This collection consists of 145 postcards and 11 photographs depicting Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with dates ranging 1890 – 1930s. The bulk of the collection consists of postcards of Native communities throughout the United States, and includes portrait images, dwellings, basket-making, weaving, and crafts.
Scope and Contents:
The Dale Jenkins postcard and photograph collection consists of 145 postcards and 11 photographs with dates ranging 1890 – 1930s. The images depict Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and spans a large geographical breadth extending from the Arctic in the north to Chile and Peru in South America. The bulk of the collection consists of postcards of Native communities throughout the United States, with a significant number of images depicting various Pueblo and Southwest cultural groups; many of these latter postcards were produced by the Fred Harvey Company. A number of the postcards and photographs include portrait images, dwellings, basket-making, weaving, and crafts. Also of particular note are 13 scenes of daily life at a number of different Indian Boarding Schools at the turn of the twentieth century. Finally, in addition to the postcard images are 11 photographs consisting of cabinet cards and other photographic prints.
Please note that the language and terminology used in this collection reflects the context and culture of the time of its creation, and may include culturally sensitive information. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged into 11 series, organized thematically (Indian Boarding Schools) and then regionally by location or culture group. Series 1: Indian Boarding Schools, Series 2: Arctic/Subarctic, Series 3: Northwest Coast,
Series 4: California, Series 5: Great Basin/Plateau, Series 6: Southwest, Series 7: Plains, Series 8: Northeast/Great Lakes, Series 9: Southeast, Series 10: Mexico/Central America, Series 11: South America
Biographical / Historical:
Dale Jenkins is a retired Financial Planner living in California, having previously worked in the Aerospace industry. He has collected late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American photographs and postcards for over 30 years. In addition to archival collections donated to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, Jenkins has also donated postcard and photograph collections to the California Museum of Photography, the California Historical Society, and the Museum of the City of New York.
Provenance:
This collection was donated by Dale Jenkins in 2013 and 2014.
Restrictions:
Access to NMAI Archives Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 3:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archives 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. For more information please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use and NMAI Archives Center's Digital Image request website.
Indians of Central America -- Guatemala Search this
Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Dale Jenkins postcard and photograph collection, NMAI.AC.069, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Slides and audio recordings produced by Intermedia Systems for the Economic Development Administration, United States Department of Commerce, presenting case histories on the following Native reservations— Uintah and Ouray (Ute), Metlakatla (Tsimshian), Warm Springs (Northern Paiute), Lummi, Fort Apache (Chiricahua Apache), and Mescalero (Mescalero Apache) reservations.
Scope and Contents:
This collection includes 602 slides and 9 audiocassettes from produced by Intermedia Systems for the Economic Development Administration, United States Department of Commerce, presenting case histories on Indian Develpoment, circa 1973. The following Case Histories are included; Series 1: Uintah and Ouray (Ute), Series 2: Metlakatla (Tsimshian), Series 3: Warm Springs (Northern Paiute), Series 4: Lummi, Series 5: Fort Apache (Chiricahua Apache), and Series 6: Mescalero (Mescalero Apache). The slides include images of maps, statistics, landscape views highlighting economic development and community members at work. There are also groups of slides that are overviews titled; Series 7: "Development Professional," Series 8: "Indian Leader," and Series 9: "Business." Audiocassettes accompany each case history and overview.
Arrangement:
Arranged in nine Series in the order received. First by Case Histories (Series 1-6), then by Overviews (Series 7-9).
Economic Development Administration (EDA):
In 1965, Congress passed the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965 (PWEDA) (42 U.S.C. § 3121), which authorized the creation of the Economic Development Administration (EDA) to succeed the previous ARA organization. The newly created EDA organization retained many of the unique flexibilities and programs of the previous ARA program, with the exception that it was given a larger public works grant and loan program that had previously been afforded to ARA, and the previous authorities to support job training programs were removed and transferred to the Department of Labor.
