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Performing Archive
Main Menu
Visualizing the “Vanishing Race”: the photogravures of Edward S. Curtis
Front Page for Visualizing the "Vanishing Race" path
Curtis' Image and Life: The Network of The North American Indian, Inc.
An experiment with data visualization approach to understand and contextualize Curtis' images and his life
Media, Technology and Mediations
Curtis's Technology, Relationships to Media and Style
Contextualizing Curtis, The North American Indian, and Race
the collection of essays from the contributors
Consulting with Tribes as Part of Archive Development
Introduction to Consulting with Tribes by Ulia Gosart
Contributing Archives
Information on how to participate in Performing Archive
Browsing the Media
A path of paths that allow users to cut through the collection in a variety of ways.
Acknowledgements and Project Information
Project Network
Jacqueline Wernimont
bce78f60db1628727fc0b905ad2512506798cac8
David J. Kim
18723eee6e5a79c8d8823c02b7b02cb2319ee0f1
Stephan Schonberg
23744229577bdc62e9a8c09d3492541be754e1ef
Amy Borsuk
c533a79d33d48cbf428e1160c2edc0b38c50db19
Beatrice Schuster
a02047525b31e94c1336b01e99d7f4f758870500
Heather Blackmore
d0a2bf9f2053b3c0505d20108092251fc75010bf
Ulia Gosart (Popova)
67c984897e6357dbeeac6a13141c0defe5ef3403
Primitive style of hairdressing
1
2018-03-16T21:12:15-07:00
Erik Loyer
f862727c4b34febd6a0341bffd27f168a35aa637
29482
1
The arrangement imitates the squash-blossom and indicates virginity. Within the last decade it has become rare, except on ceremonial occasions.
plain
2018-03-16T21:12:15-07:00
Erik Loyer
f862727c4b34febd6a0341bffd27f168a35aa637
This page has paths:
1
2018-03-16T21:12:57-07:00
Erik Loyer
f862727c4b34febd6a0341bffd27f168a35aa637
"Primitive"
Erik Loyer
1
plain
2018-03-16T21:12:57-07:00
Erik Loyer
f862727c4b34febd6a0341bffd27f168a35aa637
Contents of this path:
1
2018-03-16T21:11:16-07:00
Vanishing race - Navaho
1
The thought which this picture is meant to convey is that the Indians as a race, already shorn in their tribal strength and stripped of their primitive dress, are passing into the darkness of an unknown future. Feeling that the picture expresses so much of the thought that inspired the entire work, the author has chosen it as the first of the series.
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1
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Scout - Apache
1
The primitive Apache in his mountain home.
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Jicarilla women
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Women watching the races on their annual ceremonial or feast day. It will be observed that they are all dressed uniformly in garments cut after the primitive mode.
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2018-03-16T21:11:17-07:00
1
2018-03-16T21:11:18-07:00
Son of the desert - Navaho
1
In the early morning this boy, as if springing from the earth itself, came to the author's desert camp. Indeed, he seemed a part of the very desert. His eyes bespeak all of the curiosity, all of the wonder of his primitive mind striving to grasp the meaning of the strange things about him.
plain
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1
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Ogalala woman
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A face so strong that it is almost masculine, showing strikingly how slight may be the difference between the male and female physiognomy in some primitive people.
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1
2018-03-16T21:11:51-07:00
Kutenai camp
1
The scene is a thinly wooded, sandy peninsula at the southern end of Flathead lake. Here the author's camp was pitched in 1909 during some weeks of investigation into the primitive life of the Kutenai.
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1
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Rush gatherer - Kutenai
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Rushes gathered in swamps and in the shallows of the lakes were dried and strung together into mats, which primitively were used for lodge-covers, mattresses, canoe cushions, and for a variety of domestic purposes.
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1
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Primitive Quinault
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Among the Coast Salish the aboriginal dress of women was a knee-length kilt of thick, cedar-bark fringe. No other garment was worn except when cold or rain made goat-hair or vegetal-fibre blankets or capes desireable.
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1
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Kwakiutl house-frame
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The two long beams in the middle are twin ridge-timbers, which are supported in the rear, as in the front, by a transverse beam resting on two uprights. At the extreme right and left are the eaves-timbers. The longitudinal and circular flutes of the columns are laboriously produced by means of a small hand-adze of primitive form. This frame is at the village Memkumlis. Another view is given in the illustration facing page 36. Kwakiutl houses are discussed on page 6.
