In the Land of the Headhunters

Joshua McNichols
05/21/2008

Most people consider the first film about Native American Culture to be 1922's Nanook of the North. But Seattle photographer Edward Curtis put northwest natives on film almost ten years earlier. That film is called, In the Land of the Headhunters. It's been newly restored and will show in Seattle next month at the Moore Theater, almost a century after it first played there. KUOW's Joshua McNichols has more.

IN 1914, EDWARD CURTIS USED WAX CYLINDERS TO RECORD A KWAK'WAK'IWAK SINGER ON NORTHERN VANCOUVER ISLAND. CURTIS SENT THE RECORDING TO JOHN BRAHAM. HE ASKED BRAHAM TO COMPOSE A FILM SCORE INSPIRED BY THAT MUSIC, TO ACCOMPANY CURTIS' FIRST FEATURE FILM. THE FEATURE WOULD BE CALLED IN THE LAND OF THE HEADHUNTERS. IT WOULD STAR NORTHWEST NATIVES IN A SHAKESPEAREAN–STYLE ADAPTATION OF THEIR TRADITIONAL STORIES. BRAHAM LISTENED TO THE RECORDINGS, AND CAME UP WITH THIS:

[Music]

BILL HOLM IS AN EXPERT ON THE FILM. HE ONCE HEADED SEATTLE'S BURKE MUSEUM AND PARTIALLY RESTORED THE FILM IN THE 1970'S. BUT HE DOESN'T THINK MUCH OF THE FILM'S ORIGINAL SCORE.

HOLM: "I can't recognize anything that suggests to me that the composer paid much attention to the recordings he had from Curtis. It's pretty much a romanticized, Westernized, stereotypical, Indian–music score."

HOLM SAYS THE FILM FLOPPED WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT. THEN IT DISAPPEARED FOR HALF A CENTURY. AFTER TRYING TO FIND THE LOST FILM FOR ALMOST TWO DECADES, HOLM GOT LUCKY.

HOLM: "And in the course of my travels I stopped in the Field Museum in Chicago to talk to George Quimby who was a curator there. And I asked him my usual question, 'have you ever heard of a film by Edward Curtis on the Kwakiutl (as they were then called)?' And he looked at me kind of strangely for a minute or so, sizing me up I guess. And he said 'we have a copy.' And I just about fell off the chair."

AFTER HOLM'S PARTIAL RESTORATION IN 1974, THE FILM DREW WIDER ATTENTION. A TEAM OF ANTHROPOLOGISTS UNCOVERED LOST FOOTAGE AND THE ORIGINAL SCORE.

TWO YEARS AGO THE BURKE AND GETTY MUSEUMS DECIDED TO RESTORE SOME OF THE FILM'S MELODRAMATIC GLORY. THAT VERSION WILL SHOW IN L.A., SEATTLE, AND NEW YORK THIS MONTH.

AARON GLASS IS AN ANTHROPOLOGIST WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLOMBIA. HE LED THE FILM'S RESTORATION. GLASS SAYS THE TRIBE SHOWN IN THE FILM IS KNOWN TODAY AS THE KWAK'WAK'IWAK. HE SAYS THEY'VE ALWAYS FASCINATED STUDENTS OF NATIVE CULTURE.

GLASS: "For a long time in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries, the Kwak'wak'iwak had developed a reputation for being more resistant to the powers of assimilation. They attracted a lot of attention of anthropologists and ethnographers who were hoping to get a glimpse at a kind of pre–contact indigenous culture."

BUT THAT ROMANTIC NOTION TURNED OUT TO BE FLAWED. SO GLASS INVITED THE DESCENDANTS OF THE FILM'S KWAK'WAK'IWAK STARS TO TOUR WITH THE RESTORED FILM, TO PROVIDE SOME PERSPECTIVE.

WILLIAM WASDEN JUNIOR IS A CHIEF IN THAT TRIBE. WASDEN LEADS THE GROUP OF SINGING DANCERS THAT TOUR WITH THE FILM. HE TAKES OBJECTION TO CURTIS' IDEA THAT THE FILM DOCUMENTED A VANISHING RACE. BUT SURPRISINGLY, HE'S OVERWHELMINGLY GRATEFUL TO CURTIS. MANY OF THE DANCES CURTIS RECORDED WERE ILLEGAL AT THE TIME. THE FILM HAS HELPED WASDEN AND OTHERS RECONSTRUCT LOST TRADITIONS.

CURTIS: "A lot of our young dancers today studied the dancers in that film. Because the people that were hired to do the dancing in that film were the best in their day, and you know, there's a lot of learning tools in there."

CURTIS AND HIS COMPOSER MAY HAVE HAD GOOD INTENTIONS. BUT THEY DID INJECT ROMANTIC PREJUDICES INTO THE FILM. IT'S TITLE, IN THE LAND OF THE HEADHUNTERS, SENSATIONALIZED THE RITUAL CANNIBALISM THAT MADE THE TRIBE FAMOUS. WASDEN SAYS HIS PEOPLE WERE HEADHUNTERS. BUT THEY DROPPED THE CANNIBALISM LONG AGO. THE FILM'S HERO STILL PERFORMS THE CANNIBAL'S DANCE, CALLED THE HAMAT'SA. THE HAMAT'SA DANCER INVITES THE CANNIBAL SPIRIT INTO HIS BODY, ONLY TO PURGE IT LATER. WASDEN SAYS THE EXPERIENCE MAKES THE DANCER MORE RESISTANT TO EVIL.

WASDEN: "The whole reason for the process is to find oneness and balance within yourself. If you're not in harmony and balance with yourself, you can't live harmony with the world."

WASDEN AND HIS GROUP BRING SOMETHING ELSE TO THE PERFORMANCE. THEY PLAY THE SAME MUSIC CURTIS CAPTURED ON HIS WAX CYLINDER ALMOST A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

FOR KUOW, I'M JOSHUA MCNICHOLS.

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