Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952)

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Provenance: University of San Diego (Incorporated California 1849)
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Title:
Plate 424 A Walpi Man
Date:
1904
Size:
Portfolio, 22 x 18 inches
Medium:
Vintage Photogravure
 
Wrapped in a thick brown shawl this Walpi man has a strong and somber expression. He looks directly at the viewer and is almost fully lit. An interesting haircut, this man has a short cut while we are used to seeing longer hair on Native Americans, especially of this age. He is wearing hoop earrings and has a piece of cloth ties around his head. Of the Walpi tribe this man would have lived in present day Arizona.

"The religious and ceremonial life of the Hopi centers in the kiva, which is simply a room, wholly or partly subterranean and entered by way of ladder through an opening in the flat roof...While the membership of the kiva consists principally of men and boys from certain clan or clans, there is no case in which all the members of a kiva belong to one clan - a condition inseparable from the provision that a man may change his kiva membership, and in fact made necessary by the existence of more clans than kivas. It is probable; nevertheless, that originally the kivas were clan institutions." - Edward Curtis
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