Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher

by Timothy Egan

  Harriman and Morgan’s daughter had gotten Curtis close to the great man. But to gain an audience with him, Curtis would have to pass through one more person: an olive-skinned, sly-witted twenty-two-year-old from Princeton who had been hired to oversee Morgan’s library and all the literary acquisitions, Belle da Costa Greene. An expert in illuminated manuscripts, she had charmed her way into New York’s art circles, and left some men speechless in her wake, with her green eyes and body-hugging clothes. “Just because I’m a librarian,” she once said, “doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.” Morgan was instantly taken, hiring Greene in 1905 and granting her extraordinary powers for one so young; she was given the kind of access to his world that no other woman had. If Greene did not like a manuscript, or increasingly, a work of art, Morgan would pass on it. She pretended to be somewhat aloof in Morgan’s presence, feigning resistance to the lure of his charm and vast wealth, joking that she was the only woman who was not “a willing candidate for the harem.” She told everyone she was of Portuguese stock, and hinted at distant royal blood. Curtis was also impressed by her beauty and exotic background. But he did not know—nor did Morgan—that virtually everything about her biography was a lie. Her real name was Belle Greener, and she was the daughter of a prominent black family from Washington, D.C., unrelated to any kind of European royalty. She never spoke of her father, though he was the first African-American graduate of Harvard. Light-skinned enough to pass as white, Belle slipped out of one racial outfit before her twenty-first birthday and dressed herself in another. The new woman, complete with a package of made-up anecdotes to fill out the narrative, was in place when she found work at the Princeton Library, and was refined over the years as Morgan’s aide in New York.

  After preliminary discussions with Greene, following a favorable response to his introductory letter, Curtis was ushered in to see Morgan. As he had clambered over a glacier to rescue two strangers on Mount Rainier; as he had descended a ladder into a Hopi kiva thick with rattlesnakes; and as he had sailed to Alaska with some of the nation’s best minds, five years after he was picking berries and digging clams, Curtis walked in, certain he could make his way. He was an interpreter, after all, a bridge between worlds, and he could find common ground with a financier who talked in the language of Wall Street as well as he could see why an Acoma native lived atop an eight-hundred-foot-high rock in the Southwest. But, for a moment, he was caught off-guard.

  Curtis was prepared for the man’s intense gaze—made famous in the best-known picture of Morgan, a 1903 portrait taken by Edward Steichen that captured a laser stare that could crack open a bank vault. And New York associates had given him tips on the Morgan conversational style. He was not known for being profligate with words, urging one and all to get to the point. But what Curtis was not ready for was the man’s appearance: Morgan was grotesque-looking. As beautiful and radiant as Belle da Costa Greene was on first impression, Morgan’s outward projection was at the other extreme—repulsive, shockingly so to those who had never met him. The forks of thinning, bone-colored hair, the ascot, the watch fob, the slow-burning cigar, the mahogany walking stick: familiar, and expected. But the eyes of a visitor were not drawn to the accessories of J. P. Morgan; they were pulled directly to his face. His oversized nose was severely mottled and inflamed. It was like the fog light of a ship, making it impossible to turn away. Morgan suffered from rhinophyma, which the best doctors could do nothing about. Women friends had suggested makeup and other cosmetics, but Morgan, after nearly twenty years of living with his condition, had stopped acting as if he cared. In old age, the rhinophyma had turned Morgan’s nose into “a hideous purple bulb,” as his biographer Jean Strouse wrote, and was the subject of constant comment by all who came in contact with him. “Pierpont’s face is now too terrible to look at,” said one friend, the historian and writer Henry Adams. “The nose has spread.”

  “Sit down,” Morgan directed Curtis. Face stern. No smile. Hands together as he sat at his desk in a room of buffed teak paneling. The sunken eyes of the financier focused in on the photographer. Curtis had barely spoken his first words when Morgan interrupted him with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Mr. Curtis, there are many demands on me for financial assistance.”

  Yes, Curtis said, he understood. As their mutual friend E. H. Harriman had explained. As Morgan’s own lovely daughter Mrs. Satterlee had implied. Again Curtis went over the plan, before he jumped to his next argument. He had given Morgan an additional document, a list of estimated annual expenses. Hotels. Money for translators and money for his subjects. Food for the crew. Food for the horses and mules. Rail tickets. Salaries of three assistants: an editor, a writer in the field and an ethnologist. The Indians would have to be paid every bit of the way. But as for Curtis himself, he would work for free.

  Free! Morgan said nothing at that, but this was as far as Curtis would go. He would be reimbursed—he hoped—from sales of the twenty complete volumes. They would be priced at $5,000 a set, and Curtis would have to hustle the subscriptions. Morgan himself would get twenty-five sets for his new library, or to distribute to various museums and universities—an impressive gift, yes? Also, hundreds of original photogravures would go to Morgan. So, for all the hours on the reservations, all the days on trains, the months of searching for subjects, interviewing, photographing, the seasons spent squinting into the sun, shivering in the snow and straining in a darkroom—for all of that, Curtis would get nothing. But Morgan raised not an eyebrow.

