Images of the Past: Native Americans

We’ve posted some varied sets of historical photos before (such as here and here), but this time we’ve got some focusing on a specific social group: Native Americans.

In 1906, photographer Edward S. Curtis was offered $75,000 to document the lives of Native Americans.

The benefactor, JP Morgan, would later receive nearly 1,500 pictures in a collection entitled The North American Indian. Curtis had been looking to photograph the Indians of North America at a time when they were dispossessed of their land and their rights.

Curtis’s photographs depict a romantic version of their cultures, a vision contrary to the stereotypes of Indians at the time.

Here is a small selection of our favorites:

To view a larger sample of this collection (over 100 photos) and the source of these photos, please click here.