Heart of the Circle: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis of Native American Women

Seattle photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) found his mission in life during the summer of 1900, when he went to the Piegan Blackfeet Reservation in Montana for the annual Sun Dance. Aware of declining populations on the reservations and the disastrous effects on Native Americans of Euro-American diseases, fenced ranges, railroads, and the decimation of the buffalo, he believed, as most people did, that Indian life was doomed. But Indians arrived by the hundreds for the Sun Dance, and Curtis began to suspect that more Indian culture existed than was evident. His destiny became clear: he appointed himself the definitive chronicler of Indian culture before it was gone forever. Later that year, he made a trip to photograph the Indians of the Southwest.

This book is the first devoted exclusively to Curtis's images of Native American women. Curtis photographed the women of every tribe he visited in many stages of life and in many of their activities. The result was hundreds of images of women making pottery, tending infants in cradleboards, hauling wood, harvesting wild berries, carrying water, grinding corn, stretching hides, and butchering game. More than one hundred of Curtis's intimate and revealing portraits from the collections of the Library of Congress are included in this book, grouped by geographic region and accompanied by informative text. Pat Durkin, a writer specializing in community issues and the environment for such publications as those of the National Geographic Society and the Washington Post, provides an illuminating introduction.

The Library of Congress holds one of the largest collections of Curtis's work available to the public. In its Rare Book and Special Collections Division is one of the original high-quality limited editions of Curtis's The North American Indian, with its accompanying portfolio of photogravure prints. His photographs — Curtis deposited approximately 2,800 images in the process of copyrighting them — are cataloged among thousands of historical photographs of Native Americans in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.

Introduction by Pat Durkin
Captions by Alan Bisbort and Sara Day
Edited by Sara Day
Joanna Scherer, technical consultant
Pomegranate Artbooks, Rohnert Park, California, in association with the Library of Congress

Available from Pomegranate Artbooks, Rohnert Park, California, booksellers, and the Library of Congress Sales Shop, Washington, DC 20540-4985

Paper, 8 1/2 by 11 inches, 128 pages, 107 black-and-white illustrations
ISBN 0-7649-0006-4
$34.95