National Museum of the American Indian

Arthur Billings Hunt photograph collection

Summary

Collection ID:
NMAI.AC.159
Creators:
Hunt, Arthur Billings
Barry, D. F. (David Francis), 1854-1934
Goff, O. S. (Orlando Scott), 1843-1917
Haynes, F. Jay (Frank Jay), 1853-1921
Huffman, L. A. (Laton Alton), 1854-1931
Dates:
1870s-1880s
Languages:
English
.
Physical Description:
15 Photographic prints
0.03 Linear feet
Repository:
This collection consists of fifteen photographic prints depicting individuals from Hunkpapa Lakota (Hunkpapa Sioux) and Yanktonnai Nakota (Yankton Sioux) communities, and dating from approximately the 1870s and 1880s.

Content Description

Content Description
The Arthur Billings Hunt photograph collection consists of fifteen photographic prints dating to the 1870s and 1880s. The bulk of the photographs are studio portraits and depict a number of Hunkpapa Lakota (Hunkpapa Sioux) and Yanktonnai Nakota (Yankton Sioux) community members and leaders. These photographs represent the work of various turn of the twentieth-century photographers of the American West including David F. Barry, Orlando Scott Goff, F. Jay Haynes, and Laton Alton Huffman. The photographs were later acquired by Arthur Billings Hunt, who subsequently donated them to the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation.

Arrangement

Arrangement
This collection is arranged into folders by cultural group.

Biographical / Historical

Biographical / Historical
Arthur Billings Hunt was born in 1890. He attended schooling at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, receiving his undergraduate degree there in 1911, and later was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the same institution in 1945. Moving to New York soon after graduation, Hunt had a lifelong career as a well-known soloist, musical director, broadcaster, and collector of Christian Americana. In addition to conducting a weekly broadcast of singing services for fourteen years with the New York Federation of Churches on radio station WEAF, Hunt also served as the Executive Director of the National Hymn Sing Association. While primarily interested in collecting Christian hymnals and sheet music himself, Hunt also inherited from his maternal grandfather, Newell B. Perkins, a number of material culture objects and photographic images related to different North American Plains Indian communities. These he subsequently donated to the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, in the mid-twentieth century. Arthur Billings Hunt died in 1971 at the age of 81.

Administration

Author
Nathan Sowry
Immediate Source of Acquisition
This collection was donated by Arthur Billings Hunt in 1945.
Processing Information
Processed by Nathan Sowry, Reference Archivist, in 2020.

Using the Collection

Conditions Governing Use
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center. Please submit a written request to nmaiphotos@si.edu. For personal or classroom use, users are invited to download, print, photocopy, and distribute the images that are available online without prior written permission, provided that the files are not modified in any way, the Smithsonian Institution copyright notice (where applicable) is included, and the source of the image is identified as the National Museum of the American Indian. For more information please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use and NMAI Archive Center's Digital Image request website.
Conditions Governing Access
Access to NMAI Archives Center collections is by appointment only, Monday - Friday, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. Please contact the archives to make an appointment (phone: 301-238-1400, email: nmaiarchives@si.edu).
Preferred Citation
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Arthur Billings Hunt photograph collection, NMAI.AC.159; National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution.

Related Materials
Other archival collections relating to the life and work of Arthur Billings Hunt include the Arthur Billings Hunt papers, located in the Columbia University Libraries Archival Collections.

Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.
Keyword Terms Keyword Types
Hunkpapa Lakota (Hunkpapa Sioux) Cultural Context Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Yanktonnai Nakota (Yankton Sioux) Cultural Context Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Oglala Lakota (Oglala Sioux) Cultural Context Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid

National Museum of the American Indian
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nmaiarchives@si.edu