Carl Moon Photographs of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma

Finding aid prepared by Suzanne Oatey.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

Photo Archives

1151 Oxford Road

San Marino, California 91108

Phone: (626) 405-2191

Email: reference@huntington.org

URL: http://www.huntington.org

Overview of the Collection

Title: Carl Moon Photographs of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma, 1904-1917

Dates: 1904-1917

Collection Number: photCL 313

Creator: Moon, Carl, 1878-1948.

Extent: 293 photographs in 17 oversize portfolio boxes: prints (approx. 13 x 16 inches) on oversize mounts (approx. 22 x 26 inches). Also includes a typescript index by Carl Moon and 1 box of ephemera and newspaper clippings.

Repository: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Photo Archives

1151 Oxford Road

San Marino, California 91108

Phone: (626) 405-2191

Email: reference@huntington.org

URL: http://www.huntington.org

Abstract: This collection of photographs by photographer Carl Moon documents Native Americans living in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma between 1904 and 1917. The primary tribes represented are Hopi, Navajo and Taos Pueblo Indians, but there are also Osage, Apache and several other Southwestern tribes. There are many portraits, as well as posed, romantic scenes depicting storytelling, hunting, weaving, or playing instruments. Additional candid views show people in their daily activities, pueblos, and dance ceremonies.

Language of Material: The records are in English.

Access

Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader Services.

Administrative Information

Publication Rights

The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Carl Moon Photographs of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Provenance

Purchased by Henry E. Huntington from Carl Moon, 1923.

Biographical Note

Carl E. Moon (originally spelled Karl) was born in Wilmington, Ohio in 1878. After graduation from high school, he served two years with the Ohio National Guard before apprenticing with various photographers in Ohio, West Virginia and Texas. He moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1903, where he set up a photography studio and began making "art studies" of the Native Americans of the Southwest, both in photographs and in oil paintings, sometimes living for weeks at a time in Navajo villages. From 1905-1906, Moon had a short-lived partnership in Albuquerque with businessman Thomas F. Keleher, called the Moon-Keleher Studio. After the partnership dissolved, Moon continued working, photographing carefully selected Indian "subjects" in a romantic, posed style. His photographs began appearing in magazines and he exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in New York. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Moon to exhibit his Native American photographs at the White House.

In 1907, Moon signed a contract with the Fred Harvey Company to produce photographs for what would be the Fred Harvey Collection of Southwest Indian Pictures. Beginning in 1911, he operated out of El Tovar Studio in the Grand Canyon. While employed by the Fred Harvey Co., he also worked as a photographer for the Santa Fe Railroad. For seven years, from 1907 to 1914, Moon photographed the native people of the Southwest, in his studio and in their villages. His images appeared (often uncredited) in brochures and publications for both companies.

Moon resigned from Fred Harvey Co. in 1914, and he and his second wife, Grace Purdie Moon, moved to Pasadena, California, where he continued to work as a photographer and painter. In 1923, Henry E. Huntington purchased from Moon 293 large, mounted photographic prints and 12 oil paintings (12 more paintings were purchased in 1925). This remains the largest and most complete collection of Carl Moon's work extant.

In 1924, Moon began work on "Indians of the Southwest," a set of 100 of his finest prints. Published in 1936, only ten copies were ever produced. With his wife Grace, he also wrote and illustrated many children's books about the Indians of the Southwest. Moon died in 1948, in San Francisco, at the home of his daughter.

Scope and Content

This collection of photographs by photographer Carl Moon documents Native Americans living in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma between 1904 and 1917. In a letter to Henry Huntington, Feb. 12, 1923, Moon describes these photographs as "a complete collection of my Indian pictures made from the beginning of my work in 1904 to 1917. It includes … the pick of the Fred Harvey collection that I made for them during the period of my contract with them, 1907 to 1914, and my own collection made since the latter date."

Moon mostly traveled by himself, and spent time getting to know his subjects before photographing them. He seems to have made a series of shots of his subjects, sometimes with different attire or props, and sometimes assigning different titles to the photographs (see images 214, 225, 235, for example).

Besides the portraits, there are scenes of Indians in their daily activities, including baking bread in outdoor ovens, gathering water in pots, riding horses and tending livestock. There are also views of the Hopi Snake Dance, and the Corn Dance at Santo Domingo.

