Daguerreotypes includes images captured with one of the earliest photographic techniques. The images show portraits of politicians and activists (including Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas), laborers, early views of the U.S. Capitol, and African Americans who became leaders in Liberia.
These online exhibits provide context and additional information about this collection.
These historical era(s) are best represented in the collection although they may not be all-encompassing.
- The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Related Collections and Exhibits
- Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865
- Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920
- The Gettysburg Address
- "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
Recommended additional sources of information.
There are currently no other resources for this collection
Specific guidance for searching this collection.
Search on American Colonization Society for portraits of African Americans who colonized Liberia. Search on congressman, senator for portraits of elected officials. Search on occupational portrait for images of laborers with the tools of their trades. Search on individuals by name.
For help with search words and names, go to America's First Look at the Camera: Daguerreotypes, 1839-1864 Subject Index.
For help with general search strategies, see Finding Items in American Memory.
The daguerreotype marked a milestone in photographic history as portraits became popular among politicians, celebrities, and the growing middle class. America's First Look into the Camera contains hundreds of portraits of both famous and anonymous men and offers insight into the people and policies of the nineteenth-century United States including politicians, the colonization of Liberia, effects of the Industrial Revolution, and reactions to high mortality rates.
America's First Exposure to Photography: The Daguerreotype Medium
Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre invented the daguerreotype in 1839. Within a few years, daguerreotype studios appeared in United States cities and the popularity of the medium grew through The 1850s. A brief history of the daguerreotype medium, its camera, and its image processing are available in the collection's,"The Daguerreotype Medium." The collection's Glossary provides a list of relevant terms.
Daguerreotypes were popularly and primarily used for portraits. Unlike most photographs today, in which images are printed from transparent negatives onto paper, the daguerreotype was a polished copper plate upon which an image was directly exposed. No negative used in the process and so each daguerreotype was a unique, one-of-a-kind object. With its brilliant, mirror-like surface and its ornate case, small enough to hold in the hand or carry in the pocket, the daguerreotype was suited to a vivid and intimate representation of a loved one.
Despite its value as a means of memorializing friends and family, photography did not have an immediate market. In fact, it was photography's almost magical ability to reproduce life that elicited fear and suspicion from many people. In an effort to assuage anxieties about the medium and to gain public credibility, photographers sought to take and to display portraits of America's elite. In an age when phrenologists offered to read a person's character based on their physical characteristics, portraits of society's leaders were thought to have an edifying and moralizing influence on the viewer. Portraits of esteemed personages such as Lyman Beecher, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Dolley Madison, and Abraham Lincoln drew the public to the photographers' studios and provided the genesis for a cult of celebrity that would grow with the evolution of photography.
- Why do you think that portraiture was the most popular use of the daguerreotype? How might precedents in painting and drawing, the business needs of the studios, and the constraints of the medium have contributed to this popularity?
- Why do you think that more men were photographed than women?
- Why would portraits of prominent Americans encourage the public to sit for their own portraits?
- Why would the display of these portraits lend the photographer credibility?
- Why might early photographers have had a difficult time being taken seriously as professionals? Who would their competitors have been?
- How might an early photographer have convinced an esteemed political or social leader to sit for his or her portrait?
- How might an early photographer have distinguished himself from his competitors?
Some artists brought the daguerreotype outside of the portrait studio to capture images of buildings and places. In addition to hundreds of portraits, this collection also contains pictures of Niagara Falls, an American Indian camp, and a monument commemorating a battle from the War of 1812. Washington, D.C. locations featured in the collection include the General Post Office, and the Patent Office. Many daguerreotype images were later reproduced as engravings and drawings in newspapers and other periodicals.
- How do you think that the realism of these images impacted the value of illustrations and written descriptions of these people and places?
- How do you think that people might have responded to such images?
- How do you think that the daguerreotype medium may have set a precedent for subsequent attempts at documentary photography?
For an understanding of how portrait photography evolved after the daguerreotype, browse American Memory collections, including William P. Gottlieb: Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz, America from the Great Depression to World War II, Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten, 1932-1964, and By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920.
- How did elements within a portrait (clothing, backgrounds, props, etc.) change over time?
- How did expressions and mannerisms change over time?
- How do the subjects affect the nature of the portrait?
- Do you think that portraits are an accurate reflection of a person in a specific historical era?
Many galleries displayed images of politicians to entice the public to visit and to sit for a portrait. Searches on terms such as Democrat, Whig, and Republican yield portraits of some of the major figures from the U.S. political parties. Images of Democratic presidents such as Andrew Jackson and James Polk might be compared to ideological adversaries such as Henry Clay, a Whig senator and 1844 presidential candidate, and the 1848 Whig candidate President Zachary Taylor with his cabinet. Republican Abraham Lincoln is also represented in portraits as a clean-shaven senator and as a familiar presidential figure. Additional searches on terms such as senator, congressman, and governor also produce a number of local politicians from the different parties.
- Do you think that these portraits reflect the ideological differences between politicians or do they present a standard image?
- To what degree is each person's uniqueness represented in these portraits?
- How do these portraits compare to the occupational portraits and other images in the collection?
- What do you think the comparison implies about the role of politicians in American society?
- How are politicians represented in today's media? How does their representation compare to other "celebrities" who frequently appear in the media?
- What is the value of a photograph of a historic figure to researchers?
In 1817, the American Colonization Society established the settlement of Liberia on the west coast of Africa. This colony was created in part for free African Americans to enjoy the civil rights denied to them in the United States. While some documents in the American Memory collection, From Slavery to Freedom, question whether Liberia was a land of opportunity or an opportunity to avoid civil rights issues in the United States, it is clear that many African Americans moved to the colony to start a new life. The American Memory collection, Maps of Liberia, 1830-1870, features a timeline history of Liberia from its early days as a colony to its recognition as an independent nation in 1847.
A search on Liberia in this collection yields a number of portraits from the American Colonization Society. Images include Liberian presidents Joseph Jenkins Roberts and Stephen Allen Benson, senators Edward Morris and Edward Roye, Senate Chaplain Philip Coker, and a number of anonymous colonists.
- Many daguerreotype galleries showcased portraits of United States politicians to attract interest from the public. Do you think that it was likely that portraits of Liberian politicians were used in the same manner? Why or why not?
- Are there any other images of African Americans in this collection?
- What do you think the relationship of the Liberian portraits to the rest of the collection suggests about how they may have been used? What does it suggest about the status of African Americans in the early nineteenth-century?
- Senator Edward Roye appears with his left hand raised in the air. What do you think might be the significance of this pose?
- How do the clothing, facial expressions, and poses of these Liberian politicians compare to those of white politicians featured in this collection?
- Why might differences in these aspects of the portraits exist?
- What might such differences imply about the efforts of the American Colonization Society?
- How do you think that the American Colonization Society might have used these images?
Tools of the Trade
Workers during the first half of the nineteenth century faced a series of transitions in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Inventions such as the steam engine and the cotton gin prompted the creation of assembly lines and factory systems as Americans began discovering the benefits of mass production.
