Not viewed. Duration and other technical specifications unknown.
Background: This footage was shot by the Santa Fe railroad executive, William E. Kopplin, probably in 1911. It formed but one part of a large number of images of Native peoples of the Southwest that were produced by this railway company for use in promotional material aimed at developing tourism in the region.
The location of the footage is unknown, but prints taken from it, some reversed, are reproduced in McLuhan and Kopplin 1985 (details below).
Background/ Content: This film is a compilation made by the US Department of the Interior and shows material shot in two different locations.
The first part concerns Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico and shows sheep being driven across a stream, houses and women baking bread.
The second part shows the Snake Dance ceremony as performed at the Hopi village of Wàlpi, Arizona, easily recognisable by the Snake Rock pillar in the village plaza.
The maker(s) of the film is/are unknown.
The National Archives catalogue suggests that the film was compiled at some point between 1916 and 1976. However, it is very likely that the material was shot some time before that as filming of the Snake Dance at Wàlpi was effectively banned after 1913. Lyon (1988) estimates that the film was made in the period 1905-1911.
Not viewed. Duration and other technical characteristics unknown.
Background: the celebrated photographer, Edward S. Curtis shot footage of two enactments of the Snake Dance ceremony at the Hopi village of Orayvi, Arizona, in 1904 and 1906.
In 1904, he shot the event from a rooftop that he had rented for the purpose, while in 1906, in exchange – it was rumoured at the time – for a fee of two hundred dollars, he appears to have been allowed to shoot inside the Snake Society kiva, the underground chamber normally very strictly reserved to initiated Hopi men.
The current whereabouts of this footage is unknown, but a sequence is reported to have been included, albeit accompanied by culturally inappropriate music and drum beats, in The Shadow Catcher, a filmic biography of Curtis directed by Teri C. McLuhan. This was produced by Phoenix Films and released in 1975.
The Antelope society enters the plaza. A shot that appears in Hopi Indians Dance for Theodore Roosevelt , (1913) which may form part of the footage shot by the Kolb brothers.
Not viewed. Duration and title unknown.
Background: This film of the Snake Dance ceremony was shot in 1911 and 1913 at the Hopi village of Wàlpi, Arizona by the Kolb brothers, Ellsworth and Emery, who operated a photographic studio at the nearby Grand Canyon.
There is some reason to believe that at least part of the footage shot for this film is included in an unattributed film held by the Library of Congress, Hopi Indians Dance for Theodore Roosevelt (1913).
Background/content: The tasapkatsinam are katsinam figures who perform in what the Hopi perceive to be the manner of a Navajo Yei Bichei masked dancer.
This material was shot by the amateur film-maker Clifford Paul (1892-1960) who toured the Hopi region whilst working as a chauffeur for the director of a farm machinery company.
It was shot in June-July 1926, probably at the First Mesa village of Sitsom’ovi. It may be the only film in existence of a traditional katsinam performance.
It was reported in 1988 that Paul’s daughter, Ethel Armstrong of Roswell, New Mexico, intended to deposit the film with the Museum of Northern Arizona. However, it does not appear in the listings of Arizona Archives Online (AAQ).
The Antelope Society enters the plaza. The ‘kisi’, the cottonwood bower where the snakes are kept, is on the right. The dancers bodies are covered with zigzag lines.
approx 3:45 minutes, with no titles nor end credits, and a faulty chronology.
Source: a copy is held by the Library of Congress (LoC), which may be viewed here.
Production: Pathe’s Weekly, possibly also Kolb Studio, Grand Canyon.
Background: this material was shot in the Hopi village of Wàlpi in Arizona on 21 August 1913. It was supplied to the Library of Congress by the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association, which would probably explain the misleading title. In fact, the Hopi were not dancing specifically for the former President; rather they were celebrating their biennial Snake Dance ceremony aimed at bringing rain for their late season maize crop. At that time, these ceremonies took place at Wàlpi on odd years of the Gregorian calendar.
Roosevelt, centre, leans forward to speak to his sons. The Arizona State Governor , W.P. Hunt, looks on from the left. High up in the crowd, a cameraman adjusts his camera. A shot taken from an identical position appears in the film. Photograph H.F. Robinson, Museum of New Mexico archive.
Roosevelt (1858-1919) had recently lost to Woodrow Wilson in his attempt to be re-elected as President and was on a consolatory mountain lion hunting trip in the Southwest with his young cousin Nicholas Roosevelt and his teenage sons, Archie and Quentin. While in the region, he attended the event as one of many hundreds of non-Native spectators.
The presence of non-Natives, many attempting to photograph or film the ceremony, had become so overwhelming at Wàlpi that earlier that year, Cato Sells, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington had prohibited Snake Dance photography for commercial purposes.
