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Article Excerpt
Two fortuitous events enhanced the Kinishba Ruins National Historic Landmark preservation project I coordinated on behalf" of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The first was the unannounced 2004 arrival of a package containing photocopies of professional photographic portraits, including images of Kinishba. The copies had been graciously forwarded to me by Ann Rasor, superintendent of Tumacacori National Historical Park, with an inquiry concerning the tribal affiliations of the Native American individuals, the identity of the site, and a confirmation that the elderly non-Indian subject featured in a couple of the shots was Byron Cummings, the chief proponent of the excavation and rebuilding of Kinishba Ruins (see Bostwick 2006; Welch, this volume).
The preservation project and other duties prevented me from the consultations needed to identify the native people in the portraits, but both Cummings and Kinishba were unmistakably captured in the years immediately following the completion of the excavation and construction. The other subjects were instantly recognizable as White Mountain Apaches living in the greater Whiteriver vicinity. I conveyed these initial findings to Rasor with a request for more information about the collection and, if possible, digital copies of the images for the tribe's heritage site files. When the digital files arrived a few weeks later I learned that the photographs were owned by Tubac residents Dedi and Mike Hoeck. I phoned them to express my appreciation, then placed the files in the tribe's collections, malting a mental note to review the images for possible inclusion in the Kinishba project report.
The second felicitous event occurred a year later, when my search for illustrations for the Kinishba write-up led me to the door of one of the photographers of the Hoeck collection. I found in Cummings' 1952 book Indians I Have Known three photographs closely associated with the Hoeck collection. Figure 1, provided by the Hoecks, is part of a series that includes the slightly different image following page 53 in Cummings' book and credited to Esther Henderson. In the same volume, facing page 50, is an image from another of the series in the Hoeck collection, this one of Cummings composed in one of Kinishba's excavated rooms and attributed to Chuck Abbott. Figure 2 is a Henderson portrait from a third series in the Hoeck collection and shows Cummings posed in the same clothing and location, and with props comparable to the Henderson portrait of "The Dean" featured as the frontispiece of the 1952 book.
[FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]
Preliminary research revealed additional clues. Abbott and Henderson were a prominent team in Arizona's small community of non-itinerant professional photographers. A closer look indicated that on the same day Abbott shot the portraits, he also took a fine series of architectural shots of Kinishba (see Cummings 1953; Bostwick 2006: dust jacket, figs. 23.1 and 23.2). The most rewarding discovery came via contacts with Irene Rheti, Evelyn Richards, and Christine Bunting, who had lately completed initial documentation of approximately 4,600 slides taken in California (exclusively) by Abbott and Henderson and donated to Special Collections at the University of California, Santa Cruz, library (http ://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/estherabbott.final.pdf, consulted December 30, 2005). I learned that Esther Henderson had personally arranged for the donation of this collection, and a final series of phone calls resulted in arrangements for us to meet to discuss her work on White Mountain Apache lands.
Reconnecting the site, the images, and the photographers raised many questions not addressed in published sources elsewhere and seldom engaged in the interpretation and presentation of vintage Arizona photographs (see, for example, Morrissey and Jensen 2005). When, precisely, were the shots taken? Was the shoot commissioned by Cummings or planned in conjunction with an institution or with publication in mind? Do the images in the Hoeck collection represent all or most of those captured by Abbott and Henderson? Where are the negatives and any other original prints? Are the Apaches featured in the portraits Cummings' friends and workers? If not, how did the photographers forge their contacts with community members? Would a comparison of the Abbott and Henderson images with the previously known photographic records of the place and period--especially work by Tad Nichols, Thomas E. Hinton, W. N. Smith, and Joyce and Josef Muench (see Cummings 1940; Muench and Muench 1946a, b, c; Morrissey and Parezo 2005:158-60)--significantly expand our understanding of the photographs' subjects and contexts? (1)
I addressed some of these questions with Esther Henderson in her home in Santa Cruz on January 21, 2006 (figure 3). My approach was to employ the images as memory "catalysts" to learn as much as possible from Henderson. I then repeated this exercise by taking the photographs back to Apache lands and attempting to document links between the images and the individual and familial identities of the Abbott and Henderson subjects. The follow-up consultations were conducted in January and February 2006 with Glenda Antonio, Mark Antonio, Broadus Bones, Paul and Genevieve Ethelbah, Ruth Goklish, Art Guenther, Cornelia Hoffman, Beverly Malone, Shirley Massey, Jimmy Riley, Ramon Riley, Anne...
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