In large measure, EDA was established to create and retain jobs and to help stimulate industrial and commercial growth in distressed rural and urban communities across the nation. PWEDA was authorized in support of President Johnson's domestic focus to create and expand programs that would provide distressed communities the resources needed to realize the benefits of progress other portions of the country were experiencing. Since the enactment of PWEDA in 1965, successive Congressional reauthorizations have expanded EDA's initial authority to provide the agency enhanced flexibility to carry out its mission.
For the three decades after PWEDA's initial passage, EDA primarily focused on providing assistance to help communities develop basic infrastructure, including water, sewer and roads. In the early-1970s EDA's portfolio expanded to include an extensive planning initiative which soon became the Partnership Planning program.
By the mid-1970s, EDA received special authority to create the Economic Adjustment Assistance Program, designed to address economic development challenges more proactively and more effectively. Authorized by the new Title IX of PWEDA during reauthorization in 1975, the Economic Adjustment Assistance Program specifically authorized the agency to take action in any area having or facing major structural changes to its economy. This change was designed to provide EDA the latitude needed to work proactively with local partners to address economic challenges before they became deep-rooted and more costly to the community in terms of lost jobs and revenues.
Access to NMAI Archives Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archives 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. For more information please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use and NMAI Archive Center's Digital Image request website.
Genre/Form:
Slides
Audiocassettes
Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known);Economic Development Administration "Case Histories" on Indian Development collection, NMAI.AC.441; National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution.
United States Economic Development Administration Search this
Extent:
23 Slides (photographs)
1 Sound cassette
Container:
Box 1, Sheet 8-9
Box 3, Item 3
Culture:
Northern Paiute (Paviotso) [Warm Springs Reservation] Search this
Type:
Archival materials
Slides
Audio
Slides (photographs)
Sound cassettes
Date:
undated
1973
Collection Restrictions:
Access to NMAI Archives Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archives 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. For more information please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use and NMAI Archive Center's Digital Image request website.
Collection Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known);Economic Development Administration "Case Histories" on Indian Development collection, NMAI.AC.441; National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Includes photographs of individual tribal members, artifacts; and the following archeological sites: Hawikku (Hawikuh), Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico; Mill Creek, Tehama County, California; Coachilla Valley, California; Sandal Cave, New Mexico; Eagle Canyon, Texas; Thea Heye Cave, Pyramid Lake, Nevada; Crown Peak, Chisos Mountains, Texas; Pueblo Grande, Nevada; Salt Caves, St. Thomas, Nevada; Chuckawalla Cave, Nevada; Lovelock Cave, Pershing County, Nevada; other sites in Nevada; cacti in Brewster County, Texas and California; archaeological sites in Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, New York, and Tennessee Collection also includes a variety of scenic shots in different states; shots of persons, identified and unidentified; personal photographs of Harrington, his son, and one of his wives (ELH); and photographs taken during his expeditions to Cuba and Ecuador. Includes photographs of the Alibamu, Apache, Catawba, Cherokee, Chitimacha, Choctaw, Chumash, Comanche, Delaware, Iowa, Iroquois, Kaw, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Klamath, Koasati, Maidu, Mattaponi, Mohegan, Nanticoke, Narragansett, Navajo, Niantic (Nyantic),Ojibwa (Chippewa), Osage, Paiute, Pamunkey, Peoria, Pit River, Potawatomi, Quapaw, Sac and Fox (Sauk and Fox), Seminole, Shawnee, Tolowa, Tulare, Wampanoag, Wichita, Wyandot, Yara, and Zuni tribes.
Arrangement note:
Collection arranged by format and item number.
