Scope and Contents

This collection includes photographic prints and negatives shot by Kenneth C. Miller as well as photographs and postcards collected and donated to the museum by Miller dating between 1926 and 1943.

The majority of the photographic negatives in this collection are from a 1926 collecting trip with Donald Cadzow to the Canadian Northwest where Miller served as a field assistant. Cadzow was collecting on behalf of the MAI and had taken previous trips to the same area in 1924 and 1925. Cadzow and Miller visited various locations in Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada collecting among the Plains Cree (Prairie Cree), Assiniboine (Stoney), and Apatohsipipiikani (Northern Piegan) among other communities. These photographs include images of Native community members posing for photographs as well as images of the expedition members, such as Donald Cadzow. Some of these photographs are restricted due to cultural sensitivity. (N13144 - N13150, N23001 - N23047, P11460-P11462, P15351, P16103).

Photographs shot by Miller while he was an MAI staff member include: Negatives (N21568 - N21573) of a mahogany canoe found in an old mill near Brooklyn, NY in 1938; Negatives of Joseph Keppler in Rochester, New York in 1937 with a group of Seneca at an event in Ellison Park (N23115 - N23123); and photographic prints of MAI staff from 1938 (P13057-P13059).

Additional non-MAI photographs include: excavation photographs from the Seip Mound in Ohio in 1931 which was not an MAI sponsored excavation (P11944-P11948); 16 postcards donated by Miller in 1940 which are mostly images of objects from an Exhibition of Modern Art, held at the Museum of Modern Art (P15107 - P15120, P15174, P15205); other miscellaneous postcards and photographic prints from Florida, Michigan, Montana, Rhode Island, California (P13439-P13440, P15310 - P15317, P15323 - P15326, P15934-P15935, P16103, P16566, P21175).

Arrangement

Arranged by catalog number.

Biographical / Historical

Kenneth C. Miller (1901-1974) was born in New York in 1901. Miller joined the New York State National Guard in 1922 and eventually became a Major with the Seventh Regiment. In 1926, Miller accompanied Donald Cadzow as a field assistant on a collecting trip to Northwestern, Canada between May and September in 1926 sponsored by the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation (MAI). Cadzow and Miller visited 23 reserves in Saskatchewan and Alberta. In 1935 Miller was hired as a general staff member of the MAI from where he assisted with field collecting and photography until 1943. Miller later became the superintendent of the Washington's Headquarters Historical site in Newburgh, NY in 1956 and served as Vice President of the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and Highlands. He also sat on the committee of the Hudson River Historical Museum.

Related Materials

For more photograph from Miller's 1926 trip to Canada see the Donald Cadzow photograph collection (NMAI.AC.001.004).