Edward S. Curtis spent 30 years beginning in the late 1800s creating a photo-ethnographic study of the North American Indian that was widely considered the finest collection of limited edition books ever made in the US. The High Desert Museum is proud to hold in its collection a complete set of the 20 bound volumes of The North American Indian. These rare volumes will be displayed along with prints that depict tribes from the High Desert region. This is the inaugural exhibition for the new series, From the Vault, where we unveil rarely-displayed materials from the collection.