Read Online Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan - Free Book Online
Authors: Timothy Egan
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the best the Indians can get,” said Morgan. “They cannot escape
it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it.” Forced assimilation never
had a more clearly stated goal.
After the mission was established on the Montana prairie in 1890, young Blackfeet
were taken from the tribe and sent to a three-story brick boarding school, fifteen
miles from Browning. The idea was to rinse the native out of them and cleanse them
with western Christianity. A big part of that effort was to get the boys to reject
the illegal Sun Dance. A year’s worth of missionary reeducation could be undone by
just a few days in summer at the traditional ceremony. If the Piegan were to avoid
the fate of Angeline’s people, they would have to start the new century by joining
the modern world, the clerics insisted. Give up the chanting and dancing, the prayers
to the sun and the earth, the mumbo jumbo. An ancient festival paying homage to a
blinding star was barbaric.
In 1900, census takers were in the field, making a concerted effort, at long last,
to count every Indian—this at a time when all violent hostilities between the original
inhabitants of the continent and the new residents had finally come to an end. The
frontier was closed, the U.S. Census Bureau had announced a few years earlier—there
was no longer a line to push west nor a big empty space on the map to be filled in
with immigrants. This caused a great fuss among the pulse takers of American life.
The early reports of the count were not good: the number of Indians was down, dramatically
so. And the population figures conformed with other indicators of decline: by 1900,
the tribes owned less than 2 percent of the land they once possessed. Entire languages
had already disappeared—more than a loss of words, a loss of a way to look at the
world. All of this had been predicted for some time, and was taken as accepted wisdom.
As far back as 1831, the prescient observer Alexis de Tocqueville had said this of
American Indians: “They were isolated in their own country, and their race constituted
only a little colony of troublesome strangers in the midst of numerous dominant people.”
Throughout the afternoon and into the early evening Curtis took pictures of these
“troublesome strangers” from above: the encampment; the practical lodges, big enough
to provide shelter for an extended family; the stretched animal skins outside, painted
with symbols that told a story in a compact wraparound. Curtis worked without pause,
moving across the cliff’s edge, reacting to the changing light, slipping the heavy
plates from his camera into a sealed container, then reloading.
Grinnell was impressed by his passion. Two years after meeting Curtis on the volcano,
he saw in him a rare combination. Here was “a professional photographer, equipped
with all the skill required in the technical part of that business,” Grinnell wrote,
“but he is also an artist, seeing and loving the beautiful and longing to reproduce
it.” And everything below, the sweep of tradition and majesty on one of the longest
days of the year—it was fantastic, yes, Grinnell said. But the view was superficial
as well, offering only a glancing impression.
“Their humanity has been forgotten,” Grinnell said of the predominant way most outsiders
looked at Indians—as either savages or victims. The Piegan had gathered to pay homage
to the Great Mystery, Bird explained. And if Curtis expected to understand that mystery,
in order to take pictures that were true, he would need to go down below and get to
know the people. The glory was in the eyes, in the faces, in understanding how they
thought and what they did in the margins of a day.
Bird took him to the encampment. It was important, he cautioned, not to come on too
strong, too eager. Relax. Soak it all in. Smile. These people are not specimens, not
fauna to be categorized and
it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it.” Forced assimilation never
had a more clearly stated goal.
After the mission was established on the Montana prairie in 1890, young Blackfeet
were taken from the tribe and sent to a three-story brick boarding school, fifteen
miles from Browning. The idea was to rinse the native out of them and cleanse them
with western Christianity. A big part of that effort was to get the boys to reject
the illegal Sun Dance. A year’s worth of missionary reeducation could be undone by
just a few days in summer at the traditional ceremony. If the Piegan were to avoid
the fate of Angeline’s people, they would have to start the new century by joining
the modern world, the clerics insisted. Give up the chanting and dancing, the prayers
to the sun and the earth, the mumbo jumbo. An ancient festival paying homage to a
blinding star was barbaric.
In 1900, census takers were in the field, making a concerted effort, at long last,
to count every Indian—this at a time when all violent hostilities between the original
inhabitants of the continent and the new residents had finally come to an end. The
frontier was closed, the U.S. Census Bureau had announced a few years earlier—there
was no longer a line to push west nor a big empty space on the map to be filled in
with immigrants. This caused a great fuss among the pulse takers of American life.
The early reports of the count were not good: the number of Indians was down, dramatically
so. And the population figures conformed with other indicators of decline: by 1900,
the tribes owned less than 2 percent of the land they once possessed. Entire languages
had already disappeared—more than a loss of words, a loss of a way to look at the
world. All of this had been predicted for some time, and was taken as accepted wisdom.
As far back as 1831, the prescient observer Alexis de Tocqueville had said this of
American Indians: “They were isolated in their own country, and their race constituted
only a little colony of troublesome strangers in the midst of numerous dominant people.”
Throughout the afternoon and into the early evening Curtis took pictures of these
“troublesome strangers” from above: the encampment; the practical lodges, big enough
to provide shelter for an extended family; the stretched animal skins outside, painted
with symbols that told a story in a compact wraparound. Curtis worked without pause,
moving across the cliff’s edge, reacting to the changing light, slipping the heavy
plates from his camera into a sealed container, then reloading.
Grinnell was impressed by his passion. Two years after meeting Curtis on the volcano,
he saw in him a rare combination. Here was “a professional photographer, equipped
with all the skill required in the technical part of that business,” Grinnell wrote,
“but he is also an artist, seeing and loving the beautiful and longing to reproduce
it.” And everything below, the sweep of tradition and majesty on one of the longest
days of the year—it was fantastic, yes, Grinnell said. But the view was superficial
as well, offering only a glancing impression.
“Their humanity has been forgotten,” Grinnell said of the predominant way most outsiders
looked at Indians—as either savages or victims. The Piegan had gathered to pay homage
to the Great Mystery, Bird explained. And if Curtis expected to understand that mystery,
in order to take pictures that were true, he would need to go down below and get to
know the people. The glory was in the eyes, in the faces, in understanding how they
thought and what they did in the margins of a day.
Bird took him to the encampment. It was important, he cautioned, not to come on too
strong, too eager. Relax. Soak it all in. Smile. These people are not specimens, not
fauna to be categorized and
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