1. EDWARD SHERIFF CURTIS Pl. 310 Basket Maker, 1912 11.5x15.3" Photogravure on 18x22" Japan Vellum paper from Portfolio 9 of The North American Indian ASG# ESC/8688

2. EDWARD SHERIFF CURTIS Pl. 311 Basket Carrier, 1899 14.7x8.6" Photogravure on 22x18" Japan Vellum paper from Portfolio 9 of The North American Indian ASG# ESC/8689

The Curtis caption reads: "When a heavy burden is to be borne, the tumpline crosses the forehead and the bearer walks stooping."

These two prints from Salishan tribes of the [Northwest] coast. The Chimakum and the Quilliute. The Willapa.

Curtis took the view of the Basket Carrier in 1899 in his Seattle Studio. He had been photographing Seattle area Indians for a number of years. The view of the Basket Maker made in 1912 is an environmental portrait as well as one that is modern in showing every day clothes rather than having props or a blanket covering their modern clothing.

Edward Sheriff Curtis's (1868-1952) legacy was a monumental, heroic and theatrical record of the American Indian and their recollected and imagined way of life before the white man. His mastery of the grandest pictorial style and technique in his photogravures, orotones and silver and platinum prints was rivaled only by the most elegant prints of Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz. During this time he was the most famous photographer in the country just as Ansel Adams later in the 20th Century.

Fair, Prints have waviness in the paper and a bend going the width or length in the middle of the prints on the shorter dimensions and handling wear in margins