What was the story of Edward S. Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters?

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Curtis, Edward S. — Edward S. Curtis Self-portrait, photogravure by Edward S. Curtis, 1899; in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In 1914, Edward S. Curtis produced In the Land of the Head Hunters, a full-length feature movie that utilized a linear, fictitious love story to present ethnographic material about the Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw) people of British Columbia.1

Set in a time period before contact with white settlers, the film incorporated documentary elements such as hunting customs, religious beliefs, and various ceremonies into its narrative. While the film was considered a spectacular achievement—particularly when accompanied by its original orchestral score—and received positive reviews, it was not a financial success. The project is notable for having partly inspired Robert Flaherty’s later, more famous documentary Nanook of the North.1