{"id":950,"date":"2012-10-23T13:55:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T18:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=950"},"modified":"2012-10-23T13:55:21","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T18:55:21","slug":"short-nights-of-the-shadow-catcher-a-new-biography-of-edward-curtis-by-timothy-egan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/reviews\/950\/short-nights-of-the-shadow-catcher-a-new-biography-of-edward-curtis-by-timothy-egan","title":{"rendered":"Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher–A New Biography of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan."},"content":{"rendered":"

Timothy Egan, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher.\u00a0 The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis<\/em>.\u00a0 Houghton Miflin Harcourt, October, 2012.\u00a0 412 pages, $28.00<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A Review<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly eighty-five years ago this week, Seattle\u2019s \u201cmost famous citizen,\u201d returning from a successful summer of field work in Alaska undertaken for the final volume of his monumental photographic and ethnographic survey of the \u201cvanishing\u201d native peoples of western North America, was arrested by King County deputies for his alleged failure to make alimony payments.\u00a0 Timothy Egan\u2019s heartbreaking account of the trial that followed illuminates both Edward Curtis\u2019 extraordinary life and the limitations of Egan\u2019s biographical method.<\/p>\n

Drawing heavily on Curtis\u2019 unpublished autobiography, as well as on archival research (including in the records of Portland\u2019s legendary climbing club, the\u00a0Mazamas), Egan\u2019s account of Curtis\u2019 thirty-year quest to memorialize native life at the turn of the 20th century in The North American Indian seems reliable, thorough and, as one would expect from a writer who\u2019s won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, well-written, if occasionally straining for the mot juste.\u00a0\u00a0 Writing that newly rich Seattle residents would \u201cpay handsomely to have the name Curtis etched below their hagiographic mugs,\u201d for example, is showy.\u00a0\u00a0 Egan also strains for effect when he writes that \u201ccoming from the maritime Northwest, where rain fell as soft and persistent mist, Curtis was not used to such muscular meteorological mood changes\u201d as he encountered in the southwest.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, writing that the Dakota plains \u201cwere a ghost prairie in 1907\u2014an empty pantry,\u201d or that \u201cvandals and thieves were actively chiseling away the centuries of life left behind in the cliffs\u201d of Anasazi dwellings, get it just right.<\/p>\n

Still, until the final pages, when his account of Curtis\u2019 humiliation and collapse brings him alive in ways the chronicle of his years of struggle and triumph never quite do, the tone of Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher<\/em> is restrained, as if Egan is reluctant to evaluate as well as narrate.\u00a0 Because his heart is on his sleeve in the alimony trail, Curtis comes alive, and that highlights what\u2019s missing from most of the book\u2014access to Curtis\u2019 inner life, as opposed to a chronicle of his business dilemmas, or the tribulations of accomplishing his life\u2019s work.\u00a0\u00a0 Simply chronicling a life is not the same as biography.\u00a0 Roger Porter of Reed College asks “what else does a biographer do but uncover documentary evidence, determine its importance, and use it to interpret the subject under study?’\u00a0 Egan performs the first two tasks successfully, but does little to “interpret” Curtis in the way that, to use one\u00a0example,\u00a0Edmund Morris\u00a0does for his subject in his splendid biography of Teddy Roosevelt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is, nonetheless, a remarkable story that Egan tells.\u00a0 Entirely self-made as an artist and self-taught as an anthropologist, Curtis discovered his m\u00e9tier when his photographic skills intersected with the public\u2019s curiosity about the fate of the last \u201cwild Indians.\u201d\u00a0 A vigorous and avid outdoorsman and already a successful studio photographer, Curtis rescued a climbing party on Mt. Rainier in 1898 which just happened to include George Grinnell, \u201cthe world\u2019s foremost expert on Plains Indians,\u201d and C. Hart Merriam, cofounder of the National Geographic Society and chief of the U. S. Biological Survey (predecessor to the US Fish and Wildlife Service). They liked this \u201cresourceful fellow,\u201d Egan writes.\u00a0 \u201cHe was fast on his feet, quick with a joke, full of practical knowledge, physically heroic.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So impressed was Merriam that he asked Curtis to join the Harriman Expedition to Alaska, \u201cthe last great exploratory expedition of its kind in North America, dating to the Lewis and Clark journey a hundred years earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Muir was also a member of the Harriman Expedition. He\u2019s the only person I can think of who reminds me of Curtis.\u00a0 (Although Harriman and Curtis were both sons of preachers who dropped out of school, they had little else in common.)\u00a0 Muir and Curtis shared extraordinary physical stamina, self-confidence, and in the final analysis, an enduring influence.\u00a0 They also had domineering fathers and extraordinary repositories of self-reliance. Did Curtis talk with Muir during their two months together?\u00a0 Muir was much older, but they\u2019d both grown up in Wisconsin and could climb mountains as easily as a normal person could amble down a level trail.\u00a0\u00a0 Curtis must have seen something of himself in Muir.\u00a0\u00a0 Did they stay in touch?\u00a0 Muir lived until 1914.<\/p>\n

