Photographs depicting a village, people, and rock formations in or near the Hopi village of Oraibi. The small albumen prints are the same as those normally used to make stereographs.
Biographical/Historical note:
John K. Hillers (1843-1925) immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1852. He spent almost twenty years photographing Native Americans and the landscape of the Indian Territories, California, the Southwest, and the Southeast, largely for the Bureau of American Ethnology and the United States Geological Survey. He began work on the Survey as a boatman on John Wesley Powell's second expedition down the Colorado River in 1871. He soon became the assistant, and then the main photographer (1872) for the expedition. From 1879 to 1900, Hillers served as the first staff photographer of Powell's Bureau of Ethnology, and in 1881 he took pictures for the United States Geological Survey.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 83-18
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Additional photographs by John K. Hillers can be found in the National Anthropological Archives in Photo Lot 14, Photo Lot 24, Photo Lot 28, Photo Lot 40, Photo Lot 143, Photo Lot 87-2N, Photo Lot 90-1, Photo Lot 92-46, and the BAE historical negatives.
The National Anthropological Archives holds Powell's inventory of photographs made on expeditions 1871-1875 (MS 1795-c).
The National Anthropological Archives holds Hillers's diary from 1871-1872 and 1874, 1875 (MS 4410).
The National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, National Archives, Duke University, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley, University of Oregon, Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, and Southern Methodist University also hold photographs by Hillers.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Rights:
Contact the repository for terms of use.
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Citation:
Photo lot 83-18, John K. Hillers photographs of a village near Oraibi, Arizona, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Photographs collected by Willis G. Tilton, a dealer in artifacts and photographs relating to Native Americans. Many of the photographs were made by Field Columbian Museum photographer Charles Carpenter at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904; many others were created by various photographers for Field Museum publications. Notable subjects include Big Foot, dead in the snow at the Wounded Knee battlefield; Arapaho and Cheyenne social dances; Hopi ceremonies; a reenactment of the shooting of Sitting Bull; Sun Dances (Arapaho, Assiniboin, Gros Ventre, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Ponca); and views of the United States Indian School Building and Pawnee people at the the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Other photographs include portraits and images of artifacts, basket weaving, cradles, dress, dwelling, tipis and other dwellings, and tree burials. There are also some photographs of Henry Field's expedition to Iraq in 1934 (Field museum anthropological expedition to the Near East), work elephants in Burma, Pipestone Quarry in Minnesota, a church in the Yucatan, and a rickshaw and cart in Ceylon.
Biographical/Historical note:
Willis G. Tilton was a dealer and owner of the store, Tilton Indian Relics, in Topeka, Kansas.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 89-8, NAA Photo Lot 135
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Photographs in the Tilton Collection, previously filed in Photo Lot 135, have been relocated and merged with Photo Lot 89-8. These photographs were also purchased by the Bureau of American Ethnology from Willis G. Tilton and form part of this collection.
Associated photographs still held in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
Most photographs included in the card catalog of copy negatives and in the reference file prints by tribe.
Additional photographs by Dorsey held in the National Anthropological Archives in MS 4721 and Photo Lot 24.
Correspondence from Dorsey held in the National Anthropological Archives in MS 4821, records of the Bureau of American Ethnology, the J.C. Pilling Papers, and the Ales Hrdlicka Papers.
Additional photographs by Nelson held in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 171, Photo Lot 133, Photo Lot 24, and the BAE historical negatives.
Additional Maude photographs held in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 90-1 and Photo Lot 24.
Additional E. E. Hall photographs held in National Anthropological Archives MS 4978 and Photo Lot 24.
The Smithsonian Institution Archives holds Nelson's field reports (SIA Acc. 97-123) and the Edward William Nelson and Edward Alphonso Goldman Collection (SIA RU007364).
See others in:
Willis G. Tilton photograph collection of American Indians, circa 1880-1930 (bulk 1899-1904)
Copy negatives made from negatives depicting Native Americans, dwellings, and ceremonies. There are images of Hopi people at Walpi and Oraibi pueblos and other Puebloan people, as well as portraits of Apache, Osage, Navajo, Blackfoot, Brule, Nez Perce, Rogue River, Taos, Pawnee, Oto, Caddo, Arapaho, and Delaware people and the Ute Chief Ouray. Some of the images are from the series "Dangers of the Indian Country--Frontier Exposures." Represented photographers include George Wharton James, F. H. Maude, and others.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 73-26G
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Additional George Wharton James photographs can be found in National Anthropological Archives MS 4577, Photo Lot 59, Photo Lot 89-8, and Photo Lot R92-15.
Additional F. H. Maude photographs can be found in National Anthropological Archives MS 4978, Photo Lot 59, Photo Lot 89-8, Photo Lot 90-1, and Photo Lot 24.
The National Anthropological Archives also holds the Ales Hrdlicka papers and other collections relating to his work (Numbered Manuscript collections and Photo Lots).
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Rights:
Contact the repository for terms of use.
Topic:
Indians of North America -- Southern states Search this
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Citation:
Photo lot 73-26G, Copies of photographs of Native Americans, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
The photographs primarily document ceremonies, people, and lands of Native Americans in the Plains and Southwest, taken during Mekeel's field research from 1929 to 1936. A large portion of the collection depicts Mekeel's research during the early 1930s among the Oglala of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Another large portion of the collection includes personal photos depicting Mekeel's homes and children.
Biographical/Historical note:
H. Scudder Mekeel (1902-1947) was an anthropologist who studied social and psychological aspects of Native American cultures. Educated at Harvard University (BA, 1928), the University of Chicago (MA, 1929), and Yale University (PhD, 1932), he was a member of the 1929 Laboratory of Anthropology (Santa Fe) ethnological field school led by Alfred L. Kroeber. In 1929-1932, he carried out three field expeditions to the Sioux communities of South Dakota, working mainly on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs as Director of Applied Anthropology under Commissioner John Collier in 1935. Two years later, he was appointed Director of the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe and continued there until 1940, when he accepted a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 94-21
Location of Other Archival Materials:
The National Anthropological Archives holds copies of Mekeel's Field Notes from the summers of 1930 and 1931 in the White Clay District of the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota (MS 7088). Originals of these field notes and Mekeel's population notes on the White Clay District are held by the American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology Archives (.M454).
The Human Studies Film Archives holds Mekeel's film footage of a Lakota Sioux Sundance from 1930 (HSFA 92.8.1).
Correspondence from Mekeel held in the National Anthropological Archives in the William Duncan Strong papers, Raoul Weston LaBarre Papers, and Bureau of American Ethnology Administrative File.
Restrictions:
Original nitrate negatives are in cold storage and require special arrangements for viewing.
This collection consists of approximately ninety-eight (98) drawings on seventy (70) leaves. The illustrations were made by students of the Oraibi Day School between 1924 and 1928 under the direction of J. Preston Myers. The collection also contains a photocopy of a published version of the drawings held by the University of Arizona special collections.
Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
Biographical Note:
J. Preston Myers (1892-1947) worked for the Office of Indian Affairs as an Educational Field Agent at the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota, Potowatomi and Kickapoo Agencies in Kansas, and Hoopla Valley Agency in California. He was principal of the Oraibi Day School in Arizona in the 1920s.
Local Numbers:
NAA MS 1998-46
Publication Note:
The designs were published in:
Myers, J. Preston. The Oraibi Book of Indian Designs for Arts and Crafts or Decorative Work. [Horton, Kan.], 1930.
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 broadbast 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); Collection Title, Box and Folder Number; National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.
