by Timothy Egan
“King Island is one of the most picturesque spots in all the North,” Curtis wrote in his log. “The island is but a rock pinnacle standing out to sea. The village is like no other village on the continent. These people can well be called North Sea Cliff Dwellers.” He managed to find a small place to tie up his boat, and climbed up the hill to investigate the town. His hip was killing him, barking pain with every upward step, but Curtis lost track of the physical irritation and time—“almost exploding with joy at our success of getting pictures of the village.” In one image, he shot the stick community from the water, with the Jewel Guard in the foreground. This picture reinforced his diary conclusion of King Island: “Truly humans pick strange places in which to exist.”
From there, with wind and current on their side, they sailed to Cape Prince of Wales. Curtis took some quick shots of a few native hunters and promised to return when more people were around. The next anchorage was off Little Diomede Island, a dollop of gray rock, only a third of a mile from the International Date Line. The rock was within shouting distance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, on Big Diomede Island. Curtis went ashore with Eastwood, walking through a village of fewer than two hundred Inupiat. A flu epidemic the previous decade had devastated these people, an elder explained. Curtis spent almost a full week on Little Diomede, rarely resting—sixty hours of work for every four hours of sleep, he estimated.
When they left the far northwest of Alaska for the town of Kotzebue, it was already the third week of August, and Harry the Fish was worried, because the natives were starting to haul their boats out for the year. Winter preparations were in full swing. Curtis wanted no hesitation, but also no shortcuts. There was still too much left to photograph. They moved through the Bering Strait, around Cape Prince of Wales, crossed the Arctic Circle and took a sharp right turn to the east, aiming for three communities around Kotzebue.
“Fought the mudflats all day,” Curtis wrote of trying to tie up in Kotzebue. “Ran in every direction looking for water deep enough to keep us afloat.” He planned to get a decent night’s sleep and then work flat out for days on end. The morning of August 19, he went ashore. It didn’t take long to see that Kotzebue would be no Nunivak. “Meeting considerable opposition from the missionaries.”
The next day. “Worked ashore. Raining; storm too bad for whaling trip.”
August 21. “Worked ashore. Still too stormy for whaling.”
August 23. The storm abated. They started upriver, looking for pictures and stories, Curtis, Eastwood and a translator. “Camped with our old man that night and he talked until midnight. Bad weather. Rained all night and we had no tents.”
August 24. “Cold night, the first real freezing night we have had. Reached the Noatak Village at midnight . . . a fine supper, mostly of salmon trout, nothing equal to them in the salmon family except the small blue salmon of a small stream on the West Coast of Washington.”
August 25. “Nice morning. Up early and looking over village. Spent the day making pictures. Eastwood talking with old man. Worked with old man until midnight.”
August 26. “Day stormy. Worked with old man. Made some pictures.”
August 28. “We are back at Kotzebue and at work.”
September 1. “Up at 3:30 and on our way. Storm, wind, rough water. Arrived at Seliwik Village at 7:30 a.m. Work started badly, too much missionary. Missionary has sent out word to all natives that they must not talk to us.”
September 2. “Moved up stream three miles to be near an old informant. This man has been driven from the village by the missionaries owing to his refusal to be a Christian. The old man is a cripple and a most pathetic case. Missionary will not allow relatives to assist him in any way.”
The snow started that day, falling till dusk. At dawn, the world was white, not the best canvas for the Curtis camera. They worked through the week in freezing temperatures, draining of folklore another loner who’d been shunned by missionaries—“a devil man,” as he was called. After three weeks in Kotzebue, they sailed south, for a second session at Cape Wales, before an attempt to get back to Nome. The natives warned them that they were pushing their luck. Harry the Fish knew as much. He told Curtis to look at the empty seas: they were the sole fools testing the elements. Must press on, Curtis insisted.
September 20. “Reached Wales yesterday a little after 3:00 . . . Harry was so mad he was frothing at the mouth. Barometer falling rapidly and storm threatens.”