Biographical/Historical note:
Mark Raymond Harrington was born on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on July 6, 1882. He received his BS in 1907 and his MA in 1908 from Columbia University, where he studied under Franz Boas. He met George Heye while working at Covert's Indian store in New York in 1908 and Heye hired him shortly thereafter. Harrington spent from 1908-1911 visiting and collecting from tribes in the east and Midwest for Heye. From 1911-1915 Harrington was assistant curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. From 1916-1917 he conducted archeological surveys in Cuba and Arkansas, after which he spent a short time in the U.S. Army during the First World War. After his return in 1919 he started a series of archeological surveys in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Nevada, and Texas. Harrington worked for George G. Heye as an archaeologist, ethnologist, field collector, and curator, primarily along the eastern seaboard, in the south, Midwest, west, Cuba and Ecuador, from 1908 to 1928. He then joined the staff of the Southwest Museum as curator until his retirement in 1964. He died in San Fernando, California on June 30, 1971. Harrington is the author of many books and several hundred articles. A partial bibliography can be found in the Mark Raymond Harrington manuscript collection in the archives of the National Museum of the American Indian, Cultural Resource Center, Suitland, Maryland.
General note:
NMAItest
Restrictions:
Access restricted. For information on this collection consult the NMAI photo archivist at 301-238-1400 or NMAIphotos@si.edu.
Rights:
Copyright restrictions apply. Contact archives staff for information.
The Edward S. Curtis photogravure plates and proofs for The North American Indian include photogravure printing plates and associated proofs made from Curtis photographs and used in the publication of The North American Indian volumes 1-9 and 12-19. The bulk of the images are portraits, though there are also images of everyday items, ceremonial artifacts, and camps.
Scope and Contents:
The collection comprises 183 photogravure plates (101 folio and 82 octavo) and 96 associated proofs used in the printing of The North American Indian volumes 1-9 and 12-19. The original photographs used to make the photogravures were made circa 1903-1926 and the photogravure plates were made in 1907-1930. The bulk are portraits, though there are also images of everyday items, ceremonial artifacts, and camps. About half of the proofs in the collection are originals used for Curtis's publication, though the collection also includes proofs made in the process of later publication by the Classic Gravure Company (circa 1980). Vintage proofs include handwritten notes, likely made by Curtis Studio employees in Seattle and Los Angeles. Many of the photogravure plates do not have matching proofs; in particular, there are no proofs for the octavo plates.
Arrangement:
The plates and proofs are arranged by the volume of The North American Indian in which they were published. They are described in this finding aid by the caption and plate number with which they were published.
Biographical / Historical:
Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) was an American photographer best known for his monumental and now-controversial project, the twenty-volume publication The North American Indian. Here he sought to document in words and pictures the "vanishing race" of American Indians.
Born in Wisconsin in 1868, Edward Curtis grew up on his family's farm in Le Sueur County, Minnesota, from 1874 to 1887. In 1887, he and his father Johnson Curtis settled on a plot near what is now Port Orchard, Washington, and the rest of the family joined them the following year. When Johnson Curtis died within a month of the family's arrival, the burden of providing for his mother and siblings fell to 20-year-old Edward, and Edward set out to do so through his photography. In 1891, Curtis moved to the booming city of Seattle and bought into a joint photo studio with Rasmus Rothi. Less than a year later, he formed "Curtis and Guptill, Photographers and Photoengravers" with Thomas Guptill; the enterprise quickly became a premier portrait studio for Seattle's elite. In 1895, Curtis made his first "Indian photograph" depicting Princess Angeline, daughter of the chief for whom Seattle had been named. The following year he earned his first medal from the National Photographic Convention for his "genre studies."
In 1899, Edward Curtis joined the Harriman Alaska Expedition as official photographer, a position which allowed him to learn from anthropologists C. Hart Merriam and George Bird Grinnell while documenting the landscapes and peoples of the Alaskan coast. This expedition and the resulting friendship with Grinnell helped to foster Curtis's ultimate goal to "form a comprehensive and permanent record of all the important tribes of the United States and Alaska that still retain to a considerable degree their primitive customs and traditions" (General Introduction, The North American Indian). Curtis made several trips to reservations from 1900 to 1904, including a trip with Grinnell to Montana in 1900 and multiple trips to the Southwest, including the Hopi Reservation. He also hired Adolph Muhr, former assistant to Omaha photographer Frank A. Rinehart, to manage the Curtis studio in his absence, a decision which would prove more and more fruitful as Curtis spent less and less time in Seattle.