However, when the local Indian agent, Leo Crane, arrived at Wàlpi for the ceremony, he discovered two unauthorised film crews.
One of these consisted of the young Pathe’s Weekly newsreel cameraman Victor Miller.The other crew were the Kolb brothers, Ellsworth and Emery, who had a studio in the nearby Grand Canyon and were already well-known as local photographers. They had filmed the Snake Dance at Wàlpi before, in 1911.
Crane allowed the crews to remain on the condition that they gave written assurances after the ceremony that their footage would be used only for historical documentation purposes.
Miller, however, made an unsuccessful attempt to evade this obligation by leaving the village under the cover of darkness. He was arrested, and his undeveloped footage was confiscated and sent to Washington.
The material held in the LoC, acquired in 1986, is thought to derive from Miller’s footage. The Kolbs’ footage, on the other hand, combined with their material from 1911, is deposited in Emery Kolb Collection archive at the University of Northern Arizona. Here it is restricted due to the potentially culturally sensitive nature of the material. But a fragment showing Roosevelt, Hunt and other spectators getting ready to watch the ceremony can be accessed here.
The LoC film was clearly shot from two radically different camera positions. One was high above the action, producing images such as the one at the head of this entry. The other camera position was on the plaza itself, close to the performers, as in the image below.
As it is unlikely, particularly given the crush of spectators, that it would have been possible to move from one camera position to another once the performance had begun, this suggests that this film incorporates material shot by both of the crews present.
The material shot from above would almost certainly have been shot by the cameraman in the background of the H.F. Skinner photograph above. As the image is very small, it is difficult to identify this person. But of the cameramen known to be present, he appears to be most like Ellsworth Kolb. The camera that he is operating also appears to be the same as the one used by the Kolb brothers.
Content: The film begins with a series of shots from the high camera position showing the entry from the left of the Antelope Society dancers, perhaps 13 of them. They move in a circle around the small plaza, shaking their rattles. A large crowd of non-Natives presses around the perimeter. (See the image at the top of the page).
The Antelopes’ bodies are decorated with zigzag lines symbolising lightning. This refers to the prospect of rain which it is the aim of the ceremony to provoke. After about 30 seconds, they line up on the right in front of the kisi, the cottonwood bower where the snakes are kept.
The Snake Society then enters. There are somewhat more of them, perhaps 15. As they circle round the plaza, some stamp on the wooden plank in front of the Antelopes that serves as a foot drum. The day before, in a cavity below the drum, offerings had been made to the spirits who control the elements to encourage them to release the rains.
Around a minute in, there is an abrupt cut to a slightly closer shot, still taken from above, of the Snake Society lined up opposite the Antelope Society in front of the kisi. They are chanting prior to the beginning of the snake dancing proper.
This begins after a further 15 seconds. Snake Society members dance in pairs around the plaza, one with a snake in his mouth, the other holding a feather used to tame the reptile. Senior members of the society supervise and pick up any snakes that have escaped. All this is shot from above.
But at 2:35, there is a radical cut to a camera position at the level of plaza. In an image very similar to the Robinson photograph above, Roosevelt is shown with his sons and his cousin sitting in front of him, and to the left, the portly Governor of Arizona. They are all very self-conscious. At 15 seconds, this is the longest shot in the film.
It is followed at 2:48 by a return to the camera position above which offers a slow pan across the plaza, now filled with white spectators. Two Hopi men appear, without ceremonial dress, and briefly duck into the kisi. But otherwise there is no sign of the dancers, suggesting that these two shot were taken before the ceremony began.
(This could also be true of the Roosevelt shot, in which case, it could have been taken by the cameraman who eventually ended up behind him in the H.F. Skinner image.)
After this interlude, around 3:15, there is another abrupt cut, this time back to a dramatic series of shots of snake dancing taken from the camera position on the plaza, very close to the dancers, as in this frame-grab.
Bizarrely, this sequence is interrupted by another slow, 10-second pan from the camera position above that moves across the village showing the spectators, but pointing away from the dancing. It ends finally on the desert far below the village.
Around 3:40, there is a cut to a final sequence of close-up shots on the plaza. Snake dancing continues but some snakes are apparently being gathered up, possibly preparatory to returning them to the desert where they will carry the Hopi’s plea for rain to the spirits who dwell underground there.
Before this happens though, the film ends, midshot, at around 3:45.
The Snake Dance ceremony at Wàlpi in 1889 photographed by Ben Wittick (1845-1903) from a position and angle very similar to one adopted by White and Blechynden to shoot their films. However by 1901, the number of non-Native spectators had increased greatly.
