Curtis brought Angeline to his studio at 614 Second Avenue. He had her sit down. Angeline daydreamed as Curtis set to work. The image Curtis captured was more than just Angeline’s portrait. The narrative at the time was that the natives were a primitive, inferior race, who had welcomed with open arms the white settlers. They had happily ceded their land and adopted the ways of life of a superior culture. Curtis’ portrait of Angeline captured something quite different.
There was no smile upon Angeline’s face. Her mouth was downturned, and by the sorrowful distant gaze upon her deeply wrinkled face, it was clear that this was a woman who had known tragedy in her life. This was a woman who had witnessed the dispersal of her people from their native lands. Who had watched an entire way of life being disrupted and changed by the influx of white settlers. It was the first image Curtis had captured of a Native American subject, but it was to change his life forever.
Two other images Curtis captured of Angeline also received critical acclaim. ‘The Clam Digger’ and the ‘Mussel Gatherer,’ were the images that Curtis really wanted to capture that day when he saw Angeline working on the shore. They represented a way of life that was disappearing slowly, and he wanted to capture them before it was too late. Curtis would go on to produce a series of volumes of images and descriptions of Native Americans and their way of life, entitled The North American Indian. The series would include 20 volumes and span over twenty-three years; from 1907 to 1930.
Angeline passed away in her cabin on May 31, 1896. Her death made the front page of the Post-Intelligencer newspaper. City dignitaries hailed the passing of Angeline as a much-beloved figure of their community. Beside, the article was a sketch of Curtis’s studio portrait of Angeline. The church ladies organized for Princess Angeline’s casket to be made in the shape of a canoe. Angeline’s funeral took place in Our Lady of Good Help Church in Seattle and she was buried at Lake View Cemetery. A plaque, attached to a granite headstone, reads that Angeline was buried, at her request, near the grave of Henry L. Yesler, the man who protected her during the Battle of Seattle.
Sources For Further Reading:
History Link – David Swinson Maynard: Father of Seattle
University of Pittsburg – Edward S. Curtis on The North American Indian
American Battlefield Trust – Isaac I. Stevens
My Northwest – Remembering Washington’s Complicated First Governor Isaac Stevens