At the same time, many craftsmen faced a transitional time as mechanization threatened their livelihoods. A search on occupational portrait yields a number of images documenting the different disciplines of this industrial age. Traditional workers such as a blacksmith, carpenter, latch maker, watchmaker, clergyman, and stonecutter are featured along with people whose jobs were byproducts of the Industrial Revolution such as a woman working at a sewing machine, a man in front of an engine, and men on a crank handcar on the tracks of a railroad.
- How do different workers pose with their tools?
- How are these people dressed compared to other people featured in this collection?
- What do you think that the clothes and mannerisms of these craftsmen imply about their social class?
- How do these images of craftsmen differ from others in the collection (clothing, facial expressions, etc.)?
- What do you think is the relationship between the worker and his or her tools?
- Do you think that there is a difference between the depiction of traditional crafts and new industrial efforts? Why or why not?
- Considering that these workers are anonymous, do you think that the people or the trades are the real subject of the portraits?
- How do these portraits reflect nineteenth-century attitudes towards the value of work?
- How do these images compare with how tradesmen are depicted today?
- Do you think that these portraits appeared in studios alongside images of politicians and other famous people?
- How does the way these portraits may have been presented impact their significance?
Death and Memorialization in the Victorian Era
People living in the nineteenth-century United States endured a higher mortality rate than subsequent generations and the memorialization of loved ones held special importance in the all too frequent grieving process. Those with more money could afford to have portraits of family members drawn or painted. Death masks placed over a person's face, shoulders, and sometimes hands just after death were also popular. The advent of photography made it possible for the middle class to afford portraits as well. If a portrait was not made prior to death, it was not unusual to obtain one after the fact. Portraits drawn or photographed just after death were often said to capture a heavenly look of serenity, suggesting that the horrible inevitability of death also held a beauty.
Daguerreotypes often required a subject to remain still for several minutes to ensure that the image would not blur. Some subjects were more still than others. It is unclear exactly when Mary Gideon sat for her portrait in 1853, but the notes in this collection indicate that she died the year that the image was taken. Such a memorial was likely to have been displayed in a special place in the family's home or embedded on a tombstone. Another potential post-mortem daguerreotype comes in the form of the Adams family portrait featuring a somber couple dressed in black holding what appears to be their sleeping daughter on their lap. Animals, too, may have been so cherished as to have been memorialized in photographs such as that of an unidentified man with a cat in his lap.
- In what ways does a portrait memorialize a loved one? Why would memorials such as photographs help a friend or family member cope with the loss of a loved one?
- Is a portrait of the deceased different from a portrait of the living? If so, how?
- What impact would you expect the Civil War to have had on the use of photography for memorialization?
- How have notions of death and memorialization changed over time? To what might these changes be attributed?
- How might the increased ease of taking and duplicating photographs have affected the value of portraits and the meaning of memorialization?
The daguerreotypes available in America's First Look into the Camera provide an opportunity to assess the value of research tools such as timelines and visual biographies. The subtle details within occupational portraits of tradesmen and other working classes can be interpreted to determine the status of each group in the nineteenth-century United States. Portraits of politicians provide a starting point to gain a better understanding of the rise and fall of the Whig Party. These and other images also allow a number of opportunities for future historical research.
Chronological Thinking: Timeline and Biography
The collection's Timeline of the Daguerrian Era provides a brief history of the United States from 1839 to 1860. It also provides the opportunity to understand that timelines are interprative tools that enhance the study of history by focusing on select events at the expense of other historical moments. Assess this collection's timeline by identifying the specific themes and ideas that it emphasizes and those themes and ideas that are left out.
- What themes are represented in this timeline? How are these themes related to each other?
- Do you think that this timeline is helpful in understanding the collection? Why or why not?
- What other events or themes could have been included in a timeline for this collection?
Chronological thinking can also be practiced in biographical projects. Select a photograph of a famous person represented in the collection. Research what was going on in this person's life in the year that the photograph was taken. Determine what the main events were in this person's life. Take on this individual's persona, and write a journal entry for the year in which the photograph was taken. Try to make the entry reflect the significance of this time in the person's life.
Historical Comprehension: The Whig Party
The Whig Party's history coincided with the era of the daguerreotype. Its origin and dissolution were based on various political conflicts. In 1834, Henry Clay and other members of the National Republican party joined forces with disgruntled Democrats to establish the Whig Party in opposition to President Andrew Jackson's policies.
Six years after the party's formation, William Henry Harrison won the presidential election on the Whig ticket, but he died one month into serving his term. His successor, Vice President John Tyler, demonstrated loyalties to the Democrats and was kicked out of the party. Henry Clay earned the 1844 Whig nomination but his refusal to discuss the issue of the annexation of Texas as a slave state prompted many northern abolitionists to leave the party. This ensured victory for Democratic candidate James K. Polk.
Whig candidate Zachary Taylor won the presidency four years later but his opposition to admitting California prompted debates over what would be known as the Compromise of 1850. Taylor died in the midst of the debate and his successor, Millard Fillmore, supported the Compromise despite objections from within the party.
The debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which nullified the ban on slavery in U.S. territories established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, ultimately caused the remaining members of the Whig Party to split and join the Democrats, the new Republican Party, or the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party.
Searches on Whig and Democrat provide a number of portraits of various Congressmen associated with both parties. These portraits can be organized according to political affiliation and used to create an illustrative timeline documenting the rise and fall of the Whig Party.
Historical Analysis and Interpretation: Portraiture
A search on occupation portraits results in a number of images of anonymous workers such as a blacksmith and a tinworker posing with the tools of their trade. These portraits are filled with subtle details such as the workers' facial expressions and their clothes and tools. An analysis of these visual details provides information about the subjects in these portraits and their relationship to other groups featured in this collection.
Such groups might include military and religious figures. Searches on terms such as army and military yield portraits of men such as U.S. Army General Hugh Brady in both his civilian clothes and his military uniform and a photograph of the U.S. Military Commission to Crimea. A search on terms such as clerical results in portraits of men such as Bishop Frederic Baraga and Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman.
- What are the similarities and differences between the portraits of these different types of people?
- What do the subjects' clothing suggest about their occupations and social status?
- What do the subjects' poses and props (or lack thereof) suggest about their occupations and social status?
- Do the captions shed any light on the subjects and their status?
- How do these portraits compare to the collection's images of politicians and authors?
- How do you think that these visual details influenced the way viewers responded to the images?
- What kinds of values would you expect the society that created these portraits to have had?
Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making: The Rise of Photography to an Art
The business potential of the new daguerreotype technology attracted many tradespeople who, once having acquired the right equipment, needed only to acquire a new skill. Even the more amateur photographers could make a profit as itinerant daguerreotypists, selling cheap portraits in one town after another. Most of these former jewelers and druggists lacked any kind of artistic training and their photographs were more affordable than aesthetic. Given the proliferation of mediocre photographs, the money-making motives of many early photographers, and the mechanical nature of their medium, photography was considered inferior to the true arts of painting and drawing.