  Curtis tried another tack, a way to Morgan’s wallet. Here was the thing: this project matched Morgan’s passions. How so? Think of it this way: the Curtis Indian creation would be a publishing sensation. The Vatican, the monarchs of Europe and the kaiser of Germany would want sets. For Morgan it would be an ideal addition to the collection of a man who owned medieval icons, antique Chinese porcelains and the famed Indian Bible, printed in 1663, the first time Scripture was published in a Native American language, Algonquin. What Morgan desired was to have that which no one else could possess. As he himself had said, the most expensive words in the world are unique au monde.

  Yet Morgan was unmoved. “I will be unable to help you.”

  Had Curtis stood up and walked out, as rejected suitors to Morgan’s money usually did, that would have been the end of it. Meany’s loan was still a pipe dream. Clara cried that the family would soon be in the poorhouse. And even an exhibition at such a tony showcase as the Waldorf-Astoria, selling Indian pictures to the New York rich, barely covered the cost of renting the room. But instead of turning to leave, Curtis sat in place and went on the offensive. He opened his portfolio and spread the pictures on the desk of the king of Wall Street. Here was the Walpi warrior. Here was the Chief Joseph portrait so loved by Teddy—um, the president. Here was the old well at Acoma. Here were the salmon people of Puget Sound. The more the rich man saw of the pictures, the more he seemed touched. These faces were as much a part of the American landscape as a Hudson Valley promontory. Did Morgan think the country could afford to lose this piece of its past? And, more cynically, benevolence could do wonders for Morgan’s image. Roosevelt had made the wealthy out to be heartless bastards, the lot of them, and the progressive mob wanted them taxed at an annual rate of 50 percent or more. These people, many of them Republicans with personal fortunes of their own, were calling for the creation of an income tax, of all things—the audacity. If Morgan agreed to sponsor something historic on behalf of a downtrodden native class, it would do quite a bit for his reputation. See, the rich aren’t so hollowed-out inside. How much longer did he have to live? And what, truly, would outlive him? What would be his legacy? All the carved stone in his library?

  One more picture did the trick. This portrait, titled Mosa, shows a Mojave girl in early adolescence. She is a face-painted beauty with a careless gaze, skin as smooth as a bar of soap—just the jewel for Morgan the collector. He loved the picture, and it sealed the deal. Very well:

  “I will lend financial assistan
ce for the publication of a set of books illustrated with photographs such as these,” Morgan said. Yes? More Mosa, in other words. Curtis assured him there were many more Mosas where that came from. Now, had Curtis heard him right? A deal was done, just like that? Indeed he had. “My staff will take care of the financial arrangements.”

  Morgan agreed to the $75,000, spread over five years—for fieldwork only. The money for publication, the printing and binding, would have to come from those willing to pay the subscription for the complete twenty-volume set. And $5,000 was too much to ask. How about $3,000 for a set printed on thick etching stock, and $3,850 for Japanese tissue? And instead of one hundred sets, why not try to sell five hundred sets? A superb idea! The books must be bound in lustrous leather. Of course! Beautiful to behold, a thing of great artistry. Done! There remained one quibble about the text. Rather than hire some eminent scholar for the prose narrative, or a ghostwriter with many books already published, why not have Curtis write it himself? After all, who better knows the Indians? He had promised in his outline to produce “interesting reading,” had he not?

  “You are the one to write it,” Morgan said. “You know the Indians and how they live and what they are thinking.”

  They shook hands. The photographer gathered up his material, closed his portfolio, turned to leave. “Mr. Curtis,” Morgan said in closing, “I like a man who attempts the impossible.” By then, Curtis had forgotten about the nose.

  For days, Curtis strolled on air. No January looked so good. No city so great as New York. No man so wonderful as J. Pierpont Morgan. “I walked from his presence in a daze,” he said. Yes, $75,000 was a trifle compared to the nearly ten times that amount Morgan had spent on the musty book collection of a Brit. But to Curtis it was everything—his life work, his future. Clara was with him, getting a rare chance to share a triumph with her husband. For the moment, he did not care about the details of selling individual sets, on spec, for an amount equal to three times the annual wage of an average American. Nor did he seem concerned that he had cut himself out of a salary. What he rejoiced at was the assurance of $15,000 a year, enough to bring the Big Idea home and establish himself among the greats who strived to capture human images for posterity.

  MORGAN MONEY TO KEEP INDIANS FROM OBLIVION

  Morgan got the kind of press he wished for, the historic irony lost on the daily papers. But before the headlines, Curtis told Roosevelt of his triumph.

  “I congratulate you with all my heart,” the president replied in a short note. “That is a mighty fine deed of Mr. Morgan.” And to this Roosevelt added a surprising request. His daughter Alice, the most celebrated young woman in America, would be marrying shortly. Yes, Curtis knew: it was in the press every day, the upcoming nuptials between a handsome congressman, Nicholas Longsworth, and Princess Alice. Roosevelt asked Curtis if he would photograph the event. Everyone in the country would want a look, and what they would see would be filtered through the lens of the Shadow Catcher.

