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The snake-dance of the Moquis of Arizona : being a narrative of a journey from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the villages of the Moqui Indians of Arizona
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Snake Dance of the Hopi Indians at Oraibi. Painted Desert, Arizona
Visual Materials
Hopi Indian men wearing dance regalia, performing Snake Dance. One man is holding a snake. Spectators watch from pueblo walls.
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Snake Dance of the Hopi Indians at Oraibi, Third Mesa, Arizona
Visual Materials
This set of photographs by Frederick Monsen focuses on Native Americans of the Southwest in mostly candid views taken in Pueblo communities, approx. 1886-1911. Photographs include portraits, ceremonies, dances, pueblos, livestock and scenes of daily activities. A smaller portion of the collection consists of landscapes, cliff-dwellings, ruins, gold miners, wagons and scenes of pioneer life in the West. Some photographs were made by Monsen while he was with U.S. Geological Surveys (including the Brown-Stanton survey of 1889), and others during his own photography trips. The majority of Native Americans pictured are Hopi and Navajo, but there are also Paiute, Apache, and Pueblo Indians. There are a few views of Mojave Indians of Southern California, and natives of Baja, Mexico. There are several views of Indian children, shown with and without clothes, in their daily activities. Scenes of non-Indian Western life include men in covered wagons on trails, gold prospectors and stagecoaches. There are many artistic landscape views of canyons, buttes and mesas; Death Valley; salt beds; ancient ruins; cactus and other desert plants. Unusual subjects of note are three photographs of skeletons in the deserts of Arizona and one view of the covered bodies of prospectors being carried on burros. The prints are all signed by Monsen and have typed or handwritten captions on the back, written by Monsen.
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Snake Dance at Mishongnovi. Old Oraibi, Hopi Indian Reservation, Arizona
Visual Materials
The photographs in this collection depict Hopi natives and their families; the Hopi villages of Oraibi and Mishongnovi; the Snake Dance; the Antelope Dance; the Blue Flute Ceremony; the race before the Snake Dance; initiation ceremonies into the Snake Society; kivas; the altar of the Blue Flute Society; preparations for the Blue Flute Ceremony; and crypts (in which smallpox victims were burned) being used as a storage area. There are also photographs of Earle R. Forrest traveling through Arizona and Louis Akin observing the Snake Dance ceremony. A photograph of an amphitheater in Wupatki National Monument and a photograph of a stone serpent head at a temple of Quetzalcoatl in San Juan Teotihuacán, Mexico are included. It appears from the photo captions that Forrest placed these photos in the collection to help explain the origins of the Hopi Snake Dance.
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