Mathew Brady was working as a jewel-case manufacturer in New York City in the early 1840s when he learned about the daguerreotype process from inventor Samuel Morse. Brady soon established himself as a portrait photographer with his New York City Daguerrean Gallery. Brady longed to raise the status of photography to an art. He improved the quality of his images to appeal to customers of high taste and sought out only the most esteemed subjects. This collection contains hundreds of portraits attributed to Brady's studios including images of presidents Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan, senators Sam Houston (Texas) and Daniel Webster (New Hampshire), authors Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and celebrities such as Tom Thumb.
Brady never operated the camera himself, but was celebrated as the designer of the portrait, posing his subjects and eliciting the desired expression. Brady was soon heralded as the champion of a growing art form that not only reproduced the subject's image, but also expressed the subject's true character.
By the 1860s, the popularity of celebrity portraits had developed into a craze for collecting small copies of these portraits and organizing them into albums. These small portraits, or cartes-de-visite, sold well, but Brady never liked these cheap copies. He preferred the Imperial portraits he had created when paper photographs replaced daguerreotypes. These large-format portraits were often retouched with inks and paints to give them the uniqueness and status of paintings. The uniqueness of the Imperials gave them a higher value, but one that was not easily marketable. Eventually, Brady's business failed as he refused to put aside his artistic pretensions to cater to middle-class customers.
- What is the difference between art and a craft?
- Does the money-making motives of itinerant daguerreotypists disqualify them from the status of artists? How does the creator's motives relate to his or her status as an artist?
- Is the ability to draw an income from one's craft necessary to qualify it as an art form?
- What does the fact that Brady was renowned for his design of his portraits but did not have to operate the camera imply about the role of the artist and the definition of art?
- What is the value of the artistic effort put into the design of a work? What is the value of the effort put into the implementation of the design in crafting the work? Is the value of one greater than the other?
- What is implied by the fact that the status of daguerreotype portraits was elevated when they were thought to express the subjects' inner characters? Does an image need to have moral value in order to be considered art?
- Is the status of photography different from that of painting or drawing because the image is created through a chemical and mechanical process?
- Are the demands upon the photographer different from the demands upon the painter or illustrator? If so, how? Does one medium require more artistic skill than another?
Historical Research Capabilities
The portraits in this collection offer an ideal opportunity for further biographical research. Images of renowned individuals can be printed and organized by any number of themes such as politics, presidents, authors, artists, or women. Relevant biographical information can be placed on the back of each printed portrait to create biographical flash cards that might include the following details:
America's First Look into the Camera offers portraits of authors, politicians, tradesmen, and other people in the nineteenth-century United States. These images can be used to spark biographical and critical assessments of an author's work. Other portraits can be used in creative writing projects and can prompt the analysis of the evolution of media outlets from their origins in the 1830s.
Walt Whitman and the Picture Gallery
In a July 2, 1846, edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, editor Walt Whitman described daguerreotype portraits as a spectacle:
In whatever direction you turn your peering gaze, you see naught but human faces! There they stretch, from floor to ceiling--hundreds of them. Ah! what tales might those pictures tell if their mute lips had the power of speech! How romance then, would be infinitely outdone by fact.
Whitman celebrated the connection that a viewer has with the subject of a portrait and noted, "An electric chain seems to vibrate. . . between our brain and him or her preserved there so well by the limner's cunning. Time, space, both are annihilated, and we identify the semblance with the reality." Whitman made reference, again, to this spectacle in his poem, "My Picture Gallery."
In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix'd house,
It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other;
Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories!
Here the tableaus of life, and here the goupings of death;
Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself,
With finger rais'd he points to the prodigal pictures.
- In "My Picture Gallery," what does the metaphor of the "little house" represent?
- What does the metaphor of the pictures represent? Why are they described as "prodigal"?
Whitman's biographer, David S. Reynolds, observed in Walt Whitman's America, that "photography was an essential metaphor behind [Whitman's] democratic aesthetic." This collection provides the opportunity to examine Whitman's work with an understanding of the impact of early photography in mind.
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they
are my poems.
Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's, father's,
young man's, young woman's poems.
"I Sing the Body Electric" (1855)
- In what ways does Whitman's poetry resemble photography or a picture gallery?
- Do his poems annihilate time and space?
- What are some examples of what Reynolds calls Whitman's "democratic aesthetic"?
- What does photography have to do with democracy?
This collection can be used for creative writing projects based on an imagined visit to a daguerreotype gallery. In 1840, the first commercial portrait gallery, New York's Wolcott and Johnson, used large mirrors mounted outside the studio to project as much sunlight onto the customer as possible, in a sitting that could last for as long as eight minutes. As daguerreotype technologies improved, sitting times decreased and attention to artistry increased. Photographer, Mathew Brady, achieved fame for his skill in posing his subjects, eliciting from them the desired expression, and then telling the camera operator when to take the picture. Portraitist Napoleon Sarony was known for dramatic poses made possible by an innovative posing machine with separate controls for the sitter's back, arms, head, etc. Like Brady, Sarony employed a camera operator while he elicited a pose and expression from his subject, in one case sparring with a boxer to evoke the image of a prizefighter.
Browse the collection's photographs and imagine either what it would have been like to see such images in a daguerreotype gallery or to sit for a portrait. Describe this experience as if writing about it in a letter to a friend.
- Was this the first time that you were in a daguerreotype gallery? What is it like to see all of these portraits hanging on the walls?
- Which people do you recognize? Why?
- How did you pose for your portrait? What objects did you include in the picture? What clothes did you wear? Why?
- What was the photographer and the studio like?
This collection contains portraits of literary figures from the nineteenth century including poet, William Cullen Bryant, authors, Samuel Goodrich, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Washington Irving, and publisher, James Brown of Little, Brown & Company. The lives of these people can be researched and serve as the basis for a biographical sketch that includes a discussion of the subject's major contribution to nineteenth-century American literature.
- What is the social and educational background of the writer?
- Do you think that the writer's personal life is reflected in his or her work?
- If so, to what extent does it influence the story or poem? Does it play out in a semi-autobiographical fashion or is it merely reflected in the work's themes?
Authors often choose names for their characters that reinforce certain qualities about them. When Washington Irving wrote his classic tale, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," he named the protagonist, terrorized by the Headless Horseman, Ichabod Crane. This collection, however, contains a portrait of the real Ichabod Crane, a U.S. Army colonel who Irving met when the soldier was stationed in Sackett's Harbor, New York during the War of 1812.
- How does the portrait of the real Ichabod Crane compare to the author's description of his protagonist?
- When you hear the name, "Ichabod Crane," what types of qualities do you imagine this person possessing? Why?
- Do you think that these qualities can be attributed to the person in the portrait, to Irving's character, or to Walt Disney's portrayal of the protagonist?
- Do you think that the character would be different if his name was "John Smith" or "Thomas Wintergreen"?
- How does the effect of a name compare to the influence of a person's appearance?
- What is the difference between the ways that characters are developed in fiction and in dramatic arts such as theater or film?
- What types of techniques are used to introduce a character?
- When is it necessary to introduce the name of a character to further the plot?
