Description
Mora’s introduction to the cultures depicted came on a trip through the southwest in 1904 with his friend Walter “Honey” Williams. Among his goals were to witness a Hopi Snake Dance. Having done so, he decided to rent a studio near the Hopi village. He traveled to different reservations producing detailed ethnographic artwork in a variety of media, including drawing, photography and terra cotta. He learned Hopi and Navajo languages and not only gained the trust of both tribes but was honored by a Hopi chief who invited him to participate in the design of a new Kachina (spirit given visual form). In 1906 he was engaged as a mediator to resolve a dispute between the U.S. government and the Hopi tribe. The poster reflects these firsthand experiences observing and participating in Native American culture. A dedication lower center, signed and dated by Mora in his handwriting, states:
In making this Carte — Indians of North America — I must confess to a more difficult task than anticipated •• With the vast amount of data acquired in a lifelong intimate study, it was not lack of material but that discouraging necessity for elimination forced on me by the limitations of available space that made this task most trying. I hope you will derive some measure of instruction and pleasure from its perusal and that it may stimulate a desire for further study of our Aboriginal Americana.
Indians of North America was originally issued in 1936. The offered example is a 1941 glossy paper reissue published by Jo Mora Publications, Monterey California. Mora’s The Evolution of the Cowboy (1933), in many ways a companion to this work, was also reissued in 1941.
Joseph Jacinto “Jo” Mora was one of the foremost pictorial mapmakers of the 20th century. According to art historian Mary Murray, it is in the pictorial maps that he created “an art form uniquely his own” that “exemplify the popular, entertaining, direct, and informative art at which Mora excelled.” His maps are characterized by humor — often with portrayals of whimsical cartoonish characters and pun-related references — simultaneously combined with detailed geography and historical references. The intent, as described by geography historian Stephen J. Hornsby, was to use “humor to make other content more interesting.”
The year after he was born in Uruguay, Mora’s family moved to the United States, eventually settling in Boston. He attended the Art Students League in New York, and by his early 20s was working as a cartoonist and illustrator for Boston newspapers and children’s book publishers. He began taking trips to the American west and Mexico in the 1890s and relocated permanently to the West in 1903, spending three years living in Arizona, drawing and studying the Hopi and the Navajo cultures. In 1920 he moved to the Monterey Peninsula of California, where he spent the rest of his life in Pebble Beach and Carmel. Like many pictorial mapmakers, Mora had wide-ranging interests and a combination of talents as an artist proficient in many media, a cartographer, a historian and an author. Over a career spanning almost 50 years, Mora illustrated several books for children as well as books on California history, completed commissioned realist sculpture and murals, and made paintings in oil and watercolor. His most original and best-known works, however, are his distinctive pictorial maps and charts which he referred to as “cartes.” These were mainly of places in California and include California’s Playground (1926), Monterey Peninsula (1927), The Seventeen Mile Drive (1927), California (1927), Grand Canyon (1931), Yosemite (1931), Yellowstone (1931), Ye Old Spanish Main (1933), Carmel-By-The-Sea (1942), Map of Los Angeles (1942) and a later version of California (1945). He also designed and illustrated the posters Indians of North America (1936) and The Evolution of the Cowboy (1933).
Condition: Generally very good, recently professionally cleaned and deacidified, with only light remaining toning, wear, handling. Few marginal tears professionally restored. Pale yellow discoloration in the four corners from tape residue from former mounting.
References:
“About.” Jo Mora Trust. 2021. https://jomoratrust.com/about/ (7 June 2021).
Burton-Carvajal, Julianne. “Back to the Drawing Board with Artist Jo Mora: Illustrated Chronologies of his Life, Works, and Exhibitions.” Noticias del Puerto del Puerto de Monterey, Quarterly Bulletin of the Monterey History and Art Association. Vol. 52: 3. Fall 2003. p. 15. https://www.mayohayeslibrary.org/uploads/2/5/3/9/25392173/vol_52_num_3_fall_2009.pdf (25 March 2022).
Hiller, Peter. The Life and Times of Jo Mora: Iconic Artist of the American West. Kaysville, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 2021.
Holmes, Nigel. Pictorial Maps. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1991. p. 45
Hornsby, Stephen J. Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. pp. 28-31, 57.
Pilchen, Lloyd. “Exhibition of Jo Mora’s Whimsical Map Delights.” 29 January 2022. The American Surveyor. https://amerisurv.com/2022/01/29/exhibition-of-jo-moras-whimsical-map-delights/ (22 March 2022).
