From there, his free black servants brought runaway slaves to awaiting boats on Waukegan Harbour, giving the impression that they were doing business for James Cory.

[2] She made her living as a commercial artist, contributing drawings to Recreation magazine and was involved with New York's Pen and Brush Club.

[9] Beginning in 1895, Cory partnered with potter Charles Volkmar to create hand-painted plaques, cups and plates of historic people, like William Penn and Alexander Hamilton.

[7] Her interest in the western United States had been sparked by Ernest Seton and when Akin told her of his plans to begin an artists' colony in Northern Arizona in 1905, Cory booked passage on a train to Canyon Diablo, Arizona,[7][9] and then traveled north 65 miles through the desert to the high mesa of the Hopi reservation.

Her pictures depicted a traditional Hopi way of life on the precipice of having to assimilate or adapt to modern white America.

[13] ...her willingness to make do with leftovers, to recycle; her disregard for material possessions; her tendency to barter rather than buy; and her limited appetite and consumption.

[16] She didn't sell her photographs, but would use them as illustrations for her essays, like Life and Its Living in Hopiland – The Hopi Women, which was published in a magazine in 1909.

[19] Because of declining attendance at the Prescott Rodeo, Cory helped a group of local men calling themselves "Smoki" (pronounced Smoke-eye) with information about Hopi ceremonies that they performed.

When the Smoki grew large enough to need a permanent facility and a museum, Cory assisted with the design and decoration of the buildings.

[1] She was described as having had "a plain, weather-beaten face, pulled-back hair, a determined black-clothed walk with a cane, as if every trip downtown were aimed at confronting the mayor.

Due to concern from the Hopis about the rights to their cultural property, many images will not be published by the museum and are available in a restricted file for viewing by researchers.

Perhaps the man's position straddling shade and sun reflects the worlds he also straddles, which are visually conveyed in his cropped hair and Anglo clothes and in his skill at spinning wool, its presence in the Southwest the result of encounters between the Spanish and Native peoples.The Smoki Museum in Prescott, Arizona, has the largest collection of Cory artwork on display.