In 1898, Edward S. Curtis was out photographing Mt. Rainier when he met George Bird Grinnell, an expert on Native Americans. Two years later, Grinnell invited Curtis to join an expedition and photograph the Blackfeet Indians in Montana. JP Morgan must have liked what he saw and in 1906, Mr. Morgan offered Curtis 75,000 dollars to produce a 20 volume, 1,500 photograph series of the North American Indian. Curtis wrote in 1907: “The information that is to be gathered … respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost.”
I regard the work you do as one of the most valuable works which any American could now do. – President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to Edward S. Curtis, December 16, 1905.