In a race between men and storm, the storm won. When the Jewel Guard scooted around the cape and tried to make it to Nome, it was hit by a blast of hard winter. In the teeth of the blizzard, they made anchorage just offshore. The storm raged for a full day. The boat iced up, taking on such a hard coating that it looked as if it were sealed in lacquer. If they did not move, the boat would freeze in place for the next eight months. Out again in open waters, the party ran into a second full day of heavy snow—and a third, and a fourth. They chipped away, Curtis and Eastwood clearing snow, Harry the Fish fuming, as the Jewel Guard struggled to get through the weather. “The wind picked up sections of the sea and threw it into our faces,” Curtis wrote. The hull began to leak, filling with saltwater from below and slushy snowmelt from above. They were alone, a speck of floating humanity in a cauldron of white. “One nice thing about such situations is that the suspense is short lived,” Curtis wrote. “You either make it or you don’t.”
They made it, sputtering back to Nome on a ship listing with water, its deck encased in ice. A message sent earlier from Kotzebue indicated they had been lost at sea. It was the second time in his life that Curtis had been formally given up for dead. He was overjoyed, not so much at surviving the float through a frozen maze, but at the work produced. If he could get these many negatives, this fresh material, home, he knew he could close out The North American Indian with a lasting triumph. He bid goodbye to Harry the Fish and sailed for Puget Sound.
Curtis arrived in Seattle on October 9, 1927. In past years, after a successful trip to some enchanted destination in Indian country, Curtis would hold court with the press. Then, he was the swashbuckler with stories for the newspaper boys, a best westerner. His shine was Seattle’s shine, Curtis and the city one and the same. But by 1927, Curtis was a name from another era. If The North American Indian was an active project, few people in Seattle knew as much. After his steamer tied up in Elliott Bay, Curtis headed immediately for King Street station to catch a train for Los Angeles. After purchasing his ticket and storing his gear in the train car, he was approached by two uniformed sheriff’s deputies and several operatives of the Burns Detective Agency. It had been only half an hour since he’d disembarked from the steamer.
“Are you Edward S. Curtis?”
Indeed. What’s this about?
“We have a warrant for your arrest.” The men slapped handcuffs on Curtis and marched him off to jail. He was thrown in a cell with other unfortunates. The legal trail from jail led back to Clara Curtis. She had gotten wind of her ex-husband’s pending arrival earlier in the week, after reading a news story on his near-death experience in Alaska. On Friday, she went to court and swore out an affidavit saying Curtis had not paid alimony since 1920. She was owed $4,400. She said Curtis had slipped into Seattle in June, traveling “under an assumed name,” and was set to return using similar deception. At the close of business that day, a judge had signed an order for the sheriff to arrest Curtis “whenever and wherever found.”
Woman and Child, 1927. On Nunivak Island, in the far north of an Alaskan summer, Curtis and his daughter Beth conducted the final field trip of The North American Indian. Curtis was never happier. “Should any misguided missionary start for this island,” he wrote, “I trust the sea will do its duty.”
King Island Village, 1927. A hamlet on stilts. “This village is like no other on the continent,” Curtis wrote.
17. Fight to the Finish
1927–1932
AFTER SPENDING TWO days in jail, the figure who stood before
King County Superior Court Judge J. T. Ronald on Tuesday morning was a shambles—hair matted, clothes soiled, eyes clouded. Following more than a decade out of public view in his hometown, Curtis had made “a startling, if humiliating reappearance in Seattle,” one reporter wrote. Could this wreck who limped toward the witness stand, this low-voiced, snowy-headed, reedy-armed man, be the same Edward S. Curtis who once bestrode the city, friend of presidents and tycoons, a giant in the world of photographic art, the anthropologic auteur, the man once hailed by a paper in the other Washington as “a national institution”?
In court, Clara Curtis repeated the charges in her affidavit. She identified herself as a businesswoman who ran the studio—what was left of it, still in her ex-husband’s name—in Seattle. She was deep in debt, and had been sued for failure to pay numerous bills. Most of her troubles, the financial ones, could be blamed on the disheveled person brought from his windowless cell, she claimed. Curtis denied delinquency, and said the bills were news to him. The judge granted bail of $2,000 and released Curtis. He was ordered to appear the following day with Mrs. Curtis to sort their affairs.
On Wednesday, the city was exposed to a view of Edward Curtis only a handful of people knew—that is, a man who’d been living on gossamer strands. He took the stand and barely looked up. The judge started in with questions.
What are his assets?
“None.”
That couldn’t be true. Everyone knew he was the nation’s premier portrait photographer—had been, at one time, and so much in demand that he was picked to shoot the Roosevelt family wedding, for God’s sake. Then, of course, he came under the patronage of J. P. Morgan, once ranked the richest man in America, if not the world. He had produced a film of some sort, yes? And The North American Indian—why, a single subscription sold for $3,500. How could he be insolvent?
“I have no funds, your honor. I have no business. Only The North American Indian—and for that I get nothing.”
Nothing?
Curtis trembled, bit his lip. He looked as if he were going to cry. The judge continued: What about this studio in Los Angeles, operating out of the Biltmore Hotel? A chimera, largely, Curtis replied—run by his daughter, it was her business, from which he received nothing. Well, how did he pay his rent, put food on the table? Same as above: his daughter. She takes care of him. A second round of questions followed on The North American Indian. How much money had J. P. Morgan put into it? Curtis took his time to do the math.
“The Morgan estate will have paid about $2.5 million when it’s done.”
The judge took that revelation as news as well. Surely Curtis had something to show for $2.5 million?
“No. It operates on a deficit.” And the project was not only deeply in debt, but years behind. He explained the original deal with Morgan, how Curtis was supposed to pay his way with rich donors. Even if he sold all five hundred subscriptions—he hadn’t reached half that goal—he would not get anything in return. All went into fieldwork, printing costs, translators, a skipper named Harry the Fish, a cook named Noggie, a car named Nanny, a Snake Dance priest in Arizona and on and on. The judge summarized the Curtis defense.
“Do I understand that you will receive no money for this work?”
Curtis nodded, his eyes misted. “I work for nothing.”
Flabbergasted, the judge shook his head. “Then why are you doing it?”
“Your honor, it was my job. The only thing . . . the only thing I could do that was worth doing.”
With that, the Shadow Catcher’s eyes welled up. The crowd of reporters gasped, scribbling in haste. They were sketching paragraphs for early editions, sent outside the courtroom by runners. Extra! Extra! “Nationally known compiler of Indian lore breaks down on witness stand!” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer described Curtis, this “international character, friend of Theodore Roosevelt and associate of the late J. Pierpont Morgan” as a “shabby, hunched and weary figure” who was “garbed in his rough hiking clothing.” The Seattle Star sent out this dispatch: “Curtis, overcome by the forced revelation of his life’s secret, wept.” The sobbing grew more pronounced. Curtis had made thousands of appearances over the course of thirty years, onstage and in the press, from Carnegie Hall to the White House. He was a man’s man, in the public eye. If he had ever cried in front of anyone, it had gone unreported. Ed Meany knew of a single instance, when he had written his friend after the divorce, trying to cheer him with memories of mountain climbing and better days. Curtis wrote back: “Reading it caused me to break down and cry as a child.”
The judge gave Curtis a few moments to regain his composure. The witness tried to contain himself, to fully answer the question of why he could stay with such a thing if it only put him deeper into a hole.
“I was duty bound to finish.”
Still, the judge was stunned. How could someone without means work for no money? What craziness was that? And to do so with no possibility of ever being made whole? Why, why, why?
“Your honor . . . I am one of those fanatical persons who wants to finish what he starts.”
After a three-day hearing, the judge slammed the proceedings to a close. The evidence was inconclusive. Neither side could produce the original alimony document, the basis of late-payment claims by Mrs. Curtis. Without that filing, the judge could not hold Curtis. Plus, he was moved by Curtis’s confession, stripping himself of the veneer of dignity that came with money. “The court cannot imprison a man for not doing what he cannot do,” the judge wrote. Curtis was free to go.
