For over thirty years, photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) traveled the length and breadth of North America, seeking to record in words and images the traditional life of its vanishing indigenous inhabitants - the American Natives.

Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868–1952) is one of the earliest successful portrait photographers, well-known for his remarkable archive of prints documenting the Native American people and their way of life in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century.

At the turn of the century, the American photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868?1952) started on his 30-year project to produce a monumental study of North American Indians.

Inspired by a gathering of thousands of Blackfoot, Piegan, and Blood Indians in Montana in 1900 to perform the outlawed Sun Dance for probably the last time, Edward S. Curtis set out to record as much as he could of Indian culture before it was gone.