Almost all of the photographs are signed "Karl Moon" – his name until 1918, when he changed the spelling to Carl. Many of the prints are also stamped "copyright Fred Harvey" which indicates they were made while Moon was under contract there, 1907-1914. Moon also copyrighted many of his own works, and a dated copyright stamp is embossed in the prints. The copyright date does not always indicate the year the photograph was made – it could be several years later (see image 214, for example).

Other items in collection

Box 18:

- Typescript introduction and index to the photographs, titled "A Brief Account of the Making of this Collection of Indian Pictures," by Carl Moon, 1924, 54 pp.

- Newspaper clippings related to Moon, 1904-1936 (bulk 1911-1923).

- Exhibition brochure for artist Thomas Moran, mentioning "Karl Moon," 1916.

Bibliography

Sources consulted:

Driebe, Tom. In Search of the Wild Indian: Photographs and Life Works by Carl and Grace Moon.Moscow, Pa.: Maurose Publishing Co., 1997.

Faris, James C. Navajo and photography: a critical history of the representation of an American people.Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

Moon, Carl. "A Brief Account of the Making of this Collection of Indian Pictures," 1924. (Part of this collection), Huntington Library.

Alternative Form of Materials Available

Visit the Huntington Digital Library to view additional digitized images from the Native American Photographs Project.

Related Collections:

- Copy Photographs from Carl Moon Negatives of Indians of the Southwest and Oklahoma, approximately 1903-1917 (photCL 195). This is a set of contact prints only; there are no negatives.

- Carl Moon Family photograph collection (photCL 484).

- Carl Moon's paintings. The Huntington Library has oil paintings by Carl Moon based on his photographs. Moon intended his paintings "to give the student of the future the true coloring of the Indian and his surroundings." Please contact Art Collections for additional information.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Huntington Library's Online Catalog.

Persons

Moon, Carl, 1878-1948.

Nampeyo, approximately 1856-1942.

Subjects

Acoma Indians -- Photographs.

Apache Indians -- Photographs.

Arapaho Indians -- Photographs.

Cheyenne Indians -- Photographs.

Cliff-dwellings--Arizona -- Photographs.

Havasupai Indians -- Photographs.

Hopi Indians -- Photographs.

Hopi Indians--Rites and ceremonies -- Photographs.

Indian baskets--Southwest, New -- Photographs.

Indians of North America--Southwest, New -- Photographs.

Indians of North America--Great Plains -- Photographs.

Isleta Indians -- Photographs.

Kivas -- Photographs.

Laguna Indians -- Photographs.

Looms -- Photographs.

Mission churches--New Mexico -- Photographs.

Navajo Indians -- Photographs.

Osage Indians -- Photographs.

Pueblo dance -- Photographs.

Pueblo pottery -- Photographs.

Pueblo Indians -- Photographs.

Pueblos--Arizona -- Photographs.

Pueblos—New Mexico -- Photographs.

Ruins -- Photographs.

Taos Indians -- Photographs.

Weaving -- Photographs.

Zuni Indians -- Photographs.

Places

Arizona -- Photographs

New Mexico -- Photographs

Oklahoma -- Photographs

Acoma Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

Chelly, Canyon de (Ariz.) -- Photographs

Cochiti (N.M.) -- Photographs

First Mesa (Ariz. : Mesa) -- Photographs

Isleta Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico -- Photographs

Nambe Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

Oraibi (Ariz.) -- Photographs

Pueblo of San Ildefonso, New Mexico -- Photographs

Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico -- Photographs

San Felipe Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

San Juan Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

Santo Domingo Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

Second Mesa (Ariz. : Mesa) -- Photographs

Taos Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

Tesuque Pueblo (N.M.) -- Photographs

Walpi (Ariz.) -- Photographs

Zuni (N.M.) -- Photographs

Document types

Photographs.

Portraits.

Landscape photographs.

Ephemera.

Additional item: Carl Moon's Introduction and Index

"A Brief Account of the Making of this Collection of Indian Pictures," by Carl Moon, 1924

Photographs

Physical Description: 293 photographs in 17 boxes

Note

Titles transcribed from Moon's handwritten titles on photograph mounts. Go to digital image for further information about each photograph.

Box 1

Photographs 1-20

(1)

Edge of the Mesa. Hopi. Second Mesa.