Not viewed. Durations and technical characteristics not verified.
Background: This series of five films was made at the Hopi village of Wàlpi in August 1901 by director James H. White and cameraman Frederick Blechynden, who were working for the Edison production company.
The Library of Congress (LoC) holds 16mm copies of paper prints of these films (originally submitted for copyright purposes). They are reported to be of “relatively poor quality” (Lyon 1988).
Content: this has been described by Pierre-L. Jordan (1992):
Panoramic View of Moki Land (37 secs) – panoramic shot from left to right across an arid landscape showing buttes and cliffs
Parade of Snake Dancers before the Dance (42 secs) – about 50 dancers, ceremonially dressed, enter the plaza. Shot from above from a single camera position. In the background, there are evidently many non-Native spectators.
The March of Prayer and Entrance of the Dancers (86 secs) – group of 12 dancers, members of the Snake Society led by their chief, enter the plaza. From roughly the same camera position as the previous shot
Line-Up and Teasing the Snakes (70 secs) – snakes are taken out of a jar and teased by the dancers with sticks. Again shot from above.
Carrying Out the Snakes (58 secs) – final stage of the ceremony in which the dancers pick up the snakes and carry them out of the plaza.
The LoC also holds a 16 mm negative of a separate film, also produced by the Edison company in 1901, entitled Moki Snake Dance by Walpapi Indians. This was evidently shot at Wàlpi in the same year as the series of five films, presumably by the same film crew.
This separate film is 50ft long, i.e. it must have had a duration of around 50 seconds. Given the general title, it seems likely that it was a compilation based on the other films, perhaps aimed at a more popular audience.
The “rooster-plucking” or “gallo” race, one of three films made of the Navajo tournament by Holmes and Depue. Unattributed photograph in Holmes 1901, p.322.
Shot on 60mm film. Footage lost, duration unknown.
Background: This footage was shot on 24 August, 1898 when the travel lecturer Burton Holmes and his cameraman Oscar Depue stopped over at Tolani Lake, Arizona, on their way back to the railroad station after filming the Snake Dance at the Hopi pueblo of Orayvi two days previously.
This was the site of one of the three trade stores that their guide, Frederick W. Volz (1856-1913) owned in the area and it was Volz who organised the tournament. Although the principal participants were local Navajos, some Hopi were involved also. Depue shot sufficient footage for three short films that would feature regularly in support of the lectures that Holmes would give over the ensuing years.
Although the footage is lost, as in the case of the Snake Dance material, it is possible to reconstruct its content on the basis of various sources: eyewitness accounts, including one by Holmes himself, the photographic record and, importantly, the descriptions subsequently offered in the press in the reviews of Holmes’ lectures.
Content: According to the newspaper reports, the first of the three films to be screened at Holmes’ lectures was of the “rooster plucking” or gallo race (gallo being the Spanish term for rooster or cockerel), as seen in the photograph above. This was a customary practice that the Navajos had borrowed within the previous two centuries from New Mexico Hispanos and/or Rio Grande Pueblos.
Normally, this event consisted of riders attempting to pluck out a cockerel buried in the ground as they galloped by at speed. However, on this occasion, the German anthropologist Paul Ehrenreich, who witnessed the event, reported that in deference to the sensitivities of the visitors, a knotted rope was used instead.
Navajo horsemen present at the tournament. Unattributed photograph in Holmes 1901, p.329
The second film, “Parade of Navajo Indians” would probably have shown the “grand march” described by Holmes, which was led by Volz, as the host, and a much-respected elderly Navajo chief.
But it is the third film, which although certainly not ethnographic, that is in many ways the most intriguing since it reminds us that the distinction between ethnographic film-making and other genres was not then firmly established.
Dubbed by Holmes as “one of the most thrilling motion pictures made in Arizona”, it featured a member of his travel party, the sixteen-year-old Rose Dougan, whose nickname was “Rattlesnake Jack”, being pursued on horseback by a large band of Navajos.
This chase was entirely in keeping with a common trope of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows since the 1870s, which had in turn arisen from a theatrical imaginary of “Indian-white” relations with antecedents in early 19th century stage performances and captivity narratives beginning even earlier. It also anticipates a common trope of the Western genre as it would develop in the early years of the 20th century.
By prior arrangement with Volz, the Navajos “failed” to catch “the girl from Denver” and in the film, she approaches the camera and salutes the spectators in triumph. In his text, Holmes illustrated this scene with prints of two strips of the 60mm film shot by Depue – the only frames of the film known to have survived.
The following year, on their way to the Hopi village of Wàlpi to shoot further Snake Dance material, Holmes and Depue returned to Tolani Lake and showed the tournament films to the Navajo participants. None of them had seen films before and they were both amazed and concerned that those who had died in the interim could still be seen apparently alive on the screen.