- When is it necessary to introduce the name of a character to develop the character?
- Why do you think that Irving used the name of a real person?
- What qualities do you think of in regard to your own name? Why?
Mass-produced newspapers costing a penny per issue entered United States cities in the 1830s. Their emphasis on sensational stories of criminal activity and general human depravity established a loyal readership. In 1835, Scottish immigrant James Gordon Bennett entered the growing market by founding the New York Herald. Within two years, he sold approximately 20,000 copies each day.
The New York Herald and other "penny papers" often competed with papers of integrity such as Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Greeley founded the Tribune in 1841 and provided space for intellectual discussions of politics, social reform, and news. Searches on editor and journalist provide portraits of newspapermen such as Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennett, and members of the New York Tribune editorial staff. A search on news also results in an 1853 image of a man stranded on a log in Niagara Falls that provides an early example of a news photograph.
- What sort of information does this news photograph of Niagara Falls convey to the viewer?
- Why do you think that Greeley posed with a copy of a newspaper on his lap?
- Why do you think that Bennett did not appear holding a paper?
- Do you think that these portraits are more similar to the collection's occupational portraits or its presidential portraits?
- Do you find sensational newspapers today similar to the "penny papers" of the nineteenth century?
- Do you think that certain media outlets attempt to establish an audience through sensational stories?
- Which forms of reporting (radio, print, television) are more sensational than others?
- What do you think are the potential benefits and potential dangers of sensational reporting?


Matron, Mother, Hostess: Senior USO Hostesses and the Care of American Soldiers in World War II
American involvement in World War II marked a shift in American lives as the country prepared to enter the fight. The United States government had mobilized its male fighting force, shifting familial dynamics and creating issues of morale and home front employment. This extensive mobilization included women, as popular images of Rosie the Riveter or the Women’s Auxiliary Corps recruitment posters created the illusion that every able-bodied woman entered into the workforce. In reality, Rosie workers only embodied a small percentage of women who joined the workforce. Meanwhile the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps gave women the opportunity to travel abroad and serve their country like the boys, but its creation was met with heavy opposition over fears of “masculinizing” American women through the traditionally masculine roles they took.
A large percentage of women did not feel comfortable being either a Rosie or a WAC. Balancing the work of the housewife with a factory work day could be incredibly difficult, in addition to challenging traditional gender roles. For those women who wanted to combine war work with traditional ideas of femininity, the United Service Organizations (USO) was an excellent choice. There, they could exercise their feminine influence as hostesses– women who hosted servicemen at USO events and service clubs– in ways they felt would still contribute to the war effort. It was their own form of patriotic duty. Created out of the Salvation Army, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), National Catholic Community Services (NCCS), National Travelers Aid Association, and the National Jewish Welfare Board, the USO sought to lift troop morale and grow support for the war on the home front.
Historians have often ignored the contributions of USO hostesses, focusing on the debate between whether the war did or did not lead to gains in women’s economic and social independence. One need only to search for women’s work during World War II to see a plethora of articles about women in the military or war work, but hardly any results for USO hostesses or their contributions to the war effort.
Historian Meghan Winchell describes these women as a stabilizing force for established gender roles– proverbial “good girls”– at a time when war work and military groups such as the WACs challenged those roles. Junior hostesses took on the role of single, sexually respectable women while senior hostesses became the mothers of the USO. Both types of women acted as ties to the home front. By bringing comfort to servicemen, the USO worked toward creating an environment reminiscent of home, the war a long way off. Of interest in this paper, however, are the senior hostesses as it applies to the letter collection used.
The life and influence of one such senior hostess brings the experience of the USO hostess to life. Examining letters sent to her, a clearer picture of hostesses, as viewed by soldiers, begins to emerge. Lola Cannon Pefley was thirty years old at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. She would later go on to volunteer for the USO and act as a senior hostess for the war’s duration, working at a USO club in Camp Bowie in Brownwood, Texas. Little else can be found about her; but the letters she received from soldiers around the world illuminate her life just enough to get a glimpse of who she was and her role as a hostess. In this examination, letters express implicit feelings, rather than solely explicit facts or details about combat. Historian Paul Fussell argues that letters are unreliable as they are prone to self-censorship, censorship by the government, and are often too formulaic to be of any real value. Soldiers often could not and did not reveal much about the combat experience in their correspondence. The letters from the soldiers in the Pefley collection, however, do reveal their perceptions of Lola and their relationships with her. In this way, they are useful by suggesting men’s broader views on gender in regard to USO hostesses and how their work boosted morale among soldiers. USO hostesses could be both women and Americans in their roles, despite the occasionally strict gender stereotypes they embraced.
Women’s roles are often painted with a broad brush, reduced to stereotypes, people hardly worth exploring in the larger narrative of World War II. Fussell sums it up best: women were “the female, consisting of a mother, grandmother, and sister, on the one hand, and, on the other, agents of sexual solace.” Yet, Lola’s letters from soldiers suggest a need to reconsider Fussell’s type-casts. Women, hostesses specifically, occupied, a central place in the soldier’s narrative. But what was their role? On a broader scale, how did they feature in the narrative the government tried to create surrounding USO women, junior and senior hostesses alike? And, finally, were these type-casts responsible for the way in which hostesses’ contributions were remembered?
Between the years 1942 and 1945, Lola Canon Pefley received over eighty letters from soldiers previously stationed at Camp Bowie in Texas. All had come to meet her through her USO service club located at the camp or through their letters to her. Many discussed homesickness and their desire for a girlfriend when they returned home, but one consistent theme throughout was Lola herself. Her companionship, her letters, and gifts; the soldiers never failed to mention how grateful they were for her. She was a presence even though no letters she sent were part of the collection. Though that would have been ideal, there is enough in the soldiers’ letters to piece together how she came to take such a large role in the lives of these men.
Often, soldiers “missed the support and attention of [their] wife, mother, or girlfriend” according to Kindsvatter, so the USO provided with pseudo-wives, mothers, and girlfriends. USO hostesses were the better and wholesome alternative to other forms of entertainment, such as brothels. In this respect, junior hostesses were the most important. These young women, usually in their 20s, were expected to be “good, clean girls” who kept the soldiers away from women who could give them venereal diseases. They danced with men at USO dance halls and provided companionship, a reminder of their sweethearts waiting back home. While Lola was most likely a senior hostess, it is important to understand how senior hostesses became the equally feminized foil of junior hostesses.
Most senior hostesses were married women, usually thirty-five years or older. Ultimately, these women served the matronly role, performing such services such as baking cookies for the soldiers, sewing patches onto their uniforms, and lending an ear to the soldiers’ anxieties. Senior USO hostesses were also expected to provide their boys with young female pen pals and dates. Heterosexual relationships were seen as important to keep up morale. The senior hostesses served as advisors for– or more likely, against– relationships as servicemen went abroad. One paratrooper in Australia, Edward “Black Eddie” Rivas and hereafter referred to as Rivas, wrote to Lola about the Australian girls and how they reminded him of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls from Texas. If he survived the war, he said, he’d “bring one of them back so [Lola could] meet her.” There is no letter attesting to what Lola advised, but based on the responses of other USO hostesses of the time, she most likely discouraged such a relationship. Hostesses were supposed to encourage servicemen to seek the American girls. There was worry within American society that their sons would become corrupted by foreign women, especially those who could transmit venereal diseases. As a result, soldiers were discouraged from relations with foreign women. Senior hostesses acted as the mothers to call their soldiers back from those places and keep them safe.
