“The mountaineers were accompanied […] by 362 porters, so that the expedition in the end amounted to over four hundred men, including twenty Sherpa guides from Tibet and Nepal, with a total weight of ten thousand pounds of baggage”
I don’t know the details of that expedition, but typically, the sherpas make multiple trips up and down the mountain to bring the necessary material up to height, so that those paying can relatively comfortably acclimatize at height. Climbing Everest almost always is a team effort.
Even if you ignore those porters , those “twenty Sherpa guides from Tibet and Nepal”, IMO, deserve to be mentioned there more than Jan Morris, who didn’t make it further up the mountain than 22,000 feet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Morris).
(and aside: ten thousand pounds of baggage seems very low to me. That’s less than 30 pounds per porter ⇒ I guess that’s what made it to the highest camp)
While the Sherpa were crucial to success of the expedition, it's also important not to jump to the other extreme and underestimate the contributions of the British party. This was not a "guided" expedition where the clients were just going up in the wind shadow. Back in 1953, it's pretty unlikely that sherpa party could have summitted on their own.
If I remember correctly (it's a while since I read Hillary's account of the expedition), only three of the sherpa were able to go up to camp 4, and two of those them had to turn back due to altitude sickness. Tenzing Norgay did not have the technical knowledge to operate the oxygen systems. Also, crampons were far less advanced back then, so the mountaineers were also responsible for cutting steps every few days for all the routes that the porters were using to haul gear.
In New Zealand, despite our somewhat child-like at times desire to be known on the world stage, we all largely know and acknowledge about Tenzing Norgay as well as Hillary - which is exactly what Sir Ed wanted.
Source? As I recall, Edmund stated he just didn't think of it in the heat (actually: cold) of the moment. They were only on the summit for a few minutes.
I'd be very surprised if a man of Tenzing's calibre and achievements could not figure out something so trivial.
Edit: I've found some citations that support your point, I apologize.
Although, I'd add (a) Tenzing's account states that he offered to take a photo but was declined. And (b) a more fair description would be "because he had never used a camera before" rather than "didn't know how to work a camera".
The later suggesting a lack of intelligence or civility (though I'm sure that wasn't your intent), I'm probably just nitpicking :-).
funny thing is that the first "who wants to be a millionaire" winner in Germany had him as million [Deutsche Mark] question ("who climbed the mount everest with Edmund Hillary" or something like that). And that's why his name has always stuck in my head. However, it also goes to show that he is less famous than Hillary.
Hillary did a lot for the Sherpa community, and he rightfully gave Tenzing the acknowledgement that he deserved, one of the first western mountaineers to do so.
If you go to Everest region in Nepal, there are schools and even airport built by him just above Namche Bazaar... truly great contribution back. He literally spent decades of his later life trying to develop mainly Sherpa communities which lived in brutal poverty, largely left on their own by central government. Let's not forget Nepal was and still is one of the poorest countries in the world. Very few benefit from tourism, and money Sherpa earn is brutal compared to rest of non-mountaineering population.
Basically you either join Gurkha and fight for British, go for mountaineering career, become a corrupt government official (which you can't just join due to nepotism) or try to leave if you have money for it.
This 'critique' goes both ways and kind of show its natural to humans - when both Tenzing and Hillary came back to India from Nepal (Nepal didn't have an international airport back then, and it took quite a bit of time to built one, all expeditions went through India's sea ports) - Hillary was almost completely ignored, and Tenzing was the only one to be celebrated.
I understand the motivations ie due to past shameful english colonialism, plus good old nationalism. But its like that everywhere. It doesn't make it any more acceptable these days obviously.
Most of the "forgetting" seems to happen when it comes to communicating about larger, less notable expeditions.