*Mooney, James: * - James Mooney was an American ethnographer whose extensive fieldwork made him one of the most influential early scholars of Indigenous cultures in North America. Born in Richmond, Indiana, in 1861, he joined the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1885. He sp...

*Mooney, James: * - James Mooney was an American ethnographer whose extensive fieldwork made him one of the most influential early scholars of Indigenous cultures in North America. Born in Richmond, Indiana, in 1861, he joined the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1885. He spent several seasons living and working among Eastern Cherokee communities in North Carolina, learning the Cherokee language and documenting oral traditions, religious practices, medicinal knowledge, