484 



The National Geographic Magazine 



curacy, because it is truthful. ■• All serious 

 students are to be congratulated because 

 he is putting his work in permanent 

 form : for our generation offers the last 

 chance for doing what Mr Curtis has 

 done. 



"The Indian as he has hitherto been is 

 on the point of passing away. His life 

 has been lived under conditions through 

 which our own race passed so many ages 

 ago that not a vestige of their memory 

 remains. It would be a veritable calamity 

 if a vivid and truthful record of these 

 conditions were not kept. No one man 

 alone could preserve such a record in 

 complete form. Others have worked in 

 the past, and are working in the present, 

 to preserve parts of the record ; but Mr 

 Curtis, because of the singular combina- 

 tion of qualities with which he has been 

 blessed and because of his extraordinary 

 success in making and using his oppor- 

 'tunities, has been able to do what no 

 other man ever has done ; what, as far as 

 we can see, no other man could do. 



"Fie is an artist who works out of 

 doors and not in the closet. He is a 

 close observer, whose qualities of mind 

 and body fit him to make his observations 

 out in the field, surrounded by the wild 

 life he commem.orates. He has lived on 

 intimate terms with many different tribes 

 of the mountains and the plains. He 

 knows them as they hunt, as they travel, 

 as they go about their various avocations 

 on the march and in the camp. He knows 

 their medicine men and sorcerers, their 

 chiefs and' warriors, their young men 

 and maidens. He has not only seen their 

 vigorous outward existence, but has 

 caught glimpses, such as few white men 

 ever catch, into that strange spiritual and 

 mental life of theirs, from whose inner- 



most recesses all white men are forever 

 barred. 



"Mr Curtis in publishing this book is 

 rendering a real and great service — a. 

 service not only to our own people, but 

 to the world of scholarship everywhere." 



George Bird Grinnell writes as follows : 



"I have never seen pictures relating 

 to Indians which, for fidelity to nature, 

 combined with artistic feeling, can com- 

 pare with these pictures by Curtis. To- 

 day they are of high scientific and artistic 

 value. What will the\' be a huirdred 

 years from now, when the Indians shall 

 have utterly vanished from the face of 

 the earth ? The pictures will show to 

 the man of that day who and what were 

 his predecessors in the land. They will 

 tell how the Indian lived, what were his 

 beliefs, how he carried himself in the 

 various operations of life, and they will 

 tell it as no word-picture could ever tell 

 it. He who remembers the two or three 

 plates in Jonathan Carver's 'Travels,' or 

 Bodmer's splendid illustrations in Maxi- 

 millian's great work, cannot fail to realize 

 how great a difference exists between a 

 written and a pictured description. 



"The pictures speak for themselves, 

 and the artist who has made them is de- 

 voted to his work. To accomplish it he 

 has exchanged ease, comfort, home life, 

 for the hardest kind of work, frequent 

 and long-continued separation from his 

 famil}', the wearing toil of travel through 

 difficult regions, and finally the heart- 

 breaking struggle of winning over to his 

 purpose primitive men, to whom am- 

 bition, time, and money mean nothing, 

 but to whom a dream or a cloud in the 

 sky, or a bird flying across the trail from 

 the wrong direction, means much." 



