Nesjaja Hatali, portrait by Edward S. Curtis
Bored senseless with my own work I made a few prints last weekend with Library of Congress negatives. I’m reduced to a blubbering mass by some of Curtis’s work, and have always wanted to see some of it in carbon.
Carbon transfer on lanaquarelle, pigmented with Lamp Black and Iron Oxide Brown. Nesjaja Hatali, From the Edward S. Curtis collection. Digital negative made from LoC scan of a damaged original print (brown ink gravure probably printed by John Andrew & Son, Boston). I cropped a bit of the damage out of the margins but left the bottom to include Curtis’s name and date impression. More info on the original gravure edition here-
A quick cut and paste from Wikipedia on Hatali himself-
Hatali was a medicine man in the Navajo tribe, but soon resisted US expansion into the southwest, alongside Manuelito. Alongside several other war chiefs such as Nova and Geronimo, he was able to use guerrilla tactics to defeat American columns of troops and harass supply lines until the Navajo nation surrendered in 1866. But in the wartime, he was a very successful war leader despite being more knowledgeable in the arts of medicine.