Spirit capture

About this book

Native Americans have been among the most popular subjects of photography since the invention of the medium more than 150 years ago. One of the most assiduous collectors of Native American objects and images was George Gustav Heye, whose vast collections now form the core of the holdings of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Spirit Capture brings together more than two hundred of the most compelling images from the NMAI collection with essays from Native and non-Native historians, anthropologists, and curators. Whether depicting runaway Wyandot girls being returned to their boarding school, a Seminole woman sitting at a sewing machine, or a Yaqui man sporting a pair of bandoliers, the photographs in Spirit Capture attest to the adaptive strength of Native Americans in the face of more than a century of profound economic, political, social, and spiritual change.