Through Merriam and Grinnell, Curtis would also meet Gifford Pinchot (a key character in an earlier Egan book, The Big Burn<\/em>), Theodore Roosevelt (who liked him well enough to have him as a house guest and to photograph his daughter’s wedding), and America\u2019s richest man, J. P. Morgan, who would finance The North American Indian<\/em> in a deal that would have given Faust pause.\u00a0 At his alimony trial in 1927, Curtis confessed that while Morgan\u00a0 and his estate had invested $2.5 million in the project\u2014\u201can amount equal to about $50 million today,\u201d Egan notes\u2014Curtis himself had worked for \u201cnothing.\u201d (He also struggled to pay his loyal and mostly uncomplaining staff.\u00a0 But apart from his Crow interpreter, Alexander Upshaw, none of Curtis\u2019 colleagues ever quite come to life here\u00a0either.)\u00a0 And while he made nothing, Curtis told the judge, composing the twenty volumes of The North American Indian<\/em> was \u201cthe only thing I could do that was worth doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one doubts now the value of what Curtis accomplished, and not just in monetary terms, although Egan notes that a \u201csingle photogravure of Chief Joseph\u2026sold for $160,000 in 2010,\u201d and a complete set sold in 2005 \u201cfor $1.4 million.\u201d\u00a0 (Only 222 sets were completed.)\u00a0 Curtis\u2019 real contribution was to recognize the inherent value and the religious significance of tribal cultures, and to work with a maniacal intensity to film and record them, fearing that if he did not, they would be lost entirely.\u00a0 He intended, he said at the outset, to \u201ca complete publication\u2026of all tribes yet in a primitive condition.\u201d \u00a0 The peoples and cultures he was recording, of course, had already been transformed by centuries of contact, directly or indirectly, with the post-Columbian world.\u00a0 Horses, introduced by the Spaniards, transformed life on the Plains.\u00a0 Sheep were indispensible to Navajo life.\u00a0 Kit Carson had tried to obliterate the Navajo by destroying their flocks.\u00a0 Curtis had an intuitive appreciation of this history.<\/p>\n

He learned native languages, compiled dictionaries, and made wax recordings of songs, which he then transcribed.\u00a0 Those recordings can\u00a0still be heard, and the originals collected between 1907-1913 are at Indiana University.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Curtis was never patronizing to his subjects, even when he staged their poses, and he always acknowledged the contributions of his native collaborators.\u00a0 Trusting his informants, Egan writes, Curtis challenged the prevailing narrative of Custer\u2019s last stand, adding eye-witness reports of Crow scouts that disputed the myth of Custer’s heroism.\u00a0 (And these were the\u00a0scouts on Custer’s side.)\u00a0\u00a0 Curtis despised the policies of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the meddling hostility of Christian missionaries to \u201cpagan practices.\u201d\u00a0 He admired the religious practices of native peoples. \u00a0His point of view seems very modern.<\/p>\n

After the Morgan interests acquired all of his copyrights, both Curtis and his work disappeared from public view.\u00a0 Despite his ex-wife\u2019s hostility, Curtis retained the love and affection of his four children.\u00a0 Marianne Wiggins’ novel, The Shadow Catcher<\/em>, includes a photo she took of Curtis\u2019 headstone in a Los Angeles cemetary.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cBeloved Father,\u201d it reads, and Wiggins notes that his children chose to be buried on either side of him.\u00a0 She makes that discovery the central insight of her fictional enquiry in Curtis’s life and loves.<\/p>\n

Nearly twenty years after his death, a new generation, attracted by myths of native righteousness and wisdom, rediscovered Curtis.\u00a0\u00a0 Academics alone study Curtis\u2019 written accounts now, but the pictures are universally admired.\u00a0 \u201cCurtis mastered the art of making his subject so dimensional, so present, so complete,\u201d writes Louis Erdrich, \u201cthat it is to me as though I am looking at the women through a window, as though they are really there in the print and in the paper, looking back at me. This is the genius and the gift of the work. The women photographed by Curtis are so alive that it seems any minute they will change their expression: the hint of a smile will turn into a hoot or laugh, the frown into exasperation.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can see Curtis\u2019 photos on-line at the Library of Congress website.\u00a0 http:\/\/memory.loc.gov\/ammem\/award98\/ienhtml\/curthome.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Although Egan includes some plates, looking at the images while reading the book will add to the pleasure.\u00a0\u00a0 Taschen also published a paperback edition of the photos that you can get online for $5.00, and I would recommend that as a supplement to the Egan biography.<\/p>\n

A slightly different version of this review appeared in The Oregonian<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Timothy Egan, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher.\u00a0 The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis.\u00a0 Houghton Miflin Harcourt,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/10\/Short%20Nights%20of%20the%20Shadow%20Catcher1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}