USS Seattle Shipboard Life and Indigenous Pacific Encounters, Extensively Captioned Photo Album, Documenting Māori Receptions, Samoan Ceremonies, and Maui, c. 1920's

USS Seattle Navy Photographs Samoa New Zeland Hawaii

Photograph

U.S. Navy Pacific fleet cruise photo album documenting naval service and Indigenous encounters during Admiral Robert E. Coontz’s 1925 deployment to Australia and New Zealand. The inscription “Property of J. J. Prieskop. U.S.S. Seattle, band” identifies its owner as a musician associated with the fleet flagship. Following major exercises in Hawaiian waters, the fleet crossed the Pacific for a voyage combining naval training with public receptions and a demonstration of American maritime reach. www.history.navy.mil At Rotorua, Te Arawa hosts welcomed the visiting officers at Ohinemutu, where speeches and exchanges of gifts connected Māori hospitality with hopes for closer British-American friendship.
Photo album containing approximately 260 silver gelatin photographs, ranging from 2.5 x 3 to 8.5 x 5.5 inches, United States and Pacific locations, chiefly circa 1925, mostly mounted with corner holders on black paper leaves, with numerous contemporary handwritten captions. Coontz wears a feather cloak while exchanging a hongi, the Māori greeting involving the pressing together of noses, beneath “Admiral Coontz and staff receives Maori greeting Rotorua – N.Z.” Samoan performers carry weapons beneath “Samoan warriors in war dance,” while other scenes record sailors visiting vendors and a canoe approaching the ship. Hawaiian women perform with musicians before a commercial backdrop beneath “Hula dancers in Lahaina – 6/25.” A portrait printed “‘Maori’ South Sea Island Belle” presents a woman holding a patu, its promotional wording distinguishing commercial souvenir portraiture from the formal Rotorua reception. Sailors handle coal beneath “Coaling ship” and “In coal barge”; additional naval scenes include USS Tennessee’s 14-inch gun turrets and costumed equator-crossing festivities. A band portrait dated June 1925 at Lahaina Roads, Maui, bears handwritten identifications of individual musicians, including Prieskop, while supporting scenes include horses and a rodeo captioned Oak Grove, Portland, Oregon.

Additional photographs document encounters with Samoan communities, including ceremonial performers, groups of local residents, and American sailors interacting with vendors. One image bears the contemporary caption "Samoan Warriors in War dance," reflecting both the cultural performance depicted and the terminology employed by American observers. Another photograph, captioned "Hula dancers in Lahaina – 6/25," records Hawaiian women performing with musicians before a commercial backdrop, documenting the presentation of Indigenous culture to visiting naval personnel.
The album is particularly valuable for its combination of naval history and Indigenous Pacific encounters. It records the broader cultural and diplomatic dimensions of American naval expansion, including the ways Māori, Samoan, and Hawaiian communities received, interacted with, and were represented by visiting American servicemen. Visible wear includes chipped album leaves, vacant mounts, scattered fading and staining, and tears or edge losses to some photographs. Overall good condition. A substantial and historically engaging photographic record of the U.S. Navy's 1925 Pacific deployment, distinguished by its identified images of Admiral Coontz and the USS Tennessee, a Māori diplomatic greeting at Rotorua, Samoan ceremonial performances, Hawaiian hula dancers, and named naval musicians—documenting both American maritime power and its encounters with Indigenous Pacific cultures during the interwar era.

Item #23996

Price: $1,250.00