If ever there was a sliver of doubt that Curtis had worked for nothing in order to complete the “only worthwhile thing” in his life, the House of Morgan removed that doubt when it took from Curtis the remaining ownership of his masterwork. There had been discussions over several years about Curtis relinquishing his copyright to The North American Indian. The number that had been revealed in court—Morgan’s $2.5 million, an amount equal to about $50 million today—provided further explanation for why Curtis let the ownership go and never publicly complained about it. A document completed in early 1928 recorded the transfer from artist to institution, even though the books did not show it on the title page. He ceded copyright to the pictures and text of The North American Indian—the complete work—to the Morgan Company. Included were the copper- and glass-plate negatives. What Curtis got in return is not stated on the transfer document, but it appears to be little more than an agreement to publish the end of the work.
He had two volumes to go. The book on the Indians of Oklahoma, the one Hodge had sent back as unacceptable, underwent a complete rewrite by Curtis and Eastwood, with much back and forth. Seemingly every detail was put through the editorial sifter. “You say tribes, for example, which have not been influenced by Christianity,” Curtis wrote in one exchange. “In my lifetime, I have seen no group of Indians not influenced by Christianity.” Eastwood had improved enough that he could get through much of the writing without whimpering every time he had his ears boxed by Hodge. The last volume, on the Alaska natives, looked to be an easier production. Curtis felt he had brought home “a tremendous mass of material” from the north, he wrote Hodge.
The problem was the man behind the creation. For long periods at the end of the 1920s, Curtis fell into the black hole that had engulfed him after his divorce. For weeks that became months, he could not bring himself to write or to make prints from the plates holding those extraordinary images of an Alaskan summer. He was ashamed of his paralysis and would hide from everyone save his children. Adding to his mental torture, he was in constant physical pain. A man who had crisscrossed the continent 125 times could no longer walk a single block without sharp stabs; on some mornings, getting out of bed was a chore, though he was not an old man by any standard. “I am still suffering with my lame hip and do not get on with matters as fast as I could like,” he wrote Hodge in early 1928, the only hint of his inner demons passed off as all the fault of his gimpy leg.
He was desperate for Bill Mye
rs, who had carried him through so many obstacles in the drama of bookmaking. They had fallen completely out of touch. All Curtis knew was that Myers was managing an apartment building in San Francisco, for a small salary. “Have you heard anything from Myers?” Curtis asked Hodge in 1929. “I have not been able to get track of him.” But with help from Eastwood’s pen and the incalculable skill of Hodge, Curtis assembled his last two works.
He did what he could with Volume XIX, mostly portraits, and histories that took a long view of the Indian diaspora in Oklahoma. Many of the subjects look like costume Indians, reluctantly wearing deerskin leggings and bonnets in the hot sun. In a candid photographic nod, he gives in to contemporary life. One picture in particular, Wilbur Peebo—Comanche, is a striking departure, and shows the long arc of the Lords of the Plains, from unassailable horse soldiers to passive residents of a listless twentieth century. Wilbur Peebo is seen in a white dress shirt and tie, his hair close-cropped, slicked and parted, a regular Rotarian. Yet even that picture is true to an emotion: a pleasant face that conveys a deep level of hurt. The close-ups—the portraits, that is—are consistent with the quality of the previous eighteen volumes.
Curtis felt he had done a fair job of “making something from nothing,” as he told Hodge when the first drafts were put together. He printed alphabets, pronunciation guides, many full pages of sheet music of native songs. And he tried, once again, to correct misconceptions about spiritual life, with several pages devoted to a forceful defense of the Peyote Society. The missionaries who’d described the peyote ceremony as “devil worship” and “drug-eating debauchery” had completely missed the point. In fact, many Christian converts took peyote in a ritual that lasted from dusk till dawn, a mind-altering way to connect to the Creator. As Quanah Parker, the last chief of the wild Comanche, had said in defense of the hallucinatory experience of Indian worship: “The white man goes into his church and talks about Jesus, but the Indian goes into his tipi and talks to Jesus.”