Template:POTD protected/2007-06-23

A smoky day at the Sugar Bowl, a photograph of a Hupa fisherman by Edward S. Curtis. The Hupa are an Athabaskan tribe of over 2,600 individuals that inhabits northwestern California. They are the southernmost representatives of the Northwest Coast culture, although some of their customs are not characteristic of that culture area.

Curtis was a practitioner of salvage ethnography, which is the practice of documenting what is left of a culture before it disappears. This assumed a particular significance during the 18th century and early 19th century as the American Indians were becoming separated from their traditional culture.

Photo credit: Edward S. Curtis