Edward S. Curtis was the greatest photographer of Native Americans that this country has ever produced. Curtis photographed more than eighty Native American tribes at what for many was the penultimate moment of their existence in a period spanning more than three decades. Seen in Curtis's photographs, these are peoples of free-reining spirit set in the vastness of a primal continent. Included are a selection of Curtis's master prints, which have never been seen before, and other prints that comprised Curtis's last great exhibition, mounted in 1906 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Donated to the Peabody Essex Museum in 1906, these prints have never been exhibited since. This selection of photographs, which survive intact from almost one hundred years ago, proves that Curtis was not only a great photographer but also one of the most important artists ever produced in America. With this book, accompanied by a radical reappraisal of Curtis's work and place in American art by photographic historian Clark Worswick, Edward Curtis joins the ranks of John James Audubon, whose works on a uniquely American natural history subject admit no contemporary comparison.