Getty Museum
Moki Girls
Creator
John K. HillersAmerican Photographer · 1843–1925
All works by this person →John K. Hillers began making photographs while exploring the terrain around the Colorado River in 1871. Part of a survey team led by John Wesley Powell, a geologist and ethnologist, Hillers was originally hired as a boatman. He became increasingly interested in the work of the team's photographer, began acting as his assistant, and by 1872 had become the expedition photographer. From the 1870s unt
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1879
- Medium
- Albumen silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
To signify their unmarried status, these two Moki, or Hopi, women wear tightly wrapped "butterfly" or "ram's horns" hairstyles and cornmeal dust on their faces. As part of an ethnographic survey team headed by John Wesley Powell, John K. Hillers documented such variations in costume and facial adornment among the people of the mesas near the Grand Canyon. He photographed these women amid a variety of Hopi weavings, part of the tribe's material culture that would also have interested the survey team. Various members of the team took notes, collected artifacts, and photographed the Indians of the New Mexico and Arizona territories for the research files of the Smithsonian Institution.
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