THE SMOKI PEOPLE

On May 26, 1921, a group of Prescott businessmen participated in a Wild West Show at the Prescott Fairgrounds to raise money to help the Annual Fourth of July Frontier Days Rodeo.  Because they had a collection of snakes available, they decided to perform the Hopi Snake Dance, and a local resident, who had lived on the Hopi Reservation, taught them the steps. [See black & white picture below].  The performance evoked a very positive response, and the businessmen decided to repeat the show the following year.  Continued success led to repeating the show once a year for the next seventy years.

This group decided to call themselves the Smoki People and created a organization that met regularly to plan the dances, prepare costumes and equipment and have family pot lucks and barbecues. In 1922, the group convinced Sharlot Hall to write a small 16 page book about the Smoki People giving them a history.  

Malcolm Cummings, the son of the Dean of the School of Archeology at the University of Arizona, was hired as the first curator.  He and his wife lived in the museum and quickly organized a sizeable collection of pottery, baskets, lithics, and the like.  Over the years, the Museum and the Smoki People undertook a number of special projects including having woman from the Prescott Yavapai tribe make and sell baskets in front of the Museum and involving teenagers from the Yavapai tribe in their summer program.   

The Smoki people participated in parades as far away as Philadelphia spreading knowledge of the organization and its ceremonials.  A particularly famous member of the Smoki was Barry Goldwater who often served as an announced at the shows.  He also made some significant contributions to the Museum.

By the 1980’s, the Smoki had trouble recruiting younger members and, as a result, had increasing difficulty with staging a vigorous show.  In 1990, a delegation from the Hopi reservation observed the show and decided to protest recognizing that the Smoki dance emphasized entertainment while their ceremony was very religious.  In response, the Smoki discontinued the show and concentrated on maintaining the Museum.  A few years later, they disbanded and set up a non-profit organization to manage the Museum.

They dedicated themselves to keeping alive the cultures of the Southwest Indian tribes at a time when the government had outlawed tribal ceremonies and was compelling Indian children to attend boarding schools to learn non-Indian practices.  Each year they put on one show that included three to five ceremonials and Navajo sand painting with the Hopi Snake Dance as the finale.  The women in the organization usually did at least one of the dances including one that involved diving into a lake dug into the fairgrounds.  In addition to the lake, they built a backdrop that looked like a large pueblo and entire families dressed in costumes to give the appearance of a village.

In 1932, the group built a clubhouse on Arizona Avenue and included a small museum to house artifacts they had collected.  With the depression in 1935, the Emergency Relief Association of Arizona decided to use federal work funds to build a larger museum next to the clubhouse.  An architect designed the building to look like a very large pueblo and added a number of special features like a double Zuni-type fireplace and a flagstone floor.  The Smoki people added hand-chiseled furniture, hand-made display cases and special light fixtures.  They even developed unique signs which were hung on light poles throughout the city.  These signs are still on display on some city streets.