In the Spotlight

Online access to Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian

Northwestern University Library has launched the first complete edition of Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian, comprising 20 volumes of narrative and photogravure plates accompanied by 20 portfolios of large plates -- in all nearly 5,000 pages of text and 2,226 images. The site presents the work as originally produced and published by Curtis between 1907 and 1930, and held in the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections.

Edward S. Curtis was an entrepreneur and photographer who dedicated much of his career to recording traditional American Indian culture and customs. His view of Indians as a primitive and vanishing race reflects the cultural perspectives of his time.

This project was supported, in part, by funds from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The site complements Northwestern’s earlier digitization of the Curtis photogravures for the Library of Congress American Memory online collections, funded through the National Digital Library Competition.