Edward H. Davis

Edward Harvey Davis (1862-1951) was a field collector for the Museum of the American Indian in New York City who acquired many artifacts from various indigenous groups in San Diego county and northwestern Mexico (including the Seris) for that museum (now part of the Smithsonian).

Biography Born to Lewis S. Davis and Christine Smith Davis on 18 June 1862 in New York, Davis grew up in Brooklyn and attended the Brooklyn Art Guild, developing skills in drawing and drafting. He worked for a time in New York in the accounting office of his family's shipping firm, Jonas Smith & Company. The younger Davis found work as a surveyor and a draftsman, drawing maps and house plans.

In 1885, he married Anna Marion (Anna May) Wells in New York and returned with her to San Diego. Additionally, the SDHC Archives holds Davis's 62 notebooks and pages of field notes. The bulk of his papers are housed at Cornell University Library (Edward H. Davis Papers, 1910-1944, Collection no. 9166).

Selected publications Davis, Edward H. Early Cremation Ceremonies of the Luiseño and Diegueño Indians of Southern California. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1921. ———. “The Diegueño Ceremony of the Death Images.” Contributions from the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation 5, no. 2 (1919): 1–33. ———. The Papago Ceremony of Víkĭta. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1920. Davis, Edward H., and E. Yale Dawson. “The Savage Seris of Sonora--I.” The Scientific Monthly 60, no. 3 (1945): 193–202. ———. “The Savage Seris of Sonora--II.” The Scientific Monthly 60, no. 4 (1945): 261–68.