Edward S. Curtis Chronicles Native Nations

Edward S. Curtis Chronicles Native Nations — page 7
Curtis’s beliefs were clear in photos such as this one which he captioned The vanishing race According to Curtis each year a woman of the tribe promised the sun she would build a lodge in return for curing the illness of a family member During the five-day ceremony itself tribe members sweat in the lodge made an offering of dried buffalo tongues to the sun and sang and danced A Massive Undertaking Curtis had been greatly impressed by everything he had seen at the Piegan camp In particular however the sun dance ceremony deeply moved him He called some portions of it wild terrifying and elaborately mystifying He added I was intensely affected 7 Curtis was so inspired by the experience he made a fateful decision He would devote several years of his life to documenting American Indian cultures It appears his motivation for such a project was twofold First he had a genuine interest in Native cultures Second and perhaps more pressing he worried that many Native nations and their cultures were fast disappearing and therefore must be documented before they were gone 10