Horse Trail Chicks

The name Edward Curtis might not mean much to you, but you probably have seen the iconic photographs of Native Americans that he took in the early 20th century, such as this one of Red Hawk, an Oglala chief.

Curtis was a photographer in Seattle and in 1896 he met and photographed the daughter of Chief Sealth (“Seattle”), the 75 year-old Princess Angeline. She was the only Native American allowed to live in Seattle at that time – Native Americans having been banned from the city that bore their chief’s name. The irony of this was not lost on Edward Curtis.

Curtis knew that a genocide was underway and he understood that as a result, dozens of wonderfully rich cultures would be systematically erased. His life’s work became preserving information about these indigenous cultures before they were lost entirely. With a small team of ethnographers he spent 30 years living, for months at a time, with more than 80 different tribes, documenting their family lives, beliefs, religious ceremonies, stories, languages, and customs. He made over 40,000 photographs using a large format camera with glass plate negatives and 10,000 sound recordings on Edison wax cylinders, and published his work in a 20-volume series titled “The North American Indian,” of which only 222 sets were produced, using the finest paper and photographic printing technique – photogravure – in the world at the time. Many of the sets have been lost or broken up, but some intact sets still exist in libraries and private collections. In 2012 one complete set sold at auction for $2.8 million.

I recently traveled to Seattle to see the premiere of a documentary film produced by my brother, Vaun Raymond, about Edward Curtis. I had the great pleasure of meeting Chief Seattle’s great-great-great-great granddaughter, Mary Lou Slaughter, and great (x4)-grandson, Ken Workman, as well as the great-grandson of Edward Curtis, John Graybill. I also got to see an original copy of The North American Indian and many original Curtis photogravures. It was a very moving and meaningful experience for me.

What does this have to do with horses? Well, of course horses played a huge role in the lives of many Native American tribes, in particular the Plains Indians. Before the Spanish introduced horses to the Americas in the 1500s, Indians traveled by foot with the help of dogs, who carried packs or pulled travois. Hunting buffalo, elk, and other game from the ground was a difficult and dangerous task.

At first, the Spanish used their advantage of having horses to drive Native Americans off their land. But once Indians acquired horses of their own and learned to train and ride them, they were able to reclaim some of their territory, such as the area that is now New Mexico. Not only did horses allow Indian tribes to better defend themselves, but they revolutionized hunting and travel. Unlike a hunter on foot, a mounted hunter could keep pace with a buffalo herd and was less likely to be trampled. Nomadic tribes could travel much farther and faster to find good hunting grounds.

Horses became intimately entwined in the lives of the Apache, Nez Perce, Kootenai, Blackfeet, Comanche, Shoshone, Crow, Navajo, and many other tribes. Some tribes changed their lifestyles when they acquired horses, such as the Sioux, who shifted from forest life and travel by canoe to become plains dwellers. As eastern tribes were driven out of their homelands, the horse allowed them to survive by hunting on the western prairies. Horses became a measure of a person’s wealth, were highly valued as gifts, and horse theft was common.

Horses were ridden bareback, or with a pad or saddle. According to The Horse and the Plains Indians, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, women were more likely to use saddles because, not being hunters, they did not need to gallop fast and they often carried a baby as well as belongings, which they could attach to the saddle either by hanging them from the saddle or by a travois.

Since hunting was done with a bow and arrow or a lance, the rider needed his hands free. Indians achieved great skill in maneuvering their horses with just leg and seat, and the best horses knew exactly what to do when chasing prey such as buffalo. The relationship between a Native American and his or her horse was a true partnership. Note that the bridle in this photo consists of only a piece of rope in the horse’s mouth, and reins.

Images of horses were common decorative elements on clothing and ritual objects and were painted or carved on canyon walls. Horses were considered to have spiritual qualities such as the ability to transfer their traits, including power and agility, to medicine men and women. When going into battle, horses were sometimes painted with zig-zag stripes to represent lightning and wore masks decorated with symbols to enhance their strength and speed.

I find it extraordinary that my relationship with my horse is probably not that different from the people and horses in these photographs from 100 years ago. Or from people and horses living 500 or even 1,000 years ago. Almost everything else has changed – the structures we live in, how we make our livings, the ways we travel, and how we communicate. Yet when I look at the photograph below, taken by Curtis in 1904 of Navajo on their horses, while there is a vast chasm of time and place and life experience between us, when I sit on my horse and ride out on the trail, there is something very elemental that is beautifully similar.

John and Coleen Graybill are undertaking a project to locate, photograph (using the same type of camera that Curtis used), and record the stories of descendants of the Native Americans in Curtis’ photographs. To learn more about and donate to this project, click here.

To research this article I used Tim Egan’s excellent biography of Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher  and a lovely little book by by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, The Horse and the Plains Indians. The Graybills also provided some details.

The photos of Native Americans in this post are by Edward Sheriff Curtis and were downloaded legally for educational purposes from the Northwestern University Digital Library Collection, where all 20 volumes of The North American Indian, including over a thousand photographs, can be viewed for free online. The Edward Curtis self-portrait is from Wikipedia. The modern-day photos are by Vaun Raymond.

Although some people feel that the use of the term “Indian” is insulting, the Native Americans I knew when I lived in an Inupiat village in Alaska and in Washington State referred to themselves sometimes as “Native American” and sometimes as “Eskimo” or “Indian” and did not mind any of these terms being used by non-Native people. I use the term “Indian” here with the utmost respect.

Monica