The collection of photos of American Indians from Edward Sheriff Curtis

Apache Girl by E.S. Curtis - The North American Indian, Vol. 1 - 1906. The photographer used very dramatic lighting.

The images are impressive. The visual ethnographic work... amazing. 

Edward Sheriff Curtis took more than 40,000 photos of people from 80 Indian tribes in a project financed by J. P. Morgan. Curiously, he didn't get a salary and at the time of his death the photographer/ethnologist was mostly forgotten. But there is no doubt that his The North American Indian book series was a project of epic proportions. 

President Theodore Roosevelt wrote the foreword of the first volume and said about Curtis:  

He 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 commemorates. 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;

Curtis wrote about himself and the project in the introduction of the first book of the series:

While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically; hence the story of Indian life will not be told in microscopic detail, but rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture. And I hope that while our extended observations among these brown people have given no shallow insight into their life and thought, neither the pictures nor the descriptive matter will be found lacking in popular interest.

Some critics say the Curtis staged the photos but, does it really matter? Show me the alternative. 

(Many of his photos are in The Library of Congress. There is also a book with the complete portfolio of images for sale in Amazon - link is affiliate.)