approx 3:45 minutes, with no titles nor end credits, and a faulty chronology.
Source: a copy is held by the Library of Congress (LoC), which may be viewed here.
Production: Pathe’s Weekly, possibly also Kolb Studio, Grand Canyon.
Background: this material was shot in the Hopi village of Wàlpi in Arizona on 21 August 1913. It was supplied to the Library of Congress by the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association, which would probably explain the misleading title. In fact, the Hopi were not dancing specifically for the former President; rather they were celebrating their biennial Snake Dance ceremony aimed at bringing rain for their late season maize crop. At that time, these ceremonies took place at Wàlpi on odd years of the Gregorian calendar.
Roosevelt (1858-1919) had recently lost to Woodrow Wilson in his attempt to be re-elected as President and was on a consolatory mountain lion hunting trip in the Southwest with his young cousin Nicholas Roosevelt and his teenage sons, Archie and Quentin. While in the region, he attended the event as one of many hundreds of non-Native spectators.
The presence of non-Natives, many attempting to photograph or film the ceremony, had become so overwhelming at Wàlpi that earlier that year, Cato Sells, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington had prohibited Snake Dance photography for commercial purposes.
However, when the local Indian agent, Leo Crane, arrived at Wàlpi for the ceremony, he discovered two unauthorised film crews.
One of these consisted of the young Pathe’s Weekly newsreel cameraman Victor Miller.The other crew were the Kolb brothers, Ellsworth and Emery, who had a studio in the nearby Grand Canyon and were already well-known as local photographers. They had filmed the Snake Dance at Wàlpi before, in 1911.
Crane allowed the crews to remain on the condition that they gave written assurances after the ceremony that their footage would be used only for historical documentation purposes.
Miller, however, made an unsuccessful attempt to evade this obligation by leaving the village under the cover of darkness. He was arrested, and his undeveloped footage was confiscated and sent to Washington.
The material held in the LoC, acquired in 1986, is thought to derive from Miller’s footage. The Kolbs’ footage, on the other hand, combined with their material from 1911, is deposited in Emery Kolb Collection archive at the University of Northern Arizona. Here it is restricted due to the potentially culturally sensitive nature of the material. But a fragment showing Roosevelt, Hunt and other spectators getting ready to watch the ceremony can be accessed here.
The LoC film was clearly shot from two radically different camera positions. One was high above the action, producing images such as the one at the head of this entry. The other camera position was on the plaza itself, close to the performers, as in the image below.
As it is unlikely, particularly given the crush of spectators, that it would have been possible to move from one camera position to another once the performance had begun, this suggests that this film incorporates material shot by both of the crews present.
The material shot from above would almost certainly have been shot by the cameraman in the background of the H.F. Skinner photograph above. As the image is very small, it is difficult to identify this person. But of the cameramen known to be present, he appears to be most like Ellsworth Kolb. The camera that he is operating also appears to be the same as the one used by the Kolb brothers.
The Snake Dance at Wàlpi had been filmed a number of times before, including by Burton Holmes and Oscar Depue in 1899,an Edison crew in 1901, and William E. Kopplin, probably in 1911. But this film appears to have been the last as thereafter the prohibition on any kind of photography was even more strictly enforced.
Content: The film begins with a series of shots from the high camera position showing the entry from the left of the Antelope Society dancers, perhaps 13 of them. They move in a circle around the small plaza, shaking their rattles. A large crowd of non-Natives presses around the perimeter. (See the image at the top of the page).
The Antelopes’ bodies are decorated with zigzag lines symbolising lightning. This refers to the prospect of rain which it is the aim of the ceremony to provoke. After about 30 seconds, they line up on the right in front of the kisi, the cottonwood bower where the snakes are kept.
The Snake Society then enters. There are somewhat more of them, perhaps 15. As they circle round the plaza, some stamp on the wooden plank in front of the Antelopes that serves as a foot drum. The day before, in a cavity below the drum, offerings had been made to the spirits who control the elements to encourage them to release the rains.
Around a minute in, there is an abrupt cut to a slightly closer shot, still taken from above, of the Snake Society lined up opposite the Antelope Society in front of the kisi. They are chanting prior to the beginning of the snake dancing proper.
This begins after a further 15 seconds. Snake Society members dance in pairs around the plaza, one with a snake in his mouth, the other holding a feather used to tame the reptile. Senior members of the society supervise and pick up any snakes that have escaped. All this is shot from above.
But at 2:35, there is a radical cut to a camera position at the level of plaza. In an image very similar to the Robinson photograph above, Roosevelt is shown with his sons and his cousin sitting in front of him, and to the left, the portly Governor of Arizona. They are all very self-conscious. At 15 seconds, this is the longest shot in the film.
It is followed at 2:48 by a return to the camera position above which offers a slow pan across the plaza, now filled with white spectators. Two Hopi men appear, without ceremonial dress, and briefly duck into the kisi. But otherwise there is no sign of the dancers, suggesting that these two shot were taken before the ceremony began.
(This could also be true of the Roosevelt shot, in which case, it could have been taken by the cameraman who eventually ended up behind him in the H.F. Skinner image.)
After this interlude, around 3:15, there is another abrupt cut, this time back to a dramatic series of shots of snake dancing taken from the camera position on the plaza, very close to the dancers, as in this frame-grab.
Bizarrely, this sequence is interrupted by another slow, 10-second pan from the camera position above that moves across the village showing the spectators, but pointing away from the dancing. It ends finally on the desert far below the village.
Around 3:40, there is a cut to a final sequence of close-up shots on the plaza. Snake dancing continues but some snakes are apparently being gathered up, possibly preparatory to returning them to the desert where they will carry the Hopi’s plea for rain to the spirits who dwell underground there.
Before this happens though, the film ends, midshot, at around 3:45.
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