The North American Indian

The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis is a monumental, one-of-a-kind work of Native American ethnography and photography comprising twenty volumes of narrative text and photographs. Together these volumes contain thousands of pages of detailed cultural descriptions and histories of over 80 Native American tribes of western North America and are a treasure trove of information for history, anthropology, and language enthusiasts alike.

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The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis is a monumental, one-of-a-kind work of Native American ethnography and photography comprising twenty volumes of narrative text and photographs. Together these volumes contain thousands of pages of detailed cultural descriptions and histories of over 80 Native American tribes of western North America and are a treasure trove of information for history, anthropology, and language enthusiasts alike.

This is Volume 12: The Hopi.

The twenty volumes were originally published between 1907 and 1930. For nearly 30 years, Edward Curtis worked tirelessly to photograph and document the traditional lifestyle of the western Native American tribes before their ancient way of life was lost forever. Over the course of the project, Curtis captured more than 40,000 photographic images of members of over 80 tribes across the entire western portion of the continent. He also recorded notes on tribal history and described their languages, traditional foods, ceremonies, mythology, clothing, housing, songs, customs, and short biographies of tribal leaders. This material, in some cases, is the only written recorded history of these tribes.