Ben Wittick (1845-1903) and John K. Hillers (1843-1925) - Zion's Peak, Rio Virgin, Utah, 1873

Unframed. Negative date 1873. Print date c. 1890. Ben Wittick was a pioneer photographer of the American Southwest. This image, along with others in its collection, was a part of his "Views in New Mexico, Arizona, and Old Mexico" and represented life of Pueblo people in the late 19th century. John K. Hillers was born in Hanover, Germany and came to the U.S.A. in 1852. He was a policeman and later a soldier in the American Civil War. In 1871, he was hired as a boatman for the second expedition with John Wesley Powell down the Colorado River, but then took the place of Powell's cousin, Walter Clement Powell, as the assistant to the photographers on the expedition (first E. O. Beaman and then James Fennemore). By the next year, Hillers was Powell's chief photographer for the Grand Canyon trip. He worked as a photographer with Powell's Bureau of Ethnology, US Geological Survey, and Bureau of American Ethnology. He retired in 1900, but continued to work until 1919.