The contemporary Havasupai reservation is comprised of almost 200,000 acres at the southwestern corner of Grand Canyon National Park. Several collections bear on nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century Havasupai history.
Synonymy
The Havasupai autonym is havasúwə Ɂəpá a reference to “people of the blue‐green water” with similar names in other indigenous languages. The name was sometimes given as Supai in English, a practice long in disuse. See also Goddard, Handbook of North American Indians, v. 10, pp. 23‐24.
Contains photographs of people at Supai, their activities, schools, and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agency houses. Marshall’s recollections of life
amongst the Havasupai and other tribes provide modest information about daily and seasonal activities. A manuscript tribal census, dating from June 3, 1903, includes more than 200 Havasupai names.
Includes diaries and photographs from Sheldon’s expeditions to secure specimens for natural history museums. Sheldon employed Havasupai guides on his Arizona hunts. His diaries and photographs have been published as The Wilderness of Desert Bighorns & Seri Indians: A Historical Classic of the Southwest: The Southwestern Journals of Charles Sheldon (Phoenix: Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society, 1977), and The Wilderness of the Southwest: Charles Sheldon’s Quest for Desert Bighorn Sheep and Adventures with the Havasupai and Seri Indians (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993), edited by Neil B. Carmony and David E. Brown.
Contains materials that largely address reservation expansion and enlargement of Grand Canyon National Park in the 1960s and 1970s. Udall and Sen. Barry Goldwater (R‐AZ) thought expansion would accommodate a growing Havasupai population and secure tribal grazing. Much involves objections to implications for lands encompassed by an expanded park, and, more contentiously, reservation expansion: Arizona conservationists supported park and reservation expansion; those outside of the state, notably the Sierra Club, opposed it, fearing enlarged Havasupai lands would see commercial, industrial, or mineral development. Much correspondence from individuals. Udall’s conflict with the Sierra Club’s David Brower is evident throughout.
Includes the folklorist’s notes and manuscripts for her unpublished “Folklore and Legends of the Indians of the Southwest” including drafts of a chapter with Havasupai content.
Include files on various late‐twentieth‐century Havasupai issues, including uranium mine development, flood control and water rights, and appropriations and funding for tribal schools. There is also extensive correspondence on the tenuous communication with Supai, the remote village on the Grand Canyon’s floor, and the development of a more reliable telephone connection essential for routine and emergency services.
Includes projects and research files with tribal planning documents, brochures, and copies of tribal constitutions. Fontana’s newspaper clippings document the reservation expansion conflict. His related correspondence includes exchanges with Havasupai tribal officials, Stewart Udall, Morris Udall, Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D‐WA), and anthropologist John L. Martin.
Arizona Historical Society Materials
The materials located in this section can be found at the Arizona Historical Society Tucson location, an institution separate from the University of Arizona. There you can find manuscript materials, photographs, oral histories and books that highlight Indigenous life in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. This selection represents only a small fraction of the Arizona Historical Society's materials related to Indigenous life in the borderlands. Please contact their archivists for questions about additional materials.
