Hopi Summer with Carolyn O’Bagy Davis

During a 1927 road trip to the Hopi Indian Reservation in northern Arizona, Maud and Carey Melville of Worcester, Massachusetts, befriended Ethel and Wilfred Muchvo at First Mesa. This presentation portrays the lives of the Hopi people during the 1920s and 1930s, prior to the tremendous cultural changes that occurred before World War II. Daily life on the mesas is illustrated through letters from Ethel, interviews, and vintage photographs. This snapshot of history tells of the friendship between the Melvilles and the Muchvos, a poignant and memorable story of Hopi life. As one Hopi elder commented, “This is our history.”

Carolyn O’Bagy Davis, a fourth-generation descendant of Utah pioneers, is the author of thirteen books on archaeology, quilting, and the history of the Southwest. Her book Hopi Summer was selected as OneBookArizona for 2011, and Desert Trader was named one of the Best Books of the Southwest 2012. She was the founding president of the Tucson Quilters Guild and Old Pueblo Archaeology Center and is an inducted member of the Arizona Quilters Hall of Fame and the Society of Women Geographers. Davis has appeared on HGTV, PBS, and Lifetime programs, and has curated many traveling museum exhibitions.