Ben Wittick Pioneer Photographer

BEN WITTICK PIONEER PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE SOUTHWEST

OVER SIXTY SUMMERS ago the morning sun cast warm lights over the jumbled houses of old Walpi in Tusayan. Deep in the underground kiva of the Snake Society naked priests were performing mystic rites. Chanting song-prayers, they petitioned the Snake Virgin for the rain that would freshen the parched fields of the Hopitu Shinimu, the "peaceful people."

A writhing mass of rattlesnakes slithered over the sand-picture that covered the sipipu that lay at the south end of the floor. In this small concavity offerings had been made to Muningwa, "that which guards all the germs of life."

With one exception the ritual was the same as when witnessed by Don Pedro de Tobar when he visited the Hopi towns in 1542. For the first time a white man sat within the sacred confines and watched the ceremony.

Only the friendship of Wiki, the high-priest of the society, made it possible for Ben Wittick to clamber down the ladder into the fetid odors of the kiva. Defying the babble of protests from the other priests, Wiki was making it possible for the young photographer to see things that no white man had ever seen before.

When the sun started to slope into the west the priests began to dress for the public ceremony. While the Hopitu waited in the village plaza they started to climb the ladder. One elder, grotesque in the painted symbols of his society, peered at the intruder through his rheumy eyes. Pointing his gnarled fingers he hissed through his toothless gums, "You have not been initiated! Death shall come to you from the fangs of our 'little brothers."

In the years that followed Ben mentioned the ominous prophecy to his only daughter. It seemed to penetrate into the very fibers of his fearless character. During his many years of association with the Indian tribes of the Southwest, and an acquaintance of their secret rites, there is no question that many times he remembered the Hopi curse.

The incident in the kiva occurred some three years after Ben Wittick arrived in the Southwest. Born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, on New Year's day of 1845, he was nine years old when he traveled west with his father and mother, Conrad and Barbara Petri Wittick. While Conrad worked on the first large bridge across the Mississippi River the family settled in Moline, Illinois.

Ben spent his boyhood along the great river hunting and fishing and doing the things that other boys did. According to his daughter, Mrs. Mamie Maxwell, his artistic flair appeared early. She recently wrote, "My father -always artistic, spent most of his time as a boy 'marking' as my grandmother called drawing, and wasted time (according to her views.)"

When the Civil War broke, Ben followed his father to the Union colors. He was sixteen when he volunteered in the 1st. Minnesota Volunteers at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. After serving his first hitch he reenlisted in 1862. This took him to the Indian country where he took part in a number of engagements against the Sioux. His adventures on the High Plains would make a volume.

While stationed at Fort Snelling he married Frances Lelia Averill of Old Town, Maine. At the end of his enlistment he and his young wife returned to Moline. For a time he worked with his father as a carpenter, but soon grew restless and dissatisfied. There was a Mr. Mangold who ran a "gallery" in Moline. Deeply intrigued, Ben started to learn the photographic trade from him.

While Ben Wittick was growing up the foundations of modern photography were being laid. In 1841 Henry Fox-Talbot, in England found that if he prepared a sheet of paper covered with silver iodide, and exposed it in a camera, he got a faint image. But, if after exposure he washed the paper in gallic acid and silver nitrate, the faint image was built up into a strong picture.

In 1851 another Englishman, Scott-Archer, discovered that collodion was better than albumin to carry light sensitive solutions on glass plates. These plates were exposed and developed with a solution of silver nitrate when still moist. These were known as "wet plates" and were in vogue when Ben learned his trade..

After working for Mangold for some time, Wittick set up his own business. Photography was exclusively a studio proposition in the 1860's. To a man of Ben's nature the work was confining. The bloody tales of the Apache outbreaks and the Wild West headlined the newspapers of the east. This was ripe adventure. All his dreams centered on the Southwest. He grew restless in the provincial and humdrum life of Moline.

When the "head-o'-track" of the new transcontinental Atlantic and Pacific Railroad had pushed across the buffalo tracks and Indian trails of the plains and down towards the valley of the Rio Grande, the opportunity came. A photographer was needed to record the wonders of the country through which the line passed. This was a good excuse to a wife with a growing brood. Signing up, Ben arrived in the sleepy New Mexico pueblo of Santa Fe in 1878.

After working through western New Mexico and northern Arizona for the railroad which later became a part of the Santa Fe system, Ben formed a partnership with Charles P. Russell.

Old Fort Defiance in 1880. After being established as the first American military post in Arizona in 1851, it later became the Navajo agency. When Ben Wittick made this picture the U. S. Calvary was resting there while pursuing renegade Navajo and Ute.

Some of the earlier pictures in the writer's collection are captioned, Wittick & Russell. They had "galleries" in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

The stuffy work of photographing the New Mexican paisanos and their families soon palled on Ben. Anyway things were humming in Old Mexico, and he had never been there. Breaking his partnership with Russell, he soon was headed south with his eldest son, Tom.

When Ben and Tom landed in Chihuahua City, Porfirio Diaz, the grand old man of Mexico, was starting the first decade of his thirty-four year reign as president. The record of this trip, in addition to a number of priceless negatives of the Mexicans and their country, is contained in a yellowed packet of letters written by the sixteen year-old Tom to his mother.

When the Mexican adventure was over, Ben's interest centered in the Indian country.

W. T. Jackson had photographed the northern periphery as he had passed through with the Hayden Survey dur-ing the 1870's. Mr. Jackson, still alive in Washington, D. C., recently published a volume on his adventures. Another renowned photographer, Jack Hillers, was toting his camera from place to place. Neither concentrated on Indian life. This was Ben Wittick's particular field.