From other soldiers who wrote to her, there was often talk about relationships and arranging dates for when these soldiers returned home from the war. Morasco asked Lola about an unnamed girl she had told him about, writing, “Tell me more about her and when you see her, tell her what a heel I am and see if she would care to correspond with me.” At the time of this letter, he had already returned to the United States and was on furlough in an unnamed military camp. Earlier, in March, he wrote, “Here I thought I could depend on you and what do you do? I’m asking you. You let me down.” This was in response to Lola’s promise to set him up with a girlfriend when he returned to Texas. Another example of this matchmaking phenomenon comes from a letter Alfalfa sent to Lola. He bluntly says, “Have me a girlfriend too,” after telling Lola of his return to Brownwood, Texas on his furlough. These are just a few of the letters in which soldiers asked about such possibilities, emphasizing the soldier’s need for female companionship.
Senior hostesses were also expected to provide emotional services. Most often, this included listening to any anxieties the soldier might have. These could range from the war and the loss of friends to worries about their families and girlfriends back home. In Lola’s case, the soldiers often talked about illnesses and especially the death of their friend, paratrooper Rivas, who died in September of 1943. Before Rivas’ death, the men mentioned little in the way of their feelings other than homesickness or the occasional sad spell. Charles E. Harlan, known as “The Squirt,” wrote much about how there is little to do, stationed in the South Pacific on an unknown island, even going so far as to say, “Would almost relish [some war action]– just to break the monotony.” Boredom was a major issue for soldiers, but it could also be used to disguise unease in combat. Harlan discussed little about his job overseas, as did many other soldiers, yet there were occasional letters, such as that from Bill Owings, which read, “I’m definitely lonesome acutely so for both of you,” referring to Lola and a man by the name of Beebe. Only one line in a letter, it speaks volumes about how the men trusted Lola to be their emotional support. Similarly, Kent Thorton wrote, “I’m in the hospital, battered up a little– be up and around in a few days tho’. Mental depression was pretty bad. It seemed like a nightmare now.” At a time when mental health was rarely discussed, a soldier admitting his depression is highly unusual and a sign of trust. In USO clubs, younger junior hostesses often referred men who appeared to be in low spirits to the senior hostesses. The purported “natural,” nurturing qualities of more mature women were supposed to help provide counseling services to these men. Intriguingly, publications at the time emphasized that women would not be able to understand the masculine culture of soldiers. The job of the hostess was to provide counsel, but her ability was only good enough to ease anxieties, not understand them. A double standard emerged, where the government encouraged USO hostesses to provide a listening ear to these men yet said they could not possibly understand.
Yet, Rivas’ death created a shared sense of loss between Lola and the men. “I couldn’t keep from crying (down deep) that this has happened,” wrote Harlan in December of 1943. “I know that he loved you as we do… that you were a bright and happy spot in his brief life– as in ours.” He expresses and shares his grief with Lola, who presumably wrote about her own grief regarding Rivas’ death. In this same sentence, however, Harlan also explicitly states the effect hostesses could have on the men through their care packages and camaraderie. Given that was the mission of the hostesses, it shows Lola fulfilling her duties while also expressing the importance of having someone like her to act as an emotional caretaker. The death of a fellow friend and soldier affected everyone greatly in the group, however, not just Harlan. “It hurt a little to unwrap [the package] and see Black Eddie’s address on it and also on the enclosed Christmas card. I feel very sorry every time I think about him. We had so many things planned for the future,” said Captain Charles E. Stewart, known as “Lil’ Eddie” and hereafter referred to as Stewart, in a letter several months after Rivas’ death. While this event prompted them to talk more openly, it is telling that these soldiers were able to talk about it at all. In the masculine culture of the soldier, emotion wasn’t something expressed often in letters, especially when talking about the death of a friend. Even with censors, who could have cut out these parts about the front, these men found solace in telling Lola about their heartache. Lola was their motherly figure. The men talk about how she comforts them by sending packages and praying for them as the war enters another year. “I wish you could realize how much we Eddie’s do love and appreciate, to the fullest, your devotion and wonderful friendship,” wrote Harlan in the same letter where he discussed the profound grief he felt over Rivas’s death. Lola was “a swell gal” and a good friend to them, and Rivas’s death highlights the strongest sentiment the men have toward her during the war.
Rivas’s death and the continuation of the war brought out even more appreciation from the men. In each letter to Lola, Harlan makes sure to tell Lola how much he appreciates her letters and how he is fondly reminded of how much he means back home. “Thanksgiving day I thought of the lovely dinner I had with you last year, brought back memories,” he wrote just after Thanksgiving, 1943. She had cooked for everyone at the service club, providing them a holiday dinner far from home. Her motherly demeanor led her to be popular among the men. It even got her an article in the Camp Bowie newspaper, a piece focused on her contributions to the war effort. Historian Paul Kindsvatter wrote soldiers wanted mothers most when they were sick or wounded. It can be argued that this statement can be extended to encompass emotional wounds as well. The war took a toll on many soldiers psychologically, and they reached out to Lola voluntarily.
Another aspect of the senior hostess relationship with servicemen involved mail. Senior hostesses often helped soldiers with their gift wrapping and package mailing when it came to the holidays. Lola was one of those hostesses who wrote and sent packages to men she had met in her service club in Camp Bowie. Many letters to Lola mention how happy they are to have received a letter, especially when they have not received any other form of mail. In January of 1943, Morasco wrote, “Since I got your package, my hopes of getting the rest of my packages has gone up a lot.” Similarly, Stewart wrote one holiday season that, “it is swell of you to remember me every year like this,” and how much he appreciates Lola’s thoughtfulness in sending a Christmas card. Even far away, Lola and senior hostesses like her could extend their hospitality and emotional services to the servicemen they volunteered to help.
Additionally, letters could be used to share information about friends and family while the men were away. Lola’s job allowed her to tell the men where she thought their friends had been sent. “Have you heard if Alfalfa and the gang have left the states yet?” is a question exemplary of the similar questions Lola received in many of her letters. Men were provided relief when they knew where their friends were. Again, this became another extension of the emotional support women could offer as hostesses. The group was important to soldiers, often focusing on those that were in his platoon or company. In the case of Lola’s soldiers, they considered those of the 36th division, later divided into different components, part of their larger family. Her job was to make sure everyone kept in contact with each other, while also keeping in contact with them. Nowhere was that a part of the USO guidelines, but it provided a form of emotional work in which Lola provided security of mind. The “maintenance of morale,” explained one USO bulletin was largely “a housekeeping job,” or rather, a job left to the homemakers found in the USO hostesses. Letters to Lola served this purpose, providing both an escape from their circumstances and a means of staying involved in the lives of those they’d left behind.
