Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher (46 page)

The most significant revival, and one that would probably have surprised Curtis,
has been among Indians themselves. The 2010 census counted 2.7 million Native Americans,
just under 1 percent of the population and up 18 percent in a decade. This figure
includes only those who listed themselves as “Indian alone,” not of mixed blood. What
stopped the downward slide in population was better health and vaccinations; eventually
the white man’s diseases that had wiped out so many Indians had run their course.

The Tulalip, north of Seattle, where Curtis took some of his first Indian pictures,
have 2,500 members living, as before, on the shores of the inland sea. With its casino
just off Interstate 5, the tribe has grown very wealthy. They just opened a $19 million,
23,000-square-foot cultural center. Inside, one of the first things to greet visitors
is an enormous hanging of a picture Curtis took in 1913, called
Evening on Puget Sound.

Some of the smallest tribes have not fared so well. The Duwamish, Princess Angeline’s
people, were declared to be extinct by the United States government in 1916. Some
surviving Duwamish have long taken issue with that judgment and have tried for decades
to gain official recognition. In 2008, members of the tribe—including Cecile Hansen,
the great-great-grandniece of Chief Seattle—opened a cedar longhouse near their traditional
home by the Duwamish River. At the other end of the population spectrum, the Navajo
now number more than a quarter-million people on a reservation that is larger than
all but ten of the states. With passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act
of 1978, which extended First Amendment protection of faith to native rites, people
are free to worship the gods of their ancestors in the canyons and mesas where Curtis
found them a century ago, diminished but unbowed.

Though Edward Curtis never made a dime producing what was arguably the most expansive
and comprehensive publication undertaken by a single citizen of the United States,
though he went to his death without the acknowledgment he so wanted in life, and though
he paid for his obsession with the loss of friends, a marriage and the irreplaceable
hours of watching a family bloom, he always believed his words and pictures would
come to life long after he’d passed—the artist’s lasting reward of immortality. A
young man with an unlived-in face found his calling in the faces of a continent’s
forgotten people, and in so doing, he not only saw history, but made it.

Anybody who thinks writing is entirely a solitary endeavor has never tried to bring
a book along from its formative idea to pixels and pages. The village of helpers,
healers and mentors is large. I’ve been lucky, as was my fellow Seattleite Edward
Curtis, to live in a city that nurtures writers. I could not write in a good climate.
In gratitude, I start at the top from Seattle: thanks to my wife, Joni Balter, who
always gets the first look at my ragged prose. This time around I benefited enormously
from sharp critiques by some very good reader-editors—Sam Howe Verhovek, Barbara Winslow
Boardman and Sophie Egan. Despite my pestering, they remain good friends, and in the
last case a daughter who isn’t afraid to tell her dad when his stuff needs help. The
Allen Library at the University of Washington is home to thousands of Curtis documents,
letters and photos; thanks to the staff for their diligence in keeping these archives
in great condition, and for their help in tracking down the relevant material. It’s
a great treasure, especially the papers of Edmond S. Meany, Curtis’s pal and university
pioneer. And I found wonderful material in the Seattle Room, a comprehensive collection
of all things related to the city’s story, on a top floor of the glass masterpiece
of the Seattle Public Library.

Also in Seattle, the Rainier Club opened its doors to me in many ways, providing access
not just to their Curtis pictures, which appear in every nook and cranny, but to the
many portraits Curtis took of members. The club has been enthusiastic and helpful
in this project from the beginning. My guide there was Russell Johanson, a rare books
collector. And Marie McCaffrey, a Rainier member whose late husband, Walt Crowley,
wrote a history of the club, opened the way there, and was an early and passionate
supporter of the project. In addition, she is the cofounder and executive director
of
HistoryLink.org
, an invaluable digital service for lovers of the Pacific Northwest past. The longtime
keeper of the Curtis flame in Seattle is Lois Flury. For more than thirty years, her
Flury and Company gallery in Pioneer Square has given display space to many of the
Shadow Catcher’s masterpieces. Lois helped on many fronts. John Forsen, filmmaker
and winemaker, was key in leading me back to the Seattle world’s fair of 1909, where
Curtis was on display for the world. Three other Seattleites deserve thanks: Dr. John
Gayman, for many a ruminative run (and free medical advice) during the book’s long
winter; Casey Egan, for issuing a challenge to make it at least as interesting as
an iPhone app; and Mike Heinrich, winner of the Steve Martin look-alike contest in
our extended family, and the funniest writer in my circle.

