Visual Materials

Cocopah Indian children. Delta of the Colorado River, Lower California, Mexico

Description: Children playing on the banks of the Colorado River.
Type: Visual Materials(Opens in new tab)
Date: before 1907
Call number: photCL 312
Creator: Monsen, Frederick (1865-1929)(Opens in new tab)
Provenance: Purchased by Henry E. Huntington from Frederick Monsen, 1923.
Dimensions: images approximately 11 x 14 in. on oversize mounts approximately 21 x 26 in. +

Cocopah Indian Home, Delta of the Colorado River, Lower California

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.

photCL 312