rendering a real and great service; a service not only to our own
people, but to the world of scholarship everywhere._

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

_October 1st, 1906._

[Illustration: Theodore Roosevelt]

[Illustration: White River - Apache]

White River - Apache

_From Copyright Photograph 1903 by E.S. Curtis_

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The task of recording the descriptive material embodied in these volumes,
and of preparing the photographs which accompany them, had its inception
in 1898. Since that time, during each year, months of arduous labor have
been spent in accumulating the data necessary to form a comprehensive and
permanent record of all the important tribes of the United States and
Alaska that still retain to a considerable degree their primitive customs
and traditions. The value of such a work, in great measure, will lie in
the breadth of its treatment, in its wealth of illustration, and in the
fact that it represents the result of personal study of a people who are
rapidly losing the traces of their aboriginal character and who are
destined ultimately to become assimilated with the "superior race."

It has been the aim to picture all features of the Indian life and
environment--types of the young and the old, with their habitations,
industries, ceremonies, games, and everyday customs. Rather than being
designed for mere embellishment, the photographs are each an illustration
of an Indian character or of some vital phase in his existence. Yet the
fact that the Indian and his surroundings lend themselves to artistic
treatment has not been lost sight of, for in his country one may treat
limitless subjects of an aesthetic character without in any way doing
injustice to scientific accuracy or neglecting the homelier phases of
aboriginal life. Indeed, in a work of this sort, to overlook those
marvellous touches that Nature has given to the Indian country, and for
the origin of which the native ever has a wonder-tale to relate, would be
to neglect a most important chapter in the story of an environment that
made the Indian much of what he is. Therefore, being directly from Nature,
the accompanying pictures show what actually exists or has recently
existed (for many of the subjects have already passed forever), not what
the artist in his studio may presume the Indian and his surroundings to
be.

The task has not been