Women who worked in the USO bridged the masculine world of war and the feminine world of the home. They supported men like their sons or husbands, sending just as many packages and letters as anyone else. Senior hostesses, especially, were welcomed as mother figures to these young men being sent off to war. As one of these hostesses, Lola provided comfort and a tie to home, making sure her soldiers felt loved and remembered in a time of chaos as so many other senior hostesses did during World War II. The letters she received exemplify the importance of her role for the soldiers whom she met at her service club, regardless of whether she served in the role of emotional confidant or doting mother figure. While some historians might argue that their restrictive role granted them little autonomy, the opposite is true. Within these roles, women did their best to exercise what rights they had to better aid those serving. These senior hostesses, Lola included, used their skills in homemaking as tools with which to support the war effort. Perhaps if these women had received an award for their hard work, they would have been talked about more, by historians and laypeople alike. Their work, like that of other women during World War II, has proven to be just as important to the war effort.
 Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: sex roles, family relations, and the status of women during World War II (Contributions in women’s studies, vol. 20. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 23.
 Meghan K. Winchell, Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses During World War II (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 1.
 Anderson, Wartime Women, 10.
 Leisa D. Meyer, “Creating G.I. Jane: The regulation of sexuality and sexual behavior in the women’s army corps,” (Feminist Studies 18, no. 3, Autumn 1992), 581.
 Anderson, Wartime Women, 11.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 5.
 “About Us,” USO website, USO Inc., accessed November 4, 2017, https://www.uso.org/about.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 11.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 13.
 Terese Schlacter, “In the USO’s Early Years, Hostesses Provided a Wholesome Morale Boost,” USO (blog), USO Inc., February 4, 2016, https://www.uso.org/stories/149-in-the-uso-s-early-years-hostesses-provided-a-wholesome-morale-boost.
 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 181.
 Fussell, Wartime, 116.
 Peter S. Kindsvatter, American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 96.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 7.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 12.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 3.
 Goodman, “Patriotic Femininity”, 287.
 Edward “Black Eddie” Rivas to Lola Pefley, 28 April 1943, Pefley Correspondence.
 Yellin, Our Mothers’ War, 25
 Winchell, Good Girls, 114. However, the government often tacitly allowed foreign sexual relations with certain races of women– chiefly, white women. For more information, see Beth Bailey and David Farber’s The First Strange Place.
 Ben Morasco to Lola Pefley, 31 July 1945, Pefley Correspondence.
 Ben Morasco to Lola Pefley, 19 March 1945, Pefley Correspondence.
 Lynn “Alfalfa” Wells to Lola Pefley, 13 January 1946, Pefley Correspondence.
 Charles E. Harlan to Lola Pefley, 1 September 1943, Harlan (Charles E.) Second World War Correspondence (2017.013.w.r), Center for American War Letters, Chapman University, CA.
 Yellin, Our Mothers’ War, 25. (hereafter Harlan Correspondence).
 Bill Owings to Pefley, 25 October 1942, Pefley Correspondence.
 Yellin, Our Mothers’ War, 25.
 Kent Thorton to Lola Pefley, 8 September 1942, Pefley Correspondence.
 Yellin, Our Mothers’ War, 25.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 12.
 Hartmann, “Prescriptions for Penelope,” 230.
 Charles E. Harlan to Lola Pefley, 3 December 1943, Pefley Correspondence.
 Edward C. Stewart to Lola Pefley, 29 May 1944, Pefley Correspondence.
 Kindsvatter, American Soldiers, 125.
 Charles E. Harlan to Lola Pefley, 3 December 1943, Pefley Correspondence.
 Charles E. Harlan to Lola Pefley, 29 November 1943, Pefley Correspondence.
 Lynn Wells to Lola Pefley, 1 December 1942, Pefley Correspondence.
 Kindsvatter, American Soldiers, 96.
 Winchell, Good Girls, 39.
 Ben Morasco to Lola Pefley, 26 January 1943, Pefley Correspondence.
 Edward C. Stewart to Lola Pefley, 26 December 1944, Pefley Correspondence.
 Ben Morasco to Lola Pefley, 29 January 1943, Pefley Correspondence.
 Kindsvatter, American Soldiers, 100.
 The USO Bulletin as quoted in Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun (Meghan K. Winchell).
Sasha Conaway received her BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University. Her work has been published in the Spring 2017 and 2018 editions of Calliope Literary & Art Magazine. Currently, she is pursuing an MA in War and Society and researching for her thesis, which examines the roles and memory of women in the Easter Rising of 1916. The research in this article emerged from a graduate course and was presented at the Society of Military History conference in Louisville, Kentucky.
Anderson, Karen. Wartime Women: sex roles, family relations, and the status of women during World WarII. Contributions in women’s studies, vol. 20. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Bailey, Beth, and David Farber. The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Fussell, Paul. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Goodman, Phil. “‘Patriotic Femininity’: Women’s Moral and Men’s Morale during the Second World War.” Gender & History 10, no. 2 (July 1998): 278-293. Academic Search Premier
Kindsvatter, Peter S. American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Litoff, Judy Barrett, and David C. Smith. “‘Will He Get My Letter?’: popular portrayals of mail and morale during World War II.” The Journal of Popular Culture 23, no. 4 (1990): 21-43. doi: 10.1111/j.0022-3840.1990.2304_21.x
Meyer, Leisa D. “Creating G.I. Jane: The regulation of sexuality and sexual behavior in the women’s army corps.” Feminist Studies 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 581-601. Academic Search Premier (accessed November 2, 2017), http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.chapman.edu/stable/3178084.
Pefley, Lola Cannon, Second World War Correspondence (2017.013.w.r), Center For American War Letters, Chapman University, CA.
Winchell, Meghan K. Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses During World War II. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. EBSCOhost eBook Collection.
Yellin, Emily. Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II. New York: Free Press, 2004.


The Hopi maintain a complex religious and mythological tradition stretching back over centuries. However, it is difficult to definitively state what all Hopis as a group believe. Like the oral traditions of many other societies, Hopi mythology is not always told consistently and each Hopi mesa, or even each village, may have its own version of a particular story. But, "in essence the variants of the Hopi myth bear marked similarity to one another." It is also not clear that those stories which are told to non-Hopis, such as anthropologists and ethnographers, represent genuine Hopi beliefs or are merely stories told to the curious while keeping safe the Hopi's more sacred doctrines. As folklorist Harold Courlander states, "there is a Hopi reticence about discussing matters that could be considered ritual secrets or religion-oriented traditions." In addition, the Hopis have always been willing to assimilate foreign ideas into their cosmology if they are proven effective for such practical necessities as bringing rain. The Hopi had at least some contact with Europeans as early as the 16th century, and some believe that European Christian traditions may have entered Hopi cosmology at some point. Indeed, Spanish missions were built in several Hopi villages starting in 1629 and were in operation until the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. However, after the revolt, it was the Hopi alone of all the Pueblo tribes who kept the Spanish out of their villages permanently, and regular contact with whites did not begin again until nearly two centuries later. The Hopi mesas have therefore been seen as "relatively unacculturated" at least through the early 20th century, and it may be posited that the European influence on the core themes of Hopi mythology was slight.
