Davis visited the Diegueno and Luiseno in southern California; the Pi-pi (Pais), Kil-e-wah (Cahuilla), and Waicuri of Lower California, Mexico; the Yuma, Cocopah, Pima, Papago, Maricopa, Mojave, Hualapai (Walapai), Yaqui, and White Mountain Apache in Arizona; the Cora, Huichol, Opata, Mayo, and Yaqui of Mexico; the Seri of Tiburon Island; the Chemehuevi of Nevada and California; the Modoc and Klamath Lake Indians in Oregon; and the Paiute in Nevada. His collection contains photographs of Apache, Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Cochimi, Cochiti Pueblo, Cocopa, Cora, Guaicuruj, Huichol, Kawia, Kiliwa, Kumeyaay (Diegueno), Luiseno, Maricopa, Mayo, Mission, Mohave, Opata, Paipai, Papago (Tohono O'odham), Pima (Akimel O'odham), San Carlos Pueblo, San Manuel, Seri, Ute, Walapai (Hualapai), Yaqui, and Yuma.
Arrangement note:
Collection arranged by item number.
Biographical/Historical note:
Artist, photographer, and artefact collector, Edward Harvey Davis was born on June 18, 1862 in New York. He traveled to California in 1884 for health reasons (Bright's disease i.e. actue of chronic nephritis (a kidney disorder)), arriving in 1885, and settled on 320 acres in an area called Mesa Grande, east of San Diego. Later that year he returned to New York to marry, bringing his new bride, Anna May Wells back to California with him. They would eventually have four children. Shortly after settling in California, Davis became interested in the the Kumeyaay (Northern Diguenos), the Mesa Grande Indians indigenous to that area, and spent the remainder of his life collecting artifacts, studying and photographing them. He collected so many items that his ranch house ran out of room for them, necessitating the building of another structure (adobe) to house them. As a result of this interest and care of the Mesa Grande Indians in San Diego County, in 1907, Davis was named a ceremonial chief by the Indians themselves. Originally trained as an artist, Davis first worked as a drafter and architect. Upon his arrival in San Diego in 1885, he fortuitously invested in and profited from the booming real estate industry of the time. Davis became known to George Gustav Heye when Heye initially purchased a collection of Indian artifacts from him for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation in 1915. With the money from the sale of his collection, Davis was able to open a resort lodge called the Powam that same year. His real estate investments and his lodge enabled Davis to finance his fieldwork, most of which he did on his own. In 1916 however, Davis also became an official field collector for the Museum of the American Indian in New York. Sporadically, from 1917 to 1930, Heye contracted Davis to conduct field trips to California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Mexico, and Tiburon Island, visiting over two dozen different Indian peoples in the course of his travels. Wherever he went, Davis continued to photograph the Native peoples, but did not consider these photographs to be part of his contract with Heye. Heye later purchased the bulk of Davis's photograph collection. Davis also had sketched objects and landscapes during his travels as a method of preserving what he saw. Davis died in San Bernardino on February 22, 1951. In addition to his photographs, Davis authored several scholarly articles.
Provenance:
Purchased;, Edward H. Davis;, 1917 and 1948.
Restrictions:
Access restricted. Researchers should contact the staff of the NMAI Archives for an appointment to access the collection.
50 Stereographs (circa 50 printed stereographs, halftone and color halftone)
1,000 Stereographs (circa, albumen and silver gelatin (some tinted))
239 Prints (circa 239 mounted and unmounted prints, albumen (including cartes de visite, imperial cards, cabinet cards, and one tinted print) and silver gelatin (some modern copies))
96 Prints (Album :, silver gelatin)
21 Postcards (silver gelatin, collotype, color halftone, and halftone)
Photographs relating to Native Americans or frontier themes, including portraits, expedition photographs, landscapes, and other images of dwellings, transportation, totem poles, ceremonies, infants and children in cradleboards, camps and towns, hunting and fishing, wild west shows, food preparation, funeral customs, the US Army and army posts, cliff dwellings, and grave mounds and excavations. The collection also includes images of prisoners at Fort Marion in 1875, Sioux Indians involved in the Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota, the Fort Laramie Peace Commission of 1868, Sitting Bull and his followers after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
There are studio portraits of well-known Native Americans, including American Horse, Big Bow, Four Bears, Iron Bull, Ouray, Red Cloud, Red Dog, Red Shirt, Sitting Bull, Spotted Tail, Three Bears, and Two Guns White Calf. Depicted delegations include a Sauk and Fox meeting in Washington, DC, with Lewis V. Bogy and Charles E. Mix in 1867; Kiowas and Cheyennes at the White House in 1863; and Dakotas and Crows who visited President Warren G. Harding in 1921. Images of schools show Worcester Academy in Vinita, Oklahoma; Chilocco Indian School; Carlisle Indian Industrial School; Haskell Instittue, and Albuquerque Indian School.
