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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

As it was in the old days

29482 In early days, before white men invaded the Great Plains and ruthlessly slaughtered them by the hundreds of thousands, bison were of prime importance to the hunting tribes of the vast region in which those animals had their range. The bison was not only the chief source of food of the Plains Indians, but its skin was made into clothing, shields, packs, bags, snowshoes, and tent and boat covers; the horns were fashioned into spoons and drinking vessels; the sinew was woven into reatas, belts, personal ornaments, and the covers of sacred bundles; and the dried droppings, "buffalo-chips," were used as fuel. So dependent on the buffalo were these Indians that it became sacred to them, and many were the ceremonies performed for the purpose of promoting the increase of the herds.

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List of Large Plates Supplementing Volume Nineteen Erik Loyer
Contents of this path:
1. As it was in the old days In early days, before white men invaded the Great Plains and ruthlessly slaughtered them by the hundreds of thousands, bison were of prime importance to the hunting tribes of the vast region in which those animals had their range. The bison was not only the chief source of food of the Plains Indians, but its skin was made into clothing, shields, packs, bags, snowshoes, and tent and boat covers; the horns were fashioned into spoons and drinking vessels; the sinew was woven into reatas, belts, personal ornaments, and the covers of sacred bundles; and the dried droppings, "buffalo-chips," were used as fuel. So dependent on the buffalo were these Indians that it became sacred to them, and many were the ceremonies performed for the purpose of promoting the increase of the herds.
2. A Wichita
3. Wichita grass-house
4. Grass-house ceremony - Wichita
5. Henry - Wichita
6. Walter Ross - Wichita
7. Story of the Washita
8. On the Canadian River
9. Cheyenne sun-dance lodge
10. Hotamitaye Society, Cheyenne sun-dance
11. Water rite purification, Cheyenne animal dance
12. At the pool, animal dance - Cheyenne
13. Cheyenne chief The Cheyenne belong to the Algonquian linguistic family and therefore are related to the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy and to the Arapaho of the north, and, much more remotely, to many of the tribes that once lives along the Atlantic seaboard and in the Midwest. They are now divided into the Northern Cheyenne, living in Montana, and the Southern Cheyenne who were assigned a reservation in the present Oklahoma in 1867.
14. Lone chief - Cheyenne
15. Cheyenne costume
16. Cheyenne maiden
17. Dog woman - Cheyenne
18. Woista - Cheyenne woman
19. Reuben Taylor
20. Black Belly - Cheyenne
21. Old Cheyenne
22. Old warrior - Arapaho
23. Black Man - Arapaho
24. Standing Two - Oto
25. Lone Chief - Oto
26. Wakonda - Oto
27. Pipe-stem - Oto
28. Old Eagle - Oto
29. John Abbott - Osage
30. John Quapaw - Hunta Wakunta
31. Esipermi - Comanche There were no more vigorous people among the Indians of the Plains than the Comanche, a Shoshonean tribe, related to the Shoshone and Bannock of Idaho, from which region they entered the northern plains and drifted ever southward, following the bison in their wanderings. They were noted warriors and raiders, being the enemies of many tribes and extending their depredations far into Mexico. One need look no farther than the accompanying portraits to discern the warrior character of those old braves.
32. Lefthand - Comanche
33. Uwat - Comanche
34. A Comanche mother
35. A Comanche
36. Peyote drummer
"Food" Erik Loyer
Contents of this path:
1. Saguaro harvest - Pima
2. Gathering hanamh - Papago Hanamh is the Piman name for the cholla cactus and its fruit. The natives gather the fruit of this spiny plant in large quantities, and it forms a food of material importance to the several tribes living within its habitat. In gathering it they use rude tongs made from a split stick. After a basket is filled, the fruit is spread on the ground and bushed about with a small, stiff besom until the spines are worn off, or the spines are burned of in an open fire.
3. Seaweed gatherer
4. Canoeing on Clayoquot Sound
5. Karok baskets The basketry of the Karok does not differ from that of the Hupa and the Yurok. The process is always twining, and the usual materials are hazel rod for the warp, roots of the digger or the yellow pine for the weft, and Xerophyllum grass for white overlay, bark of the maidenhair fern for black, and fibres from the stem of Woodwardia fern, dyed in alder-bark juice in the mouth of the workwoman, for red. Represented in the plate are the receptacle for the storage of seeds and nuts, the burden-basket, the winnowing tray, various sizes of mush-baskets and food containers, and the cradle-basket.
6. Gathering wokas - Klamath Wokas, the seeds of the water-lily, Nymphaea polysepala, is harvested in the latter part of August and throughout September. The nearly ripe pods are plucked and deposited in the canoe, but the mature ones, having burst open, are too sticky to be plucked, and are scooped up in a tule ladle and placed in a basket. After the pods have fermented, the seeds are separated from the mass by stirring in water. They are then dried, parched, hulled, dried again, and stored in bags. Wokas was formerly a staple food, and is still much used as a luxury.
7. Rattlesnake design in Yokuts basketry
8. Zuni woman
9. A Chipewyan tipi among the aspens The Chipewyan are one of several Athapascan groups occupying the territory between the Hudson bay and the Rocky mountains, from about the fifty-seventh parallel to the Arctic circle. Much of this area is barren, but the streams that feed and drain the innumerable lakes are bordered by thick groves of the slender, white boles of aspens, whose pleasant glades are favored by camps of fishermen and berrypickers. The Chipewyan dwelling, formerly made of the skins of caribou, on which animal these people principally depended for food, clothing, and shelter, was one of the few points in which their culture resembled that of the plains Indians. Their distinctive garment was a leather or fur coat with skirts cut to a point before and behind, a feature to which the appellation Wichipwayaniwuk ("they pointed fur people"), the Cree original of Chipewyan, alluded.
10. As it was in the old days In early days, before white men invaded the Great Plains and ruthlessly slaughtered them by the hundreds of thousands, bison were of prime importance to the hunting tribes of the vast region in which those animals had their range. The bison was not only the chief source of food of the Plains Indians, but its skin was made into clothing, shields, packs, bags, snowshoes, and tent and boat covers; the horns were fashioned into spoons and drinking vessels; the sinew was woven into reatas, belts, personal ornaments, and the covers of sacred bundles; and the dried droppings, "buffalo-chips," were used as fuel. So dependent on the buffalo were these Indians that it became sacred to them, and many were the ceremonies performed for the purpose of promoting the increase of the herds.
11. Reindeer - Nunivak
12. Food caches, Hooper Bay
13. Food containers, pokes, Kotzebue
14. The Hopi Maiden and Watching the Dancers
15. Chief Josef –Nez Perce
16. Vanishing Race and Cañon de Chelly
17. At the Old Well and A Zuni Woman