In 1906, Curtis struck a deal with financier J. P. Morgan, whereby Morgan would support a company – The North American Indian, Inc. – with $15,000 for five years, by which time the project was expected to have ended. Systematic fieldwork for the publication began in earnest that summer season, with Curtis accompanied by a team of ethnological researchers and American Indian assistants. Arguably the most important member of Curtis' field team was William Myers, a former newspaperman who collected much of the ethnological data and completed most of the writing for the project. The first volume, covering Navajo and Apache peoples, was published at the end of 1907, but already Morgan's funding was incapable of meeting Curtis's needs. Despite heaping praise from society's elite, Curtis spent much of his time struggling to find people and institutions willing to subscribe to the expensive set of volumes. After the initial five years, only eight of the proposed twenty volumes had been completed. Fieldwork and publication continued with the support of J. P. Morgan, but Curtis's home life suffered because of his prolonged absences.
In 1919, Curtis's wife Clara was awarded a divorce settlement which included the entire Curtis studio in Seattle. Exhausted and bankrupt, Edward Curtis moved with his daughter Beth Magnuson to Los Angeles, where they operated a new Curtis Studio and continued work on the volumes; volume 12 was published
in 1922. The constant financial strain forced Myers to leave the North American Indian team after volume 18 (fieldwork in 1926) and Curtis made his last trip to photograph and gather data for volume 20 in 1927. After the final volumes were published in 1930, Curtis almost completely faded from public notice until his work was "rediscovered" and popularized in the 1970s.
Curtis's "salvage ethnology," as scholar Mick Gidley describes it, was mildly controversial even during his life and has become ever more so as his legacy deepens. In his quest to photograph pre-colonial Indian life through a twentieth-century lens, he often manipulated and constructed history as much as he recorded it: he staged reenactments, added props, and removed evidence of twentieth-century influences on "primitive" life. Curtis's work continues to shape popular conceptions of American Indians and so, while problematic, his legacy--his vision of American Indian life--continues to be relevant.
Related Materials:
NMAI also holds Edward Curtis photographs documenting the Harriman Expedition (1899) as well as platinum prints and photogravures of the images published in The North American Indian.
The Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives holds Edward Curtis prints submitted for copyright (Photo Lot 59) as well as many of his original negatives, photographs, and papers.
Steve Kern donated photogravure plates to the Center for Creative Photography and the Seattle Art Museum at the same time that he donated this set to MAI.
Provenance:
This collection was donated by Steven and Arlene Kern to the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, in 1984.
Restrictions:
Access to NMAI Archive Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Rights:
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish or broadcast materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiarchives@si.edu.
Topic:
Indians of North America -- Pictorial works Search this
Genre/Form:
Photogravures
Photographs
Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Edward S. Curtis photogravure plates and proofs for The North American Indian, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
This collection was processed with funding from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
This series includes eleven folio plates and seven octavo plates depicting vessels, baskets, mortar pits, and portraits of Kumeyaay (Diegueño), Northern Paiute (Paviotso), Kutzadika'a (Mono Paiute), Kupangaxwichem (Kupa/Cupeño), Serrano, and Washoe (Washo) men and women. It also has eleven proofs made by the North American Indian, Inc. One plate is covered by a substance or corrosion that obscurs the image.
Collection Restrictions:
Access to NMAI Archive Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Collection Rights:
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish or broadcast materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiarchives@si.edu.
Collection Citation:
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Edward S. Curtis photogravure plates and proofs for The North American Indian, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
This collection was processed with funding from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
Items correspond to schedule in Smithsonian Institution Comparative Vocabulary. General vocabulary of the Bannock dialect of Paviotso, with notes on phonetics.
Local Numbers:
NAA MS 760
Local Note:
Autograph document
Place:
Dry Creek Walla Walla County Washington Territory
Topic:
Language and languages -- Documentation Search this
Genre/Form:
Vocabulary
Citation:
Manuscript 760, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