For the mountaineering material, and pictures and insights into Curtis’s days as
a climbing guide, I am indebted to Jeff Thomas at the Mazamas in Portland. The club
does a superb job of housing all things relating to the rich mountaineering history
of the Pacific Northwest, and Jeff was kind enough to allow me to use a seldom-seen
Indian picture taken by Curtis on Mount Hood.

I tried to visit every Indian reservation and tribal homeland covered in the Curtis
magnum opus. Some of these lands I saw earlier, while not in pursuit of the Shadow
Catcher. All of the people at these places were welcoming, and warmed to the topic.
In particular, the staff at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, in the Navajo Nation,
was terrific. I urge any reader wishing to find perhaps the most enchanting—and overlooked—place
on the continent to pay a visit. Hopi elders, memorably at the stone outpost of Walpi,
and tribal officials in Acoma, the Sky City, also gave up much of their time in response
to my queries. I climbed up the path to Acoma three times—each more mesmerizing. At
the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, which I visited many times in the
heart of the Crow Nation, it helped that my initial reappraisal of the battle was
courtesy of a man who was then superintendent of the monument, Gerard Baker, a full-blood
Mandan-Hidatsa.

In Los Angeles, where Curtis spent his final years, two outposts of western and Native
American history proved most useful. Thanks to the Braun Research Library at the Southwest
Museum of the American Indian for giving me access to hundreds of Curtis letters,
even though the museum itself was closed for construction. Thanks also to the Seaver
Center for Western History Research at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History,
keeper of edited first editions of Curtis volumes.

On the other coast, in the other Washington, thanks once again to Jeffrey M. Flannery,
head of the Reference and Reader Service Section of the Library of Congress. It was
there that I found the complete write-up that Curtis did of the Little Bighorn (and
never published). Also, it was there that I trolled the correspondence of President
Theodore Roosevelt, and his aide Gifford Pinchot, with Curtis.

In New York, kudos to the entire staff at the Pierpont Morgan Library, sitting on
a nest of Curtis memorabilia. My publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has been wonderful
on this project. Special thanks to Andrea Schulz, editor in chief at HMH, for showing
such a deft hand (unusual in that trade!) and for all the suggestions that improved
the manuscript. I failed her on a few things, but it would have required interviews
beyond the grave. Larry Cooper, once again, caught many things in the copyediting
that my untrained eyes had missed. Also at Houghton, my gratitude to Christina Morgan,
for immense help in finding and sorting all the pictures, and to Lori Glazer, Carla
Gray and Megan Wilson for the kind of work that brings readers to writers. And praise,
as always, to Carol Mann, my longtime agent—a terrific literary matchmaker.

Finally, thanks to Michael Kinsley and Patty Stonesifer for allowing me into their
winter refuge in the Sonoran Desert, where I edited parts of the manuscript in blissful
disregard of all digital interferences. Patty is an author’s best friend, at any phase
of a book.

1. FIRST PICTURE

Description of Angeline’s cabin and her surroundings, from
Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
May 31, 1896, and from wire service story printed in
Wheeling Register,
December 9, 1894, and from sketch in
Annals of Old Angeline,
by Betha Piper Venen, Denny-Coryell Company, 1903.

“Ragged remnant of royalty,” from
Sealth: The City by the Inland Sea,
by Elizabeth H. Calvert, Washington State Historical Society, 1897.

City population, from “A Chronicle of the History of Seattle, 1850–1897,” by Thomas
Prosch, typescript, 1900, on file at Seattle Public Library (hereafter cited as SPL).

President Harrison visit, from
Seattle
Times,
January 21, 1873, and from
HistoryLink.org
essay 5067.

Angeline’s age, from a recollection of A. A. Denny in
Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
May 31, 1896.

