Powell survey series; verso credits E. O. Beaman. Circa 1870s.

Stereoview of a Navajo trading party with burros in an open landscape of low scrub and rolling ground. Several figures stand wrapped in striped or dark blankets, while others sit mounted among the animals. The yellow mount bears the title of the "U.S. Topographical and Geological Survey of the Valley of the Colorado River of the West," with the names of J. W. Powell and A. H. Thompson.

A pink label on the reverse identifies the series as "Indians of the Colorado Valley," No. 79, with the further caption "Nav-a-jos. Living in Northern New Mexico. On a Trading Expedition." The label credits E. O. Beaman, although the Library of Congress catalogs another example of this view under John K. Hillers.

In 1868, thousands of Navajo returned to their homeland after years of confinement at Bosque Redondo, where the U.S. Army had forcibly relocated them during the Long Walk. They returned to ruined homes, destroyed crops, and depleted herds. This photograph dates from the years that followed, when families were rebuilding their lives and livelihoods. Identified on the mount as a party traveling to trade, the group offers a glimpse of Navajo life during that recovery. Their blankets, mounts, and pack animals also make the image a useful early record of dress and travel in the Southwest.

The photograph also reflects the breadth of Powell’s survey work. Alongside the mapping of rivers and canyons, his expeditions gathered information about the people who lived in the region, including their languages and customs. Photography became an important part of that work, with Beaman and, subsequently, Hillers recording Indigenous communities as well as the landscape. Published in the Indians of the Colorado Valley series, this view belongs to the body of photographs produced as Powell’s interests increasingly turned toward ethnology, a field he would help shape as the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879.