This photogravure, part of Portfolio I, portrays preparations for the Okipē (also spelled Okipa) ceremony of the Mandan people, who lived along the upper Missouri River in present-day North Dakota. The Okipē was a four-day midsummer ritual that renewed the world and reaffirmed the community’s covenant with the spiritual beings who had first saved the Mandan after a mythic flood. The ceremony included fasting, dancing, storytelling, and acts of sacrifice. Central to the event were the buffalo, animals that sustained Mandan life by providing food, clothing, tools, and shelter. Through dance, song, and physical trials, participants honored the buffalo and sought to ensure the abundance of the herds.

Curtis’s photograph shows a Mandan man adorned in elaborate regalia poised to take part in the dance. His romanticized staging emphasizes a timeless vision of Indigenous life, while the ritual itself embodies a living tradition of resilience and renewal.

Low light required Curtis to make a long exposure for this portrait. The subject’s slight movement during the sitting produced a soft blur, a visual effect heightened by the velvety tones of the photogravure printing process. The result is an image that combines ethnographic detail with a dreamlike, almost otherworldly quality—an effect that has made Curtis’s work both celebrated as art and debated for its romanticized vision of Native life.