Curtis, Edward S.

Edward S. Curtis, in full Edward Sheriff Curtis, (born February 16, 1868, near Whitewater, Wisconsin, U.S.—died October 19, 1952, Los Angeles, California), American photographer and chronicler of Native American peoples whose work perpetuated an influential image of Indians as a “vanishing race.” The monumental The North American Indian (1907–30), published under his name, constitutes a major compendium of photographic and anthropological material about those indigenous peoples of the trans-Mississippi West who, as Curtis stated in his preface, “still retained to a considerable degree their primitive customs and traditions.”