Fewkes Digital Archive Project

From the 1880s through the 1920s, Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes made a substantial contribution to our knowledge of Native American ethnology and of Southwest archaeology. After earning his doctorate in marine biology, Fewkes joined the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition to the American Southwest and soon turned to documenting the cultures of the Hopi and Zuni Pueblos. His highly detailed notebooks, drawings and photographs form a historically significant collection of early ethnographic material about these Native Americans. He also made important contributions in archaeology, working at what is now Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Mesa Verde National Park and many other archeological sites throughout the Southwest.

Our interest in his work came about because unlike many other archeologists and ethnographers, Dr. Fewkes had an interest in how Southwest Native Americans viewed and responded to sun, moon and stars. He was also one of the early documentarians of archaeological sites we have studied, taking some of the earliest photographs known of these structures and investigating their probable use. Fewkes invited Native American artists to share their images of rock art, Hopi katsinas and other aspects of Hopi and Zuni culture, which are included in the archival collection. Fewkes was even one of the first ethnographers to use the newly developed audio recording techniques to document Native American music and language. He was an important voice in arguing for the preservation of archaeological sites in the Southwest and elsewhere in the United States.

We think that these records and photographs have immense value to the people he documented and the anthropological research community. They are useful for interpreting the architecture of the sites he excavated and repaired as well as the cultures he studied. The records we examined are but a small percentage of his collection housed at the Smithsonian Institution. The notebooks are raw data on the Hopi and Zuni way of life at that time. They have detailed color drawings and recorded information that may have been lost by modern Hopi and Zuni Societies. Such a project would be completed with close cooperation and consultation of Native American tribal entities to ensure that sensitive information or images would be protected. Even though there are many challenges, we should not be deterred from this type of undertaking. The acidic records themselves are slowly deteriorating into the dust of the ages and it is our responsibility to make sure that the efforts of our archaeological ancestors live into the future for the benefit of generations yet to come.