Some photographs relate to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876; World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893; Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, 1903; and Centennial Exposition of the Baltimore and Ohio Railraod, 1876. Expedition photographs show the Crook expedition of 1876, the Sanderson expedition to the Custer Battlefield in 1877, the Wheeler Survey of the 1870s, Powell's surveys of the Rocky Mountain region during the 1860s and 1870s, and the Hayden Surveys.
Outstanding single views include the party of Zuni group led to the sea by Frank Hamilton Cushing; Episcopal Church Rectory and School Building, Yankton Agency; Matilda Coxe Stevenson and a companion taking a photographs of a Zuni ceremony; John Moran sketching at Acoma; Ben H. Gurnsey's studio with Indian patrons; Quapaw Mission; baptism of a group of Paiutes at Coeur d'Alene Mission; court-martial commission involved in the trial of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, 1877; President Harding at Sitka, Alaska; Walter Hough at Hopi in 1902; and Mrs. Jesse Walter Fewkes at Hopi in 1897.
Biographical/Historical note:
George V. Allen was an attorney in Lawrence, Kansas and an early member of the National Stereoscope Association. Between the 1950s and 1980s, Allen made an extensive collection of photographs of the American West, mostly in stereographs, but also including cartes-de-visite and other styles of mounted prints, photogravures, lantern slides, autochromes, and glass negatives.
Photo Lot 90-1, George V. Allen collection of photographs of Native Americans and the American frontier, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Indians of North America -- Great Basin Search this
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Albums
Photographs
Date:
circa 1877
Scope and Contents note:
Albums probably assembled by William Henry Jackson, mostly containing portraits of Native American delegates in Washington, D.C. and photographs made on US Geological Surveys (including the Hayden and Powell surveys). Photographs from the field include John K. Hillers' photographs of the Southwest, photographs of Fort Laramie (possibly by Alexander Gardner), Orloff R. Westmann's photographs of Taos Pueblo, and Jackson's photographs of Crow, Shoshoni, Pawnee, and Nez Perce Tribes and related sites. Most of the photographs were made circa 1860s-1870s.
The albums were probably by Jackson while working under Ferdinand V. Hayden for the United States Geological Survey of the Territories. The reason for their creation is uncertain, though it may have been a project set up by Hayden or a continuation of William Henry Blackmore's tradition of publishing albums. Some of the albums include captions pasted from Jackson's Descriptive Catalogue of Photographs of North American Indians (1877) while others have handwritten captions.
Biographical/Historical note:
William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) was an American painter, photographer and explorer. Born in New York, he sold drawings and retouched photographs from an early age. After serving in the Civil War, he opened a photography studio in Omaha, Nebraska, with his brother Edward. As photographer for the US Geological and Geographical Surveys (1870-1878), he documented the American west and published the first photographs of Yellowstone. When the surveys lost funding in 1879, Jackson opened a studio in Denver, Colorado, and also worked for various railroad companies. Many of Jackson's photographs were displayed at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago (1893), for which he was the official photographer.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 4420
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Original negatives for many of the photographs in this collection can be found in the National Anthropological Archives in the BAE historical negatives.
The National Museum of the American Indian Archives holds William Henry Jackson photographs and negatives.
Additional Jackson photographs held in National Anthropological Archives Photo Lot 4605, MS 4801, Photo Lot 14, Photo Lot 24, Photo Lot 29, Photo Lot 37, Photo Lot 40, Photo Lot 60, Photo Lot 93, Photo lot 143, Photo Lot 87-2P, Photo Lot 87-20, and Photo Lot 90-1.
Correspondence from Jackson held in the National Anthropological Archives in MS 4517, MS 4881, MS 4821, and collections of personal papers.
Photo Lot 4420, William Henry Jackson photograph albums based on his Descriptive Catalogue of Photographs of North American Indians, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
The collection consists of photographs relating to Native Americans, which were submitted to the copyright office of the Library of Congress in and around the early 20th century. Many of the photographs are studio portraits as well as photographs made as part of expeditions and railroad surveys. It includes images of people, dwellings and other structures, agriculture, arts and crafts, burials, ceremonies and dances, games, food preparation, transportation, and scenic views. Some of the photographs were posed to illustrate literary works, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha, while others depict paintings or other artwork.
Collection is organized alphabetically by copyright claimant.
Biographical/Historical note:
The collection was formed from submissions made to the Library of Congress as part of the copyright registration process. In 1949, arrangements were made to allow the Bureau of American Ethnology to copy the collection and some negatives were made at that time, largely from the Heyn and Matzen photographs. The project was soon abandoned, however, as too large an undertaking for the facilities of the BAE. In 1957-1958, arrangements were begun by William C. Sturtevant of the BAE to transfer a set of the photographs from the Library of Congress to the BAE.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 59
Provenance:
In 1965, the Bureau merged with the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology to form the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology, and in 1968 the Office of Anthropology Archives transformed into the National Anthropological Archives.
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 59, Library of Congress Copyright Office photograph collection of Native Americans, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
