deconstruct the subject matter and to remove his subjective influences.

To deny any value at all to Curtis's work, however, would be an error. Curtis may not have followed what we now consider to be the "correct" method of ethnography, but we must also realize that anthropologists of his day in no way deemed him misrepresentational in his methods. There are fundamentalists in every theoretical point of view, and fundamentalist post-modernists would discredit work such as Curtis's entirely. Others suggest that the fundamentalists are incorrect in stating that past ethnographies have nothing to offer.

When examining Curtis's work through a post-modernist lens, I will present the views of the critics of the fundamentalists (D'Andrade, 1995; Lewis, 1998; Polier and Roseberry, 1989). These scholars identified why the points made by the fundamentalists are sound, but they also note that the works of the past have details to offer from a first-hand point of view that current ethnographers have no way of reconstructing in the same context. I believe this perspective is a useful one to apply to Curtis's work because it helps identify and remove Curtis's subjective views, and reveals elements of Native American lifeways in the early 1900s. While numerous ethnographies containing information about Native American lifeways do exist for this time period, evaluating Curtis's work and showing how it compares to the data in these ethnographies provides a framework for analyzing photographs of peoples for whom few other records exist.

Many of the fundamentalist post-modernists have made strong claims that past works should be deconstructed and reassembled into new collages, providing information deemed more relevant in today's discourse (Polier and Roseberry, 1989, p. 255). Yet it seems that few have taken this step with past works. Many are performing modern ethnography from this new theoretical perspective, but ignoring the benefits that deconstructing past work could have on the current body of anthropological knowledge. By deconstructing Curtis, I aim to show the validity of past ethnography, so that other works can be evaluated in the future by similar methods.

This article is derived from my Gaines Thesis, a much longer and more complete treatment of this subject. The entire thesis by clicking here and the complete list of references cited is available here. Full-size illustrations are also available at the same site.

The goal of this article is to show that, through recognizing the problems outlined by post-modernists and acknowledging the subjectivity of photography, we can retrieve relevant cultural data from past works. Curtis's photographs are a good case to study, because comparisons are available through other ethnographic works. Analyses of photographs can be done and can provide relevant information in areas of the world for which there is little outside ethnographic work.

Edward Sheriff Curtis

Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) believed that photography was a fusion of art and science, contrary to the critics of the time who claimed that photographs could not express artistic feeling (Lyman, 1982, p. 39). Early on,

he specialized in landscapes and scenic views, due largely to his hobby as a mountain climber. Curtis was often the guide for climbing parties. One particular climb made headlines in Seattle and, when prospectors arrived, Curtis's fame helped land him jobs in expeditions to the Klondike, during which he took numerous photos (Makepeace, 2001, pp. 30-33).

The cementation of Curtis's interest in Native American ethnographic photographs occurred as a result of George Grinnell's invitation to a Sun Dance in Montana. Curtis wrote that the experience was "wild, terrifying, elaborately mystifying . . . It was the start of my concerted effort to learn about the Plains Indians and to photograph their lives, and I was intensely affected" (Makepeace, 2001, p. 41).

Curtis was caught up in the movement of the time: salvage ethnography. Curtis noted that his work "represents the result of a personal study of a people who are rapidly losing the traces of the aboriginal character and who are destined ultimately to become assimilated with the 'superior race'" (Fowler and Homer, 1972, p. 13). In the late 1800s and early 1900s, anthropology had not yet been recognized as a formal discipline. Thus, people received the title of "ethnographer" who had no formal training. Instead, they came from a variety of backgrounds, and Curtis's background of commercial and artistic photography made him a candidate for "ethnographer" (Lyman, 1982, p. 51). During the period of Curtis's work on Native Americans, from roughly 1898-1930, other scholars such as Lewis Cass, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Lewis Henry Morgan, George Bird Grinnell, and John Wesley Powell were interested in salvaging information on the cultures of the "Vanishing Savages" (Fowler and Homer, 1972, p. 9). Beginning in 1900, anthropologists from the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology were recording the ways of the Native Americans "before it's too late" (Fowler and Homer, 1972, p. 9).

Curtis developed the idea for a compilation work entitled The North American Indian. By 1905, his pursuit of publicity in order to financially back this project finally paid off, and he even met with President Theodore Roosevelt (Lyman, 1982, p. 59). In 1906, Curtis sent a written proposal for a loan to fund his compilation to J. Pierpont Morgan. He outlined a twenty-volume document with 1500 full-page plates of pictures and he included 700 of the more important pictures (Lyman, 1982, pp. 60-61). Curtis received the loan from Morgan, and began working on The North American Indian.

In his work, Curtis included text with his photographs. His assistants wrote most of the text, but Curtis reviewed the work and chose those passages that would be included in his volumes (Lyman, 1982, p. 21). Curtis's aim in The North American Indian was "to picture all features of the Indian life and environment-types of the young and old, with their habitations, industries, ceremonies, games and everyday customs" (Fowler and Homer, 1972, p. 13). Curtis did not completely fulfill this aim. To begin with, he only focused on Native Americans living west of the Mississippi River. He also never composed a complete ethnography on any one group (but this task is not possible in any circumstance, because there is always too much to record to ever be "complete"). In an argument with Edward Ayer, Ayer told Curtis that he was attempting too large a task, saying that Curtis was "trying to do fifty men's work" (Gidle, 1998, p. 135).