  Near the end of the summer, after Morgan’s first check had been cashed, after the wedding pictures of the first family had gone out to wide acclaim, after Curtis had put together a staff of top-drawer talent, the photographer wrote Roosevelt to ask a favor of his own. He was deep in Indian country, composing a note from the Hopi homeland. The work had gone very well, he reported: he expected to publish the first two volumes within a year. He’d made a major breakthrough with the Apache. He was closer than ever to the Hopi. And he felt he knew enough about the Navajo to tell a word-and-picture story without precedent. He was fascinated by the Zuni; the pueblos of New Mexico Territory were a photographer’s dream. He wondered if the president would be willing to write an introduction to the work, something along the lines of the earlier letter of endorsement Curtis had circulated while looking for a benefactor. “Pardon my crude way of saying it,” Curtis wrote, “but you as the greatest man in America owe it to your people to do this.” Such nerve. But Roosevelt couldn’t resist. He replied from Sagamore Hill, saying he was honored that Curtis had asked him to pen a few words on his behalf.

  “Now I so thoroughly sympathize with you in your work that I am inclined to write the introduction you desire,” Roosevelt wrote. “But how long do you wish it to be and when do you wish me to have it ready for you?”

  The year closed with Curtis at his happiest. He not only had the patronage of the most powerful banker on the planet, but the president of the United States was working for him as well. For free.

  Stare of the titan: J. P. Morgan, 1903. Edward Steichen’s famous portrait of the richest banker in the United States, taken three years before Morgan agreed to back the Curtis project. The light glinting off the armrest was seen by many viewers as a knife.

  Mosa—Mohave, 1903. This is the picture that won over Morgan, who at first was reluctant to help Curtis.

  Belle da Costa Greene, gatekeeper of the treasures of the Morgan Library. Greene kept her personal life secret, shedding one racial identity for another.

  7. Anglos in Indian Country

  1906

  WHEN HE RETURNED to the White Mountain reservation in late spring of 1906, Curtis was determined to stay until he could decipher the inner lives of the Apache. He had with him a paid crew this time, and enough cash to be a bargaining force among people who had shunned him earlier. He would not leave, he insisted, until the Great Mystery was evident in his pictures and understandable in his words. Three days out of Seattle, he arrived at the rail stop of Holbrook, a dust-choked trading town along the anemic Puerco River, just downslope from the Apache homeland in the mountains of eastern Arizona Territory. Though the days were long under the glare of an unblinking sun, winter still had a grip on snow-covered peaks of ten thousand feet or more. Roads were half built, washed out in places, mere rumors in others. Six years before Arizona became a state, portions of it were terra incognita to the outside world. In advance of the trip, Curtis had written the Smithsonian wondering if someone could send him “an available map there in Washington which gives a good detail of that country.”

  Upward the Curtis party marched, a dust cloud around a wagon pulled by four horses, upward to piñon-covered prickly ground, through an area known as the Petrified Forest, winding and stumbling in search of faces to fill Volume I of the series that would soon be formalized under the title The North American Indian, with an office (for selling subscriptions) in New York, at 437 Fifth Avenue. For the first book, Curtis had chosen the Navajo and the Apache, two tribes that had most enchanted, and eluded, him.

  Curtis did not lack internal fuel: he wanted to show Morgan and Roosevelt that he could live up to their trust, but he also wanted to prove to the credentialed Indian experts that their ignorance was stupefying.

  “You are going to get something that does not exist,” an Indian scholar had told Curtis in Washington, D.C., a few months earlier. “The Apache have no religion.”

  “How do you know they have no religion?” Curtis replied.

  “I spent considerable time among them, I asked them, and they told me . . . You’re wasting your time.”

  The money from J. P. Morgan allowed the photographer to stock his project with a first-rate posse, building his team one at a time in the months after leaving Manhattan. His closest aide was an ex–newspaperman of multiple talents, William E. Myers, who was twenty-eight years old when he fell under the spell of the Shadow Catcher in 1906. Like his boss, Myers grew up in the Midwest; unlike him, he had a pedigreed education, majoring in Greek on his way to graduating with honors from Northwestern University. He spoke several languages, and had been raised in a middle-class family that valued learning. An uncanny linguist, Myers had an ear for the nuances of speech and dialect, which was vital to the groundbreaking work that Curtis aspired to do. In addition, his swift shorthand proved invaluable in taking down words for the dictionary-like glossaries Curtis was pulling together of languages that were falling out of use. Myers had taught school in the Midwest, then worked at the Seattle Star
, a gritty daily, before signing on with the open-ended adventure of Edward S. Curtis. “To the Indians, his skill in phonetics was awesome magic,” Curtis wrote of Myers. “In spelling, he was a second Webster.” Equally important, he had the stamina and stable personality for a project that would allow no room for a private life, let alone sleep.