As Kroeber explained in the preface to his Handbook of the Indians of California, his mission was to "reconstruct and present the scheme within which these people in ancient and more recent times lived their lives." Kroeber went on to explain that he was omitting "accounts of the relations of the natives with the whites and of the events befalling them after such contact was established." He would, he added, consider post-contact culture only when necessary to "form an estimate of an ancient vanished culture."
The image on the right is an unidentified Indian, whose portrait is captured on a cyanotype print. The cyanotype is blue in color, and served as a common method of photographic reproduction at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.
The black and white portrait of Kroeber (above), staring defiantly into the camera with his feet firmly spread and hands thrust into pants pockets, differs widely from that of the unidentified Indian, whose facial expression and posture suggest an undefined, or hidden, personality.
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Unidentified Indian
Photographer unknown
[BANC PIC 1978.128--PIC box 3]
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