Entering the Badlands

In 1905, Edward S. Curtis completed his fieldwork with the Sioux tribe in the Badlands of South Dakota. This photograph, Entering the Bad Lands, Three Sioux Indians on Horseback, was part of his series of large-plate images featuring the Sioux people re-creating hunting and war parties in their traditional lands east of the Black Hills. The photo is an outtake from Curtis’s The North American Indian, Portfolio 3 ([Seattle] : E.S. Curtis ; [Cambridge, Mass.: The University Press], 1908).