Hopi, at the Portal; Walvia (“Medicine Root”)—Taos; and Tûvahé—Jemez

The westward expansion that precipitated the Indian Removal Act of 1830 had disastrous consequences for Indigenous American communities. Forced from ancestral lands, their numbers dwindled; entire languages and customs soon disappeared. In 1900 Seattle-based photographer Edward Curtis embarked on a mission to show the humanity of every Native American tribe still intact. His prodigious efforts culminated in The North American Indian, a 20-volume publication that The New York Herald called “the most ambitious enterprise in publishing since the production of the King James Bible.” The Library’s holdings include this publication, platinum prints once owned by J. Pierpont Morgan (who helped finance Curtis’s project), and scores of little-known contact prints like these, which Curtis submitted to the Library of Congress to register his copyright.