Holmes and Depue also showed material shot in the cities, and as has been reported elsewhere, when a train and then a fire engine approached the camera, many people in the audience took cover.
The Antelope Society await the arrival of the Snake Society on the “snake plaza” of Orayvi, 22 August, 1898. In the middle distance, Burton Holmes, on the left, and Oscar Depue stand beside an early moving image camera. Photograph by Adam Clark Vroman (see Mahood 1961: 97).
Shot on 60mm film. Footage lost, duration unknown.
Background: Most of this footage was shot on 22 August 1898 at the Hopi village of Orayvi and is possibly the first film of a North American Native people.
Certainly, it predates the footage shot at the Hopi village of Wàlpi by an Edison crew in 1901 which is sometimes identified as the first film on the Hopi Snake Dance. It also considerably predates the Snake Dance material shot by the celebrated photographer, Edward S. Curtis, also at Orayvi, in 1904 and 1906.
This footage is sometimes erroneously attributed to Thomas Edison, but in fact was shot by Oscar Depue, a cameraman working for the celebrated travel lecturer, E. Burton Holmes. In the photograph above, Depue is seen standing behind the camera, while Holmes is standing by his side, to the left. In 1899, they returned to the region and shot further footage of the Snake Dance ceremony in the Hopi village of Wàlpi.
The camera is particularly interesting as it is a modified version of the rare Chronophotographe, devised by the French inventor Georges Demenÿ for the media entrepreneur Léon Gaumont. A distinctive feature of this camera was that it operated with 60mm film.
Acting on Holmes’ behalf, Depue had purchased an example the previous year in Paris and had modified it so that it could carry a longer roll of film. In this modified form, the camera became known in the US as the “Depue Chronomatograph”.
Apart from a single damaged frame reproduced in a study of the work of the photographer who took the image at the head of this entry, Adam Clark Vroman, the Holmes-Depue footage is currently lost.
However, its content can be reconstructed from various sources: the extensive photographic record made of this performance of the Hopi Snake Dance, the written testimonies of eyewitnesses, including Holmes himself, and the many subsequent reports on the footage that appeared in the press as the Snake Dance films became an important part of Holmes’ lecture repertoire.
Content : We know from the eyewitness account of Paul Ehrenreich, a German anthropologist, that Depue began early in the morning of 22 August when he filmed a preparatory ceremony, some hours prior to the main event, in which a group of women and girls attempted to wrestle away sheaves of cornstalks from a group of men and boys who were arriving in the village at the end of an early-morning footrace.
As for the main event, the single surviving frame suggests that after filming from the initial position shown in the photograph above, Depue moved his camera a few metres to the left, probably in order to get a better view of the snake-dancing that constitutes the second phase of the ceremony.
There is no evidence that on this occasion Depue was able to film the last phase of the ceremony in which the snakes are taken back to the desert so that they can carry a plea to the spirits who control the rain. Holmes’ account suggests that by this point , light conditions had deteriorated badly, so Depue may have found it impossible to film. It may be for this reason that Holmes and Depue returned the following year to Wàlpi, i.e., to film the final phase that they had been unable to capture at Orayvi.
There is some evidence for this is the newspaper reports of Holmes’ lectures since it is only in the autumn of 1899, after Holmes and Depue had been to Wàlpi, that they mention the returning of the snakes to the desert.
What is not in doubt is that the Snake Dance films provoked a great deal of interest. They remained a staple of Holmes’ lectures for the following six years, culminating in 1904 when he took them to London. Thereafter, however, he seems to have set this material aside and turned his attention to European and Asian subjects.
Mohawk reservation of Kahnawake – ‘Danse indienne’ (1898) – dir. Gabriel Veyre.
Probably less than a minute, b&w, silent.
Source : revised Lumière catalogue no. 96 (1000)
This “view” was shot by the leading Lumière cameraman, Gabriel Veyre, on 2 or 3 September 1898, when he was travelling through Canada on his way to Japan. It seems to be the only “view” that Veyre shot while in Canada, though it is possible that others may not have survived.
It is described in the Lumière catalogue as showing a dance involving three men and as being shot on Kahnawake, the Mohawk reservation on the south side of the St. Lawrence river across from Montréal.
As an example of early footage of North American Native peoples shot on location, this “view” is second only to the footage of the Snake Dance at the Hopi Orayvi pueblo and of a Navajo “tournament”, shot some two weeks earlier, in August 1898, by Burton Holmes’s cameraman Oscar Depue. It is certainly the first moving image film of a Canadian indigenous group.
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