"Great is the satisfaction the writer enjoys when he can at last say to all those whose faith has been unbounded, ‘It is finished.'"
~ Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian, Vol. XX, 1930

When the final volume of The North American Indian was published in 1930, Curtis was 62 years old, virtually bankrupt, and largely unknown. It was not until the 1960s that Curtis' work began to gain widespread appreciation for its artistic and ethnographic merits.

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries owns a complete set of The North American Indian, a gift of Mrs. Edward Harriman. Today these volumes support American Indian research.