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Original 1923 Edward Sheriff Curtis Photogravure – Hupa Trout‑Trap

This original 1923 photogravure by Edward Sheriff Curtis is a powerful document of Native American ingenuity, river culture, and survival. Curtis spent more than three decades traveling across North America to create The North American Indian, one of the most ambitious ethnographic and artistic projects ever attempted. His portfolio plates—such as this one—were produced in limited numbers using the labor‑intensive copperplate photogravure process, resulting in prints with extraordinary tonal depth and archival permanence. 📜

🌊 The Hupa People
The Hupa (Hoopa Valley Tribe) are an Athabaskan-speaking nation whose ancestral homeland lies along the Trinity River in northwestern California. For thousands of years, the river has been the center of Hupa life—providing salmon, steelhead, and trout, shaping their ceremonies, and informing their engineering traditions. Their fishing systems were sustainable, precise, and deeply tied to seasonal rhythms. Curtis photographed the Hupa during a period of immense cultural pressure, preserving a record of technologies and lifeways that had existed for countless generations.

🎣 The Trout Trap
The trout trap shown in this image is a remarkable example of Indigenous engineering. Built from interlocking wooden slats and positioned across a strategic point in the river, the trap guided fish into a narrow enclosure where they could be harvested efficiently. These structures required intimate knowledge of hydrodynamics, fish behavior, and the river’s seasonal changes. They were constructed communally and maintained as part of the tribe’s subsistence cycle. Curtis’s photograph captures not only the trap itself but the broader relationship between the Hupa people and the river that sustained them. This is a rare visual record of a technology that existed long before European contact. 🌲

🖨️ The Suffolk Engraving Company
This photogravure was printed by the Suffolk Engraving Company of Boston, the firm responsible for producing the later volumes and portfolios of The North American Indian. Suffolk specialized in high‑fidelity copperplate gravure printing, a process requiring a hand‑wiped copper plate for each impression. The result is a print with rich shadows, luminous highlights, and a depth impossible to achieve with modern offset methods. Every plate was individually inked, wiped, and pressed—making each print a small work of craftsmanship in its own right.

📄 Van Gelder Rag Paper
Curtis selected Van Gelder paper—an imported Dutch rag stock—for its exceptional durability, soft texture, and ability to hold the deep inks of the gravure process. Made from long‑fiber cotton rag, Van Gelder paper is known for its archival stability and distinctive tactile quality. Its watermark and surface characteristics are key indicators of authenticity. This is the same paper used for Curtis’s lifetime editions, not a later reproduction or book plate.

🔍 Authenticity
This is an original 1923 Curtis photogravure:
• Not a book plate
• Not a modern reprint
• Not an offset lithograph
• A genuine portfolio plate produced during Curtis’s lifetime

📐 Details
• Artist: Edward Sheriff Curtis
• Title: Hupa Trout‑Trap
• Date: 1923
• Medium: Photogravure on Van Gelder rag paper
• Printer: Suffolk Engraving Company, Boston
• Size: Approx. 18" × 13"
• Condition: Minor age-consistent edge wear; image area clean and well-preserved

This plate stands as both a work of art and a historical document—preserving a traditional Hupa fishing technology and the river landscape that shaped their culture for generations. It is a rare and meaningful artifact from one of the most important photographic projects in American history. 📚