"In Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian Project in the Field, Mick Gidley provides an intimate and informative glimpse of Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) and his associates as they undertook their work in the early decades of the twentieth century. A photographer, Curtis embarked on an epic quest to document through word and picture the traditional cultures of Native Americans in the western United States - cultures that he believed were inevitably doomed. Curtis's project became the largest anthropological enterprise undertaken in this country and yielded the monumental work The North American Indian (1907-30).

Its publication was a watershed in the anthropological study of Native Americans and inspired the first full-length documentary film, popular magazine articles, books for young readers, lectures, and photography exhibitions. Housing a wealth of ethnographic information yet steeped in nostalgia and predicated upon the assumption that Native Americans were a "vanishing race," Curtis's work has been both influential and controversial, and its vision of Native Americans must still be reckoned with today."--Jacket.