Cañon de Chelly—Navaho,

1904

In the early years of the twentieth century, Curtis embarked on an ambitious photographic journey throughout the United States. This orotone, rendered on a glass plate and toned with gold, shows seven Diné (Navajo) riders silhouetted against an imposing canyon. In deluxe prints such as this and in his illustrated twenty-volume publication The North American Indian (1907–30), Curtis sought to document the Native peoples whom he felt were "passing into the darkness of an unknown future." Curtis’s images and texts have been problematized by present-day Native artists and historians. While for some the photographs have value as documents of ancestors and historical practices, they also embody the artist’s erroneous belief that Native peoples and their cultures would not survive the twentieth century.