Edward Harvey Davis (1862-1951)
Edward Harvey Davis was born June 18, 1862, in New York. He was the son of marine merchant Captain Lewis S. Davis and Christine Smith Davis. He received his grammar and high school education in Brooklyn. He worked for the Associated Press and the Jonas Smith Company before coming to San Diego.
In 1884, Ed Davis traveled from New York to California for health reasons and arrived in San Diego in January of 1885. In October of that year, he returned briefly to New York to marry Anna Marion (Anna May) Wells and brought her with him to settle in San Diego. They had four children.
Davis found work in San Diego as a rancher, fruit grower, mapmaker and draftsman. In 1887, he assisted with the drafting of the plans for the Hotel del Coronado. In 1888, he and Anna May moved to Mesa Grande, sixty miles northeast of San Diego. In 1902, Davis served as Deputy County Assessor and in 1903 as County Justice of the Peace. Here, in 1915, they built the Powam Lodge, a summer resort designed by Emmor Brooke Weaver.
His passion for collecting artifacts plus his drawings and photos reveal much about the Indians of the Southwest. Davis also established bonds of trust and respect with his friends at a time when Indians were often held in contempt and persecuted.
Ed Davis had an interest in and a love of Indian culture. He was a natural hoarder who turned his talents to collecting Indian artifacts. He expressed a concern that Indian culture was dying and being overridden by the white culture and that, if care was not taken and collections started, Indian culture would be lost forever. In 1907, he became a ceremonial chief of the Mesa Grande Indians of San Diego County. In 1916 he became a field collector for the Museum of the American Indian in New York.
Davis' work concentrated on the Indian tribes of San Diego County and on the Seri Tribe of Isla Tiburon in Mexico. He also took regular trips to Yuma, Arizona, to participate in Indian festivals there. His observations covered a broad range of Indian experience, every day as well as ceremonial.
When his hosts offered food, Davis politely dined first and asked questions later. As a result he frequently learned that the tasty dish he had just eaten consisted of fried caterpillars or dog meat.
The food, the arduous travels, and the hardships agreed with this talented artist, photographer and artifact collector. He lived until the age of eighty-nine, after journeying to San Diego early in 1885, hoping the climate would cure his Bright's disease.
Davis helped survey the water flume route, drafted plans for houses and worked for the company constructing the Hotel del Coronado out on the peninsula.
The year 1885 also brought resumption of railroad service to San Diego. In the real estate boom that followed, Davis parlayed a $2,500 investment - half of it borrowed from his father - into a $27,000 return. Most of the other speculators ended up broke when the bust arrived in the spring of 1888.
Davis bought three-hundred and twenty acres on Mesa Grande, near Lake Henshaw. Then he invited his brother Irving to part from the Brooklyn, New York, homestead. Ed Davis' wife gave birth to their son Harvey. Next, Anna's mother and uncle joined the clan. At first everyone shared a small cabin with a lean-to on the side. "The only redeeming feature", Davis declared, was a large rock fireplace.
The Mesa Grande Indians, who also were called the Northern Dieguenos, fascinated him. They became his lifelong friends and initiated him as a chief in 1907.
His collection of pottery, utensils, tools and other items quickly outgrew the family ranch house, requiring an adobe "museum" back. Davis had taken art courses after graduating from high school and impressed his new friends by drawing them in their regalia. He took up photography as another way of preserving what he could see was a disappearing way of life.
Between expeditions he raised cattle, experimented with the soil to improve fruit trees, kept rain charts, served a year as deputy county assessor and another year as a justice of the peace.
In 1915 a representative of the Museum of the American Indian came from New York, checking on stories about Davis, the California collector. The visitor bought practically everything in the adobe hut, providing Davis with enough money to build Powam (Place of Rest) Lodge on the mesa. It served as a showcase for the Indians' pottery and basket-making skills, which had almost faded before Davis encouraged their revival.
The next year, George Gustav Heye, the millionaire who had founded the Museum of the American Indian (now part of the Smithsonian), called on Davis and hired him as a collector. This propelled Davis even farther afield until more than two dozen tribes in the United States and Mexico were visited over the years by the friendly, curious man with the camera, according to Charles and Elena Quinn.
In all his travels he never experienced problems with rattlesnakes. He killed scores of them for the protection of others. But he feared the scorpions, especially Mexico's deadly variety. His visit with the Seris on their Gulf of California island took courage. Stories of their cannibalistic rites caused almost everyone to detour around the island. Not Davis. The Seris liked him so much they made him a medicine man.
Before visiting a tribe, Davis checked first with the local trader, then offered to buy items at die going price. Thus the Indians and traders felt they had been treated fairly Many tribe members sought the collector for advice and arbitration.
What began as a hobby became an almost full time occupation. In later years, after slowing down a bit, he recalled, "Those trips were the joy of my life; the freedom, the exhiliration of sleeping under the stars...the great unfenced open spaces."
Edward Harvey Davis passed away in 1951.
A catalogue of his work with several photos is available on line.
[adapted from a biographical sketch from San Diego Originals by Theodore W. Fuller, published by California Profiles Publications, 1987]
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