Earle Forrest Photographs of Hopi Indians

This collection of 77 photographs by Earle Robert Forrest documents Hopi Native Americans in the villages of Oraibi and Mishongnovi, Arizona, in 1906-1908. The prints, made in the early 1960s, are accompanied by extensive descriptive typed captions by Forrest on the backs. Images 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 Forrest traveling through Arizona and American painter Louis Akin observing the Snake Dance ceremony.

Two photographs from 1960, 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.

Item titles transcribed in an abridged form from the photograph captions.