Edward Harvey Davis (1862-1951) was a field collector for the
Museum of the American Indian in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
who acquired many artifacts from various indigenous groups in
San Diego county
San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the fi ...
and northwestern
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
(including the
Seris) for that museum (now part of the
Smithsonian).
Biography
Born to Lewis S. Davis and Christine Smith Davis on 18 June 1862 in New York, Davis grew up in Brooklyn and attended the Brooklyn Art Guild,
developing skills in drawing and drafting.
He worked for a time in New York in the accounting office of his family's shipping firm, Jonas Smith & Company.
In 1885, ill with
Bright’s disease, Davis followed his older brother Henry to San Diego, where the elder Davis had established an office of the family shipping firm and expanded into lumber and mining interests. The younger Davis found work as a surveyor and a draftsman, drawing maps and house plans.
In 1887, he helped draw plans for the
Hotel del Coronado.
In 1885, he married Anna Marion (Anna May) Wells in New York and returned with her to San Diego.
In 1887, a real estate deal in downtown San Diego provided Davis the funds to purchase 320 acres in Mesa Grande, approximately 60 miles northeast of San Diego, where he developed the land into a working cattle ranch and fruit farm.
In 1915, he built a summer resort on the property, the Powam Lodge, designed by noted architect
Emmor Brook Weaver
Emor ( he, אֱמֹר — Hebrew for "speak," the fifth word, and the first distinctive word, in the parashah) is the 31st weekly Torah portion ( he, פָּרָשָׁה, ''parashah'') in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the eighth in ...
. Davis and his family operated the lodge until 1930, when it was destroyed in a fire.
An interest in Indian culture led Davis to collect Indian artifacts, trading with various tribes in the neighborhood. Concerned with the loss of traditional Indian way of life, Davis acquired extensive artifacts to preserve and document Indian culture.
In 1916,
George Gustav Heye
George Gustav Heye (1874 – January 20, 1957) was an American collector of Native American artifacts in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in North America. He founded the Museum of the American Indian, and his collection became the core of ...
, founder of the Museum of the American Indian, hired Davis as a field collector of Indian ethnological specimens.
Davis collected for the Heye Foundation from 1917 to 1930, focusing on artifacts of the Indian tribes of San Diego County/Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and northwestern Mexico, including the Paipai, Kiliwa, Cora, Huichol, Opata, Mayo, Seri, Apache, Cocopa, Tohono O’odham, Papago, Maricopa, Mojave, Hualapai, Yaqui, and Yuma Indians.
In addition to collecting, Davis photographed Indian communities, documenting their daily and ceremonial activities and publishing his experiences in both popular magazines and scholarly journals.
Davis died on 22 February 1951 at the age of 89.
Collections
The
National Museum of the American Indian houses a large number of objects Davis collected during his years in the Southwest. The
San Diego History Center (SDHC) houses the Edward H. Davis Collection of Indian Photographs and Drawings (5000 images, most dating from 1903 to 1947);. Additionally, the SDHC Archives holds Davis's 62 notebooks and pages of field notes.
The bulk of his papers are housed at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
Library (Edward H. Davis Papers, 1910-1944, Collection no. 9166).
Selected publications
*Davis, Edward H. Early Cremation Ceremonies of the Luiseño and Diegueño Indians of Southern California. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1921.
*———. “The Diegueño Ceremony of the Death Images.” ''Contributions from the Museum of the American Indian'', Heye Foundation 5, no. 2 (1919): 1–33.
*———. The Papago Ceremony of Víkĭta. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1920.
*Davis, Edward H., and E. Yale Dawson. “The Savage Seris of Sonora--I.” ''The Scientific Monthly'' 60, no. 3 (1945): 193–202.
*———. “The Savage Seris of Sonora--II.” ''The Scientific Monthly'' 60, no. 4 (1945): 261–68.
Notes
External links
Davis items in the collections of the National Museum of the American IndianEdward H. Davis Collection of Indian Photographs and Drawings San Diego History Center
San Diego Historical Society's biography of Davis adapted from Theodore W. Fuller, ''San Diego Originals'' (1987, California Profiles Publications).
* Gonzales, Christian.
‘Their Souls Are Equally Precious’: Edward Harvey Davis, Benevolence, Race, and the Colonization of Indigeneity” ''Journal of San Diego History'' 60, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 181–206.
Further reading
*Quinn, Charles Russell, and Elena Quinn. ''Edward H. Davis and the Indians of the Southwest United States and Northwest Mexico: A Harvest of Photographs, Sketches and Unpublished Manuscripts of the Indefatigable Collector of Artifacts of These Border Indians.'' 1965.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Edward Harvey
Museum people
1862 births
1951 deaths
People from Brooklyn