Between 1931 and 1935, the Ethnobotanical Laboratory at the University of Michigan acquired hundreds of seeds, plant parts, and herbarium sheets from the Hopi Mesas in northeastern Arizona. This online catalog focuses on seeds and plant parts for which information on the Hopi village or Mesa was recorded.
Nearly half of the items in this catalog were collected as part of the Hopi Crop Survey. During October of 1935, In October 1935, Volney Jones (curator at the UM Museum of Anthropology) and Alfred Whiting (curator at the Museum of Northern Arizona), with the help of Edmund Nequaptewa (a Hopi employee at Museum of Northern Arizona) interviewed members of 56 Hopi households and 3 Navajo households about the crops that they were harvesting and collected seeds from many of these households. The purpose of these interviews was to gain a greater understanding of the diversity of crops grown by the Hopi and also to add seeds to the comparative botanical collections at both the University of Michigan and the Museum of Northern Arizona. Today, nearly identical collections from this survey are curated at both institutions.
Jones and Whiting used standardized inventory forms (see an example of the form) to record information on the seeds and plants that they collected during the Survey. Information from these forms can be found in the “Description” for each item in the archive. The headings in the item description replicate sections of the 1935 plant inventory forms. Spelling errors in the field notes have been corrected and the spelling of Hopi village names was changed to the contemporary Hopi spelling.
Ethnobotanists who collected these plants
Volney Jones
Volney Jones was a trained botanist from Comanche, Texas. He received his B.A. in agriculture and an M.A. in biology with a minor in English. In 1931, he came to the University of Michigan to work in the Museum of Anthropology (now called the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology), where he soon became the Curator of Ethnology. Working closely with anthropologists, Jones is considered a pioneer in the field of ethnobotany. His interest in Native American ethnobotany inspired him to work alongside Alfred Whiting and Edmund Nequatewa on the 1935 Hopi Crop Survey.
More information can be found on the University of Michigan website
Alfred Whiting
In 1935, Alfred Whiting received a master’s degree in Taxonomic Botany from the University of Michigan and became the Curator of Biology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The Hopi Crop Survey was his first project as curator. He continued to collect plants at Hopi until the fall of 1937 when he entered a combined PhD program at the University of Chicago. Whiting’s synthesized his research at Hopi in the Ethnobotany of the Hopi, published in 1939. In addition to his work at Hopi, Whiting examined plant use by several other southwestern Native groups, including the Havasupai, Apache, and Papago, now called the Tohono O’odham.
Hopi Community Members who help create these collections
Edmund Nequatewa
Edmund Nequatewa, a Hopi man from Songòopavi village, was an employee of the Museum of Northern Arizona in the 1930s and 40s. He played such a critical role in the 1935 Hopi Crop Survey that Whiting considered Nequatewa a co-contributor. Nequatewa conducted many interviews and accompanied Jones and Whiting when they visited Hopi households, acting as the translator and adding or clarifying information in the field notes. He also negotiated permission with Hopi village leaders for Whiting and Jones to conduct the interviews and collect seeds from Hopi households.
For additional information on Edmund Nequatewa, please see: Museum of Northern Arizona website and David Seaman's introduction to Edmund Nequatewa’s autobiography Born a Chief.
Don Talayesva
Don Talayesva was born at Old Oraibi (Orayvi) in the late 1800s. During the summer of 1932, Talayesva was hired by Leslie White to be the interpreter for the an ethnographic field training program that White was teaching at Old Oraibi. Talayesva also shared information about Hopi life with the students. While visiting the project, Volney Jones hired Talayesva to collect and send plants used by the Hopi, which Jones then added to the ethnobotanical collections. In the letters that accompanied the plant materials, Talayesva includes the Hopi names for the plants and the uses of several of them.
Don Talayesva’s autobiography, Sun Chief, edited by Leo W. Simmons, was recent republished by Yale University Press.