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Rounding into port - Qagyhl
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The primitive Kwakiutl sail for canvas was a sheet of cedar-bark matting, and on catamarans a large, square section of thin boards was propped up against the wind. Canvas is now used. The painting on the canoe at the left represents "sisiutl", the mythical double-headed serpent. The carved figure-heads of the middle canoe and the one on the right are respectively an eagle and a bear. The bear canoe is further embellished with highly conventionalized paintings of the head, flipper and tail of a whale.
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On the shores at Nootka
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Two women wearing the primitive bark blanket and nose-ornament, and with clam-baskets on their backs, rest on the beach while waiting for the tide to fall and uncover the clam-beds.
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Boarding the canoe
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A Hesquiat berry-picker in primitive garb on the bold shores of Clayoquot sound. The barefoot natives make their way without difficulty over barnacle-covered rocks such as these. It will be noted that the canoe has been fitted with rowlocks.
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Oldest man of Nootka
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This individual is the most primitive relic in the modernized village of Nootka. Stark naked, he may be seen hobbling about the beach or squatting in the sun, living in thought in the golden age when the social and ceremonial customs of his people were what they had always been.
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Bark gatherer
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These people still use large quantities of yellow-cedar bark in the manufacture of mats, and formerly this material furnished them their clothing also. The Hesquiat woman in the picture has a bulky pack of bark on her back, and in her hand is a steel-bladed adz of the primitive type.
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1
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Primitive style of hairdressing
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The arrangement imitates the squash-blossom and indicates virginity. Within the last decade it has become rare, except on ceremonial occasions.
plain
2018-03-16T21:12:15-07:00
1
2018-03-16T21:12:17-07:00
A Klamath
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The entire costume here depicted is alien to the primitive Klamath. The feather head-dress and fringed shirt and leggings of deerskin were adopted by this tribe within the historical period, along with other phases of the Plains culture, which extended its influence to the Klamath country by way of Columbia river and the plains of central Oregon.
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1
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Woman's primitive dress - Tolowa
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This is the gala costume of Coast Athapascan women. The ordinary dress was a deerskin kilt with the opening at the front protected by a fringed apron of deerskin or of bark. Ordinarily the feet and the upper part of the body were bare.
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1
2018-03-16T21:12:21-07:00
Hupa woman in primitive costume
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This is an excellent example of the gala costume of Hupa women. The deerskin skirt is worn about the hips and meets in front, where the opening is covered by a similar garment. Both are fringed and heavily beaded, and the strands of the apron are ornamented with the shells of pine-nuts.
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Diegueño home
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The Diegueños, a Yuman division formerly inhabiting practically the whole of San Diego county, are now found on about a dozen small reservations. Although they were not formerly agriculturists like the Colorado River Yumans, many of them take excellent care of their little ranches. Such houses as the one shown here are not of the primitive type, though they are constructed of the same materials.
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Primitive artist - Paviotso
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A side of the glaciated bowlder near the southwestern shore of Walker lake is covered with phallic symbols in faded red.
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2018-03-16T21:07:03-07:00
Primitive Apache home
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Primitive Mohave
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Primitive transportation - Mohave
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Primitive dress - Quinault
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A primitive camp
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Primitive Chemehuevi dwelling
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Erik Loyer
f862727c4b34febd6a0341bffd27f168a35aa637
List of Large Plates Supplementing Volume Twelve
Erik Loyer
1
Media Gallery
structured_gallery
2018-03-16T21:13:02-07:00
Erik Loyer
f862727c4b34febd6a0341bffd27f168a35aa637
Contents of this path:
1
2018-03-16T21:12:12-07:00
Loitering at the spring
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A group of Walpi and Hano girls in holiday attire. The background is a typical bit of Southwestern desert.
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Buffalo dance at Hano
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The Buffalo dance at the Upper Rio Grande pueblos was lately introduced among the Hopi, who attach no religious significance to it.
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2018-03-16T21:12:12-07:00
1
2018-03-16T21:12:12-07:00
Tewa girl
1
An excellent feminine type of these early immigrants from the Rio Grande. The arrangement of her hair suggests that she is unmarried.
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1
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Hopi mother
1
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Antelopes and snakes at Oraibi
1
The Antelope fraternity, at the right, and the Snake fraternity facing them at the left, engage in singing prior to handling the reptiles in the Snake dance. At the extreme right is the kisi, a cottonwood booth in which sits the custodian of the snake-jars, ready to hand out the reptiles one by one to the dancers.
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Watching the dancers
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A group of girls on the topmost roof of Walpi, looking down into the plaza.