During a ramble someone mentioned a spectacular dance held every summer by the Hopi Indians in northern Arizona. Ben's curiosity was whetted when his informant related that the dancers held live rattlesnakes in their mouths! When the thunderheads began to rise, he packed his outfit and started for the Hopi towns. He would see for himself.

The first days amidst the Hopis were spent in establishing friendships. When the time came for the Snake Dance in 1880, the wandering photographer had set up his camera in the plaza of Shongopovi. Amazing as it may seem in the light of the present edict against picture making, the hidebound Hopi made no opposition when Ben Wittick took his first photographs of the dance.

Soon after making these epic pictures Ben joined the party of renowned archaeologist, Colonel James Stevenson. The trail led west to Grand Canyon. Camping at Captain John Hance's ranch, at Bill Hull's Spring, some fifteen miles west of El Tovar, Ben satiated himself photographing and exploring the wonders of the great chasm.

Someone mentioned a primitive tribe of Indians. They dwelt in a scenic but remote canyon a hard day's ride to the west. Few if any white man had seen them since 1776 when the explorer priest, Father Garces, visited them. Ben started west to visit and photograph the Havasupai Indians.

Ben came to the rim of a deep canyon. At his feet was a sheer drop of eight hundred feet.

Smoke was rising from the jacals squatting on lush green floor. His daughter writes of how he overcame the obstacle of the cliff, "... he was the first white man to go down into Supai Canyon. He went on a rope ladder with a fifty pound camera on his back."

Efforts to trace Ben's steps after he left Supai Canyon have been fruitless. We know he left Stevenson's party. Sam Day II, pioneer of the Navajo in his own right, tells of meeting him under the White House Ruin in the Canyon de Chelly. Others tell of seeing the wandering photographer near Flagstaff, Fort Apache, and Wide Ruin, Arizona.

When we cross the trail of the pioneer photographer, carrying our ultra-modern camera and sometimes complain of the slight inconvenience they cause, we should buck up and think of the difficulties under which the "old timer" had to work.

His camera, plates and tripod made a back bending load for one burro. Not having a shutter, he controlled the time of exposure by use of a light-proof cap that fitted over the lens-barrel of his bulky camera. If anyone had suggested shutter speeds of 1/1000 of a second, anti-stigmatic lenses, coupled range finders, or the measurement of light by the magic of the photo-electric cell, Ben would have thought them as fantastic as Jules Verne.

When Ben ran out of film, he could not run around the corner to the drugstore and get a roll. The burro or buckboard had to be unpacked. A tiny tent was pitched his darkroom. Inside he prepared his glass with a light sensitive solution of silver nitrate and collodion. This was contained in a homemade tray lined with oilcloth.

In those days there were no prepared chemicals for developing or processing film. Ben mixed his own chemical solutions. One of the more unique was a gold-toner for high class prints. This was concocted by cutting a five dollar gold piece in two. One half was dropped in a solution of agua regia. His daughter recalls that the remaining half many times gave her pocket money.

Sometime around 1885 Ben met the famous Navajo chief, Manuelito. He had never been photographed before. Ben offered him eight silver dollars to pose. Manuelito refused the dollars he wanted quarters. They would be

Better to make buttons with. Rushing to the post sutler's at Fort Wingate, Ben obtained 40 silver quarters. They were accepted and Ben made a number of pictures of the chief. The last flame of the Apache Wars flared in Southern Arizona in 1885. When the troops and Navajo scouts marched south from Fort Wingate towards the Chiricahua country, Ben was with them. Pictures of Geronimo Loco, and other Apache chiefs were the reward for the dangerous trip. Upon returning from this campaign, Ben set up his studio at Fort Wingate. It was nearer to the life he loved and was a more convenient base for his solo wanderings into the Indian country. Serving at that time under Colonel Carr were many soldiers who later became famous in the military annals of our country. One was Lieutenant John J. Pershing. Ben's particular friend among the military was the post surgeon, Dr. Robert Shufeldt. In between trips Ben worked at his excellent steel pen drawings. He also taught Dr. Shufelt photography. In exchange for these lessons the doctor taught Ben anatomy and allowed him to view interesting operations. Traveling constantly in search of new sights and people, Ben Wittick became a known character to the Indians and whites of the Southwest. In addition to making pictures, he collected Navajo and Hopi blankets, worked silver, ornaments and other Indian things. Those who knew him say that he had a remarkable native intelligence and was a sponge for knowledge. His daughter writes of Ben, “. . . In all his life he only went to school three months. He knew poetry and historyand chemistry. He wrote a beautiful hand and absorbed all kinds of knowledge and had no patience with anyone lacking that attribute.” Time passed years added up into decades. Ben never forsook his annual trip to the Hopi Snake Dance. The summer of 1903 came around. Knowing that his Hopi friends would be pleased with the gift of a rattlesnake, he had captured one and kept it in his cabin at Fort Wingate. After packing his equipment in preparation for the long trip, he went for the snake. In some way it coiled. He did not move his hand fast enough. Its fangs hooked deeply into Ben's thumb. The deadly virus coursed through his veins. He was rushed to the post hospital. His condition became critical and his sons Charley and Archie Wittick were called to his bedside. Three weeks after being bitten, Ben Wittick died! Death from a snake bite! When Ben Wittick lay dying-did he remember the curse of the old snake priest, “Death shall come to you from the bite of our brothers!” Another Indian curse fulfilled? Sometimes we wonder!