Images include domestic and ceremonial scenes of Navajo Indians. Ceremonies include Blessing Way Ceremony, Enemy Way Ceremony,and Hoop Ceremony.
Scope and Contents:
The collection consists of negatives and color slides made in Arizona by Hight from 1963 to 1964 while on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor. The materials depict Diné (Navajo) men and women preparing for and participating in ceremonies and Diné women caring for and preparing sheep for butcher. In addition, Hight apparently made two negatives from nineteenth-century prints by Timothy O'Sullivan that depict Diné women; these too are in the collection.
Arrangement note:
Negatives Arranged by negative number (N33156-N33191, N34851, N34855)
Slides Arranged by slide number (S03709-S03719, S03730-S03741)
Biographical/Historical note:
Born in Gallup, New Mexico, Hight worked during World War II as an illustrator and photographic coordinator for Convair in Ft. Worth, Texas. After the war, he and his wife returned to Gallup and opened a photography studio. Hight was a successful photographer and painted in his spare time. In 2007, he and his wife retired to Albuquerque. In the same year he received the MasterWorks Lifetime Achievement Award from MasterWorks of New Mexico, the sponsor of a prestigious annual New Mexico art show.
Provenance:
Historically, the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation managed all photographic materials separately. This collection description represents current management practices of organizing and contextualizing related archival materials.
Restrictions:
Access is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment.
Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiphotos@si.edu. For personal or classroom use, users are invited to download, print, photocopy, and distribute the images that are available online without prior written permission, provided that the files are not modified in any way, the Smithsonian Institution copyright notice (where applicable) is included, and the source of the image is identified as the National Museum of the American Indian.
Restricted: Cultural Sensitivity
Topic:
Navajo Indians -- Rites and ceremonies -- Photographs Search this
George Hight collection of negatives and slides, circa 1963-1964, National Museum of the American Indian Archives, Smithsonian Institution (negative, slide or catalog number).
Photographs made during Matilda Coxe Stevenson's field studies among Southwest Indians, particularly at Zuni. Images primarily document pueblos, people, ceremonies, and daily activities, as well as some photographs of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and ranches, probably those belonging to Stevenson or her friends. The collection includes photographs by William Henry Cobb and Wittick & Russell, as well as Stevenson's assistant May S. Clark and "Mr. Gray," a photographer that Stevenson hired as an assistant.
Biographical/Historical note:
Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1849-1915; though her birth year is often erroneously listed as 1850) was the first woman to study the American Southwest and the first (and for a long time the only) female anthropologist hired by the US government. Born Matilda Coxe Evans in 1849 in San Augustine, Texas, Stevenson was brought to Washington, D.C., as an infant. She was educated at Miss Anable's English, French, and German School in Philadelphia and through private studies with her father and Dr. William M. Mew of the Army Medical Museum. In 1872 she married James Stevenson, a geologist with the US Geological Survey of the Territories. From 1872-1878, Matilda joined James on Ferdinand V. Hayden's geological surveys to Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, and assisted him by compiling geological data. When the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) was created in 1879, Matilda Stevenson was appointed "volunteer coadjutor [sic] in ethnology" and she went with James on his BAE expeditions to the Southwest.
After James Stevenson's death in 1888, BAE Director John Wesley Powell hired Matilda Stevenson to organize her husband's notes. In 1889, Stevenson became regular BAE staff. From 1890 to 1907, Stevenson did substantial individual fieldwork at Zuni and published "The Zuni Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies" in the Bureau of American Ethnology's Twenty-Third Annual Report (1901-2). Starting in 1904, Stevenson conducted comparative studies at Zia, Jemez, San Juan, Cochiti, Nambe, Picarus, Tesuque, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and Taos. In 1907 she purchased a ranch (Ton'yo) near San Ildefonso, which became her base for fieldwork. Stevenson died in Maryland on June 24, 1915.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 23
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Stevenson photographs previously filed in BAE number 4325, MS 4624, MS 4717, Photo Lot 14, and Photo Lot 33 have been relocated and merged with Photo Lot 23. These photographs were also made by Stevenson and form part of this collection.
Additional glass negatives made by Stevenson are held in the National Anthropological Archives in the BAE historical negatives.
The National Anthropological Archives holds Matilda Coxe Stevenson's papers in MS 4689.
Photographic images and portraits of Stevenson are in the National Anthropological Archives in the following collections: Photo Lot 33, Photo Lot 70, Photo Lot 89-19, and Photo Lot 90-1.
Additional photographs of We'wha, probably commissioned by Stevenson at a studio in Washington, D.C., are in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 2004-03.
