Curtis, Edward S., The Sioux and the Apsaroke from Volumes Three and Four of The North American Indian by Edward Sheriff Curtis

Harper Colophon, 1975. Wraps, like new with custom-made polyester protector. Edited by Stuart Zoll with Foreword by A.D. Coleman. 105 pages. This book is illustrated with Curtis’ photos and while the reproduction quality is better in other publications, what distinguishes this work is Coleman’s informative introduction reviewing scholarship about Curtis and Curtis’ texts in Volumes 3 and 4 of his twenty volume magnum opus, The North American Indian, completed in 1930.  In addition to being a skilled photographer, Curtis was an ethnographer and here details Native American customs, such as courtship and marriage. Summary:

The Sioux and the Apsaroke (Harper Colophon, 1975) is a curated selection of Edward S. Curtis’s work drawn from Volumes III and IV of his monumental The North American Indian — the expansive early-20th-century photographic and ethnographic survey documenting Indigenous peoples across North America. This edition condenses the original texts and many of Curtis’s photogravure images into a single accessible paperback format of about 103–105 pages illustrated with roughly 40+ black-and-white photographs by Curtis himself.

The book presents cultural descriptions and photographic portraits of the Sioux (Lakota and Dakota) and the Apsaroke (Crow) — along with material on the Hidatsa — originally published in the early 1900s as part of Curtis’s twenty-volume project. In this Harper Colophon edition, Stuart Zoll selected representative passages and images from those two volumes to convey key aspects of daily lifeways, social structures, ceremonial life, and Indigenous knowledge as Curtis recorded it, combining documentary description with visual representation.

In his Foreword, critic and historian A.D. Coleman provides contemporary perspective and commentary on Curtis’s work and methodology. Coleman discusses Curtis’s dual role as both photographer and ethnographer, situating the original volumes within broader scholarship on Native American cultures and early documentary photography. This introduction helps readers understand the historical ambitions of Curtis’s project while also acknowledging how perceptions of his work have evolved.

Visually, the book showcases portraits and cultural scenes that reflect Curtis’s distinctive aesthetic — staged yet intimate photographic studies meant to capture the spirit of Indigenous life on the Plains. The selections emphasize both the material culture and personal presence of Sioux and Crow individuals, offering a compact but evocative sampling of Curtis’s larger archival endeavor.

Overall, The Sioux and the Apsaroke (1975) functions as both a condensed introduction to these two volumes of The North American Indian and a photographic-textual document aiming to preserve Indigenous traditions as Curtis sought to record them in the early 20th century, with Zoll’s selections and Coleman’s foreword helping frame the material for a mid-1970s audience.