Edward Sheriff Curtis, photographer and ethnologist, was born February 19, 1868, in Whitewater, Wisconsin to Ellen Sheriff and the Reverend “Ashen” Johnson Curtis. The elder Curtis was a veteran of the American Civil War and, as a result, his health suffered and he couldn’t manage his farm. The family moved to Minnesota around 1874 to join Asahel Curtis (grandfather to Edward), who ran a grocery store and was the postmaster in Le Sueur County. Young Edward left school in the sixth grade and soon built a camera.

At the age of seventeen years-of-age, Curtis apprenticed to a photographer in St. Paul. In 1887, his family moved to Seattle in the territory of Washington where Curtis purchased a new camera and became a partner in a photography studio.

In 1895, Curtis photographed Princess Angeline, daughter of Chief Sealth of Seattle. George Bird Grinnell appointed Curtis as the official photographer of the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899 and, in 1900, invited Curtis to join the expedition to the Blackfoot Confederacy in Montana.

Curtis spent thirty years of his life travelling the country going deep into Indian territories. He lived among the tribes to document a disappearing civilization. Via his photography and recording of their languages and their music, he recorded the cultures of over eighty Indigenous cultures. There have been many critics of his work as on occasion Curtis arranged his subjects and scenes, at times mixing tribal artifacts and traditions to match his romanticized vision. To Curtis’ credit, he took over 40,000 photographs, created over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Native American languages and music, and he chronicled tribal lore and history, traditional foods, housing, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs.

His life’s work was the twenty-volume, The North American Indian.

Edward Sheriff Curtis died in Los Angeles, California on October 19, 1952.