Most Hopi accounts of creation center around Tawa, the sun spirit. Tawa is the creator, and it was he who formed the "First World" out of Tokpella, or endless space, as well as its original inhabitants. It is still traditional for Hopi mothers to seek a blessing from the sun for their newborn children. Other accounts have it that Tawa, or Taiowa, first created Sotuknang, whom he called his nephew, and sent him to create the nine universes according to his plan. Sotuknang also created Spider Woman, who served as a messenger for the creator and was an intercessor between the deity and the people. In some versions of the Hopi creation myth, it is she who creates all life under the direction of Sotuknang. Yet other stories tell that life was created by Hard Being Woman of the West and Hard Being Woman of the East, while the sun merely observed the process.
Masauwu, Skeleton Man, was the Spirit of Death, Earth God, door keeper to the Fifth World, and the Keeper of Fire. He was also the Master of the Upper World, or the Fourth World, and was there when the good people escaped the wickedness of the Third World for the promise of the Fourth. Masauwu is described as wearing a hideous mask, but again showing the diversity of myths among the Hopi, Masauwu was alternately described as a handsome, bejewelled man beneath his mask or as a bloody, fearsome creature. He is also assigned certain benevolent attributes. One story has it that it was Masauwu who helped settle the Hopi at Oraibi and gave them stewardship over the land. He also charged them to watch for the coming of the Pahana (see section below), the Lost White Brother. Other important deities include the twin war gods, the kachinas, and the trickster, Coyote.
Maize is vital to Hopi subsistence and religion. "For traditional Hopis, corn is the central bond. Its essence, physically, spiritually, and symbolically, pervades their existence. For the people of the mesas corn is sustenance, ceremonial object, prayer offering, symbol, and sentient being unto itself. Corn is the Mother in the truest sense that people take in the corn and the corn becomes their flesh, as mother milk becomes the flesh of the child."
Hopi legend tells that the current earth is the Fourth World to be inhabited by Tawa's creations. The story states that in each previous world, the people, though originally happy, became disobedient and lived contrary to Tawa's plan. They engaged in sexual promiscuity, fought one another, and would not live in harmony. The most obedient were delivered (usually by Spider Woman) to the next higher world, with physical changes occurring both in the people in the course of their journey, and in the environment of the next world. In some stories, the former world was then destroyed along with their wicked inhabitants, whereas in others the good people were simply led away from the chaos which had been created by their actions.
Entrance into the Fourth WorldEdit
Two main versions exist as to the Hopi's emergence into the present Fourth World. The more prevalent is that Spider Grandmother caused a hollow reed (or bamboo) to grow into the sky, and it emerged in the Fourth World at the sipapu. The people then climbed up the reed into this world, emerging from the sipapu. The location of the sipapu is given as in the Grand Canyon.
The other version (mainly told in Oraibi) has it that Tawa destroyed the Third World in a great flood. Before the destruction, Spider Grandmother sealed the more righteous people into hollow reeds which were used as boats. On arrival on a small piece of dry land, the people saw nothing around them but more water, even after planting a large bamboo shoot, climbing to the top, and looking about. Spider Woman then told the people to make boats out of more reeds, and using island "stepping-stones" along the way, the people sailed east until they arrived on the mountainous coasts of the Fourth World.
While it may not be possible to positively ascertain which is the original or "more correct" story, Harold Courlander writes, at least in Oraibi (the oldest of the Hopi villages), little children are often told the story of the sipapu, and the story of an ocean voyage is related to them when they are older. He states that even the name of the Hopi Water Clan (Patkinyamu) literally means "a dwelling-on-water" or "houseboat". However, he notes the sipapu story is centered on Walpi and is more accepted among Hopis generally.
Upon their arrival in the Fourth World, the Hopis divided and went on a series of great migrations throughout the land. Sometimes they would stop and build a town, then abandon it to continue on with the migration. They would leave their symbols behind on the rocks to show that Hopi had been there. Long the divided people wandered in groups of families, eventually forming clans named after an event or sign that a particular group received upon its journey. These clans would travel for some time as a unified community, but almost inevitably a disagreement would occur, the clan would split and each portion would go its separate way. However, as the clans traveled, they would often join together forming large groups, only to have these associations disband, and then be reformed with other clans. These alternate periods of harmonious living followed by wickedness, contention, and separation play an important part of the Hopi mythos. This pattern seemingly began in the First World and continues even into recent history.
In the course of their migration, each Hopi clan was to go to the farthest extremity of the land in every direction. Far in the north was a land of snow and ice which was called the "Back Door", but this was closed to the Hopi. However, the Hopi say that other peoples came through the Back Door into the Fourth World. "Back Door" could refer to the Bering land bridge, which connected Asia with North America. The Hopi were led on their migrations by various signs, or were helped along by Spider Woman. Eventually, the Hopi clans finished their prescribed migrations and were led to their current location in northeastern Arizona.
Most Hopi traditions have it that they were given their land by Masauwu, the Spirit of Death and Master of the Fourth World.
Sacred Hopi tabletsEdit
Hopi tradition tells of sacred tablets which were imparted to the Hopi by various deities. Like most of Hopi mythology, accounts differ as to when the tablets were given and in precisely what manner.
Perhaps the most important was said to be in the possession of the Fire Clan, and is related to the return of the Pahana. In one version, an elder of the Fire Clan worried that his people would not recognize the Pahana when he returned from the east. He therefore etched various designs including a human figure into a stone, and then broke off the section of the stone which included the figure's head. This section was given to Pahana and he was told to bring it back with him so that the Hopi would not be deceived by a witch or sorcerer. This one is Truth, the stone has an Indian face of black, white and grey with black feathers, and it is not etched but looks more like ink that soaked into the stone.
Around 1325 CE Kachina masks and Kachina dancers appear as rock art. However, it remains an open question among scholars as to whether the kachina religion was an indigenous creation, or an import from Mexico. The similarity of many aspects of Hopi religion to that of the Aztecs to the south strongly suggest the latter to many scholars. Raymond Friday Locke discusses the Hopi legend of the Pahana writing that "The Hopis...had long anticipated the coming of Pahana and, either by coincidence or because of a common root of the legends, Pahana was due to visit the Hopi in the very same year that Quetzalcoatl was expected to return to the Aztecs. He arrived some twenty-one years later in the person of the Spaniard Pedro de Tovar, one of Coronado's conquistadors, and was the first white man to be seen by the Hopis and very probably the Navajo. Unlike the Aztecs, the Hopis put this Spanish Pahana to a series of tests, and when he failed them they sent him on his way."
To the Hopi, kachinas are supernatural beings who represent and have charge over various aspects of the natural world. They might be thought of as analogous to Greco-Roman demi-gods or Catholic saints. There are literally hundreds of different kachinas, which may represent anything from rain to watermelon, various animals, stars, and even other Indian tribes. However, the kachinas are also thought to be the spirits of dead ancestors, and they may come to the Hopi mesas in the form of rain clouds.