Joe Foster Jr., hanging, from
Seattle Times,
June 28, 1870.

Reverend Blaine’s comments, from
Skid Road,
by Murray Morgan, Viking, 1951.

Treaty terms, from Prosch, “A Chronology of the History of Seattle.”

Denny conversation, from
Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle,
by Sophie Frye Bass, Metropolitan Press, 1937.

Verse, from Venen,
Annals of Old Angeline.

Catherine Blaine recollection, from
HistoryLink.org
essay, posted July 30, 2001.

Duwamish, known as Inside the Bay People, from
A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest,
by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.

Chief Seattle speech, from
HistoryLink.org
, undated, and from
Northwest Gateway,
by Archie Binns, Doubleday, 1945.

Description of Puget Sound, from
Atlantic Monthly,
February 1883.

Eva Curtis on brother’s curiosity, from
Curtis’s Western Indians,
by Ralph W. Edwards, Bonanza Books, 1962.

Curtis as the premier photographer, from
Argus,
July 18, 1896.

“perseverance,” from
Argus,
December 14, 1896.

Description of Curtis as blue-eyed, etc., from lengthy profile in
Seattle Times,
November 15, 1903.

Curtis bedridden, “limp, thin and bleached,” from an unpublished memoir by William
Phillips, circa 1911, quoted, in part, in
Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated,
by Mick Gidley, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Curtis’s early years, from correspondence between retired Seattle librarian Harriet
Leitch and Edward S. Curtis, 1948–1952, bound, copied, handwritten letters on file
in SPL, Seattle Room.

Regrades and building boom, from
Remembering Seattle,
by Walt Crowley, Trade Papers Press, Turner Publishing, 2010.

Largest dredging contract, from Prosch, “A Chronology of the History of Seattle.”

Buildings like New York, from wire service story in
Wheeling Register,
1894.

Early success of Curtis, from
Argus,
July 18, 1896.

Curtis in the progress edition, from
Seattle Mail and Herald,
December 19, 1903.

Curtis and Angeline, first picture, from Leitch-Curtis correspondence, SPL.

Superior beings and savages, early history, from
Reminiscences of Seattle, Washington Territory,
by Thomas Phelps, Ye Galleon Press, 1970.

Curtis’s first memory of Indians, from “As It Was,” unpublished memoir on file at
University of Washington (hereafter, UW) Library, Special Collections.

Record of the hanging, largest mass execution in U.S. history, from
New York Times
story on calls for pardon, December 14, 2010.

Curtis convalescence, from Leitch-Curtis correspondence, SPL.

Curtis on paying Angeline and the Tulalip, from Leitch-Curtis correspondence, SPL.

Angeline’s slaves,
Seattle Times,
November 7, 1957.

The big idea: Curtis writes that “the task” had its inception in 1898,
The North American Indian,
Vol. I. Hereafter, references cited as
NAI.

Angeline obituaries, from
Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
May 31, 1896, and
Aberdeen Daily News,
June 1, 1896.

2. ENCOUNTER ON A VOLCANO

Account of 1897 climb, from
Portland Oregonian,
August 26, 1897.

Curtis’s account of Rainier in 1897 and 1898, and mention of Ella McBride, from his
correspondence with Leitch, SPL. Also from Curtis’s own account in his unpublished
memoir, “As It Was,” UW Library, Special Collections.

Mazama account of the 1897 Rainier climb, from the journal
Mazama: A Record of Mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest,
Vol. 2, October 1900.

Curtis mountain pictures advertised, from his brochure “Scenic Washington,” on file
at Mazama Library in Portland.

Picture of two Indians in forest of Mount St. Helens, 1898, from Mazama Library files.
This is one of Curtis’s first Indian pictures, and rarely seen.

Curtis as heroic, his rescue and leadership on Rainier, from
Seattle Times,
August 14, 1897, and
Detroit Free Press,
September 12, 1897.

Other Rainier descriptions, from Curtis’s typescript notes, “Mount Rainier, the Great
Peak of the Pacific Forest Reserve,” undated, on file at UW Library, Special Collections.