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Hopi girl
1
Soft, regular features are characteristic of Hopi young women, and no small part of a mother's time is used to be devoted to dressing the hair of her unmarried daughters. The aboriginal style is rapidly being abandoned, and the native one-piece dress here illustrated is seldom seen even at the less advanced of the Hopi pueblos.
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Evening in Hopi land
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Honovi - Walpi snake priest, with Totokya Day painting
1
This plate depicts the accoutrement of a Snake dancer on the day of the Antelope dance (see Volume XII, pages 146-149). The right hand grasps a pair of eagle-feathers - the "snake whip" - and the left a bag of ceremonial meal. Honovi was one of the author's principal informants.
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On the housetop
1
A typical village scene illustrating many features of pueblo architecture. At the extreme left is the entrance of an underground kiva, with the tips of the ladder projecting. In the central foreground is a baking-room, where piki is prepared, and to the left is an outdoor oven for baking loaf-bread.
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Walpi
1
Picturesque Walpi, perched on the point of a rocky island in a sea of sand, is an irregular, rambling community-house, built without design, added to in haphazard fashion as need arose; yet it constitutes a perfectly satisfying artistic whole.
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Hopi woman
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Hopi maiden
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Counting the record
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A series of marks cut into the rock at Middle mesa records the losses inflicted on the marauding enemies in a former generation.
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Chaiwa - Tewa
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Chaiwa - Tewa, profile
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At the trysting place
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East side of Walpi
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Few illustrations of Hopi architecture show as much regularity as this view of a Walpi street.
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1
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Snake priest
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The white markings, typifying the antelope, indicate that the subject is accoutred for the semi-final day of the Snake dance, when the public performance consists of the dance and the ceremonial race of the Antelope fraternity.
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Potter mixing clay
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This woman, so aged that her shrivelled skin hangs in folds, still finds pleasure in creating artistic and utilitarian pieces of pottery.
plain
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1
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Hopi man
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In this physiognomy we read the dominant traits of Hopi character. The eyes speak of wariness, if not downright distrust. The mouth shows great possibilities of unyielding stubbornness. Yet somewhere in this face lurks an expression of masked warmheartedness and humanity.
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Hopi architecture
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The house-walls are about eighteen inches thick, and consist of fragments of sandstone, shaped by fracture but undressed, and bound together with mud plaster. The upper levels of the terraced buildings are reached by ladders and by stone steps.
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Snake dancers entering the plaza
1
At the right stand the Antelopes, in front of the booth containing the snake-jars. The Snakes enter the plaza, encircle it four times with military tread, and then after a series of songs remarkable for their irresistible movement, they proceed to dance with the reptiles.
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1
2018-03-16T21:12:15-07:00
Primitive style of hairdressing
1
The arrangement imitates the squash-blossom and indicates virginity. Within the last decade it has become rare, except on ceremonial occasions.
plain
2018-03-16T21:12:15-07:00
1
2018-03-16T21:12:15-07:00
Walpi man
1
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Mishongnovi
1
A comprehensive view of this interesting Middle Mesa pueblo. On an eminence in the middle background is Shipaulovi, and at the right, several miles distant, is Shongopavi, on another tongue of the mesa.
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Potter
1
Every visitor at East mesa knows Nampeyo, the potter of Hano, whose creations excel those of any rival. Stranger wander into her house, welcome though unbidden, but Nampeyo only works and smiles. In the plate her paint-stone occupies the central foreground.
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East mesa girls
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2018-03-16T21:12:16-07:00
Modified style of hairdressing
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Walpi snake priest
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This subject is Koyawaima ("gray [dawn] walking"), who has been chief of the fraternity since 1899.
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Snake dancer in costume
1
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Flute dancers at Tureva Spring
1
The Flute dance is a religious ceremony concerned with bringing rain. It represents the legendary arrival of the Flute people in the Hopi country, their friendly encounter with the clans already there, and the rain-making rites subsequently performed by them for the common good. The episode here represented was photographed at Middle mesa. The individual seated near the right end is an albino, not a white man.
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Piki maker
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Piki is cornbread baked in colored sheets of paper-like thinness. The batter is spread on the baking stone with the bare hand, and the quickly baked sheet is folded and laid on the basket at the baker's left.
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1
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Depositing a prayer-stick
1
Round, painted sticks with feathers attached by cotton cords are deposited in various places, particularly in springs and at shrines, in supplication to the spirits associated with the locality.
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Tewa girls
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Water carriers
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