexico and Arizona. He battled Mexicans and then the Americans who tried to end his people’s way of life. For 30 years he fought to protect his Apache homeland. His fame grew as he eluded large forces searching for him in craggy mountains and across wide deserts. Finally, in 1886, Geronimo and his Apache followers surrendered.

      The catching of his features while the old warrior was in a retrospective mood was most fortunate, wrote Edward Curtis in the caption of his 1905 portrait of Geronimo.

      With Geronimo’s imprisonment, some Americans saw him as part of an era that was fading away. He appeared in Wild West shows that turned some of that history into entertainment. And in 1905 Geronimo was selected to lead the parade at President Roosevelt’s inauguration.

      That grand event was just a day away when Geronimo sat for Curtis at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Young Indian children were taken to Carlisle from their reservations to make them more like white Americans and less like Apaches or Crows or whatever their tribe was. But as Curtis’ famous picture of Geronimo suggests, even an aged warrior has his pride. The portrait shows a man who is still angry at how his people were treated. He is also a man not ready to give up his people’s culture or forget its past. After meeting Geronimo near the end of the warrior’s life, Curtis wrote, The spirit of the Apache is not broken.

      By the time he took Geronimo’s portrait, Curtis had spent several years living among and photographing many North American tribes. He took formal portraits, just as he had done in his studio in Seattle, Washington. But he also traveled to where the Indians lived and worked. He wanted to document a way of life that he thought might be erased by the spread of white civilization and industrialization. With his photographs, Curtis told a friend, I want to make them live forever.

      Curtis’ camera captured, as he wrote in 1907, a scene in the high mountains of Apache-land just before the breaking rainstorm.

      In the Territory of Arizona, which was not yet a state, an unknown Indian nicknamed Curtis the Shadow Catcher because his photos captured both light and dark so well. Others suggested that the name reflected Curtis’

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