The Hopi say that during a great drought, they heard singing and dancing coming from the San Francisco Peaks. Upon investigation, they met the Kachinas who returned with the Hopi to their villages and taught them various forms of agriculture. The Hopi believe that for six months of the year, Kachina spirits live in the Hopi villages. After the Home Dance in late-July or early-August, the Kachinas return to the San Francisco Peaks for six months. The Hopi believe that these dances are vital for the continued harmony and balance of the world. It serves the further and vital purpose of bringing rain to the Hopi's parched homeland.
The true Pahana (or Bahana) is the Lost White Brother of the Hopi. Most versions have it that the Pahana or Elder Brother left for the east at the time that the Hopi entered the Fourth World and began their migrations. However, the Hopi say that he will return again and at his coming the wicked will be destroyed and a new age of peace, the Fifth World, will be ushered into the world. As mentioned above, it is said he will bring with him a missing section of a sacred Hopi stone in the possession of the Fire Clan, and that he will come wearing red. Traditionally, Hopis are buried facing east in expectation of the Pahana who will come from that direction.
The legend of the Pahana seems intimately connected with the Aztec story of Quetzalcoatl, and other legends of Central America. This similarity is furthered by the liberal representation of Awanyu or the Paluliikon, the horned or plumed serpent, in Hopi and other Puebloan art. This figure resembles Quetzacoatl, the feathered serpent, of Mexico. In the early 16th century, both the Hopis and the Aztecs believed that the coming of the Spanish conquistadors was the return of this lost white prophet. Unlike the Aztecs, upon first contact the Hopi put the Spanish through a series of tests in order to determine their divinity, and having failed, the Spanish were sent away from the Hopi mesas.
One account has it that the Hopi realized that the Spanish were not the Pahana based upon the destruction of a Hopi town by the Spanish. Thus when the Spanish arrived at the village of Awatovi, they drew a line of cornmeal as a sign for the Spanish not to enter the village, but this was ignored. While some Hopi wanted to fight the invaders, it was decided to try a peaceful approach in the hope that the Spanish would eventually leave. However, Spanish accounts record a short skirmish at Awatovi before the Hopis capitulated.
In popular cultureEdit
- "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
- "Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
- "A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."
The novel by Tony Hillerman, The Dark Wind, first published in 1982, discusses Hopi mythology throughout the story, as key characters are Hopi men, and events of the story occur near important shrines or during an important ceremony. The fictional Navajo sergeant Jim Chee works with fictional Hopi Albert "Cowboy" Dashee, who is a deputy for Coconino County, Arizona, and speaks Hopi and English, translating for Chee on occasion, as well as explaining shrines and ceremonies to him.
In the 2001 novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Mr. Ibis (an incarnation of the ancient Egyptian god Thoth) discusses the reluctance of scientists to accept evidence of pre-Columbian visitors to the Americas, and refers to the sipapu story as historical fact: "Heaven knows what'll happen if they ever actually find the Hopi emergence tunnels. That'll shake a few things up, you just wait."
- Christopher Vecsey. The Emergence of the Hopi People, in American Indian Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 3, American Indian Religions, 70 (Summer 1983).
- Harold Courlander. The Fourth World of the Hopis: The Epic Story of the Hopi Indians as Preserved in their Legends and Traditions, 201 University of New Mexico Press, 1987
- Susan E. James. "Some Aspects of the Aztec Religion in the Hopi Kachina Cult", Journal of the Southwest (2000)
- Harold Coulander. The Fourth World of the Hopis: The Epic Story of the Hopi Indians as Preserved in their Legends and Traditions, 17 University of New Mexico Press, 1987
- Louise Udall. Me and Mine: The Life Story of Helen Sekaquaptewa, 7 (University of Arizona Press, 1969)
- Recorded in the 1950s by Oswald White Bear Fredericks and his wife Naomi from the storytelling of older Hopi at the village of Oraibi, reproduced in Creation Stories from around the World (2000) 4th ed.
- H.R. Voth. The Traditions of the Hopi, 1 (Chicago, 1905)
- Harold Courlander explains that this version of the story is an attempt to amalgamate two conflicting Hopi traditions dealing with two female deities, Spider Grandmother and Huruing Wuhti (Hard Being Woman). Spider Grandmother has a central role or myth where the Hopi arrive in the Fourth World via the sipapu, whereas Hard Being Woman is related to Hopi legends that they arrived in the Fourth World by boat. The Fourth World of the Hopi, 205.
- Harold Coulander. The Fourth World of the Hopis, 22.
- Hamilton A. Tyler. Pueblo Gods and Myths, 5-7 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1964)
- Dan Kotchongva. Where is the White Brother of the Hopi Indian?, in Improvement Era (1936).
- Dennis Wall and Virgil Masayesva, "People of the Corn: Teachings in Hopi Traditional Agriculture, Spirituality, and Sustainability", American Indian Quarterly, Summer/Fall 2004, pages 435–453.
- Harold Courlander. The Fourth World of the Hopis, p.205.
- See, e.g. Harold Courlander. The Fourth World of the Hopi, 35.
- Harold Courlander, The Fourth World of the Hopi, 31.
- Robert Layton (2012). "Rock art, identity and indigeneity". In McDonald, Jo; Veth, Peter (eds.). A Companion to Rock Art. Wiley. p. 448. ISBN 978-1444334241.
- Locke, Raymond Friday (2002). The Book of the Navajo. Mankind Publishing Company. p. 140. ISBN 978-0876875001. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
- Pecina, Ron and Pecina, Bob. Hopi Kachinas: History, Legends, and Art. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2013. ISBN 978-0-7643-4429-9.
- Harold Coulander. The Fourth World of the Hopis, 31.
- Raymond Friday Locke. The Book of the Navajo, 139-140 (Hollaway House 2001).
- Harold Courlander. The Fourth World of the Hopis, 176.
- Courlander, Harold, The Fourth World of the Hopis: The Epic Story of the Hopi Indians as Preserved in Their Legends and Traditions (University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
- Dozier, Edward, The Pueblo Indians of North America (Case Studies in Anthropology, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970).
- Gunn Allen, Paula, The Sacred Hoop (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).
- Hultkrantz, Ake, “The Religion of the Goddess in North America,” The Book of the Goddess Past and Present: An Introduction to Her Religion, Carl Olson, editor (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1990).
- McLeod, Roxie, Dreams and rumors: a history of "Book of the Hopi" Thesis (M.A.) (University of Colorado, 1994). MLA.
- Pecina, Ron and Pecina, Bob. ‘’Hopi Kachinas: History, Legends, and Art’’. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2013. ISBN 978-0-7643-4429-9.
- Wall, Dennis, and Virgil Masayesva, “People of the Corn: Teachings in Hopi Traditional Agriculture, Spirituality, and Sustainability,” American Indian Quarterly, Summer/Fall 2004, Vol. 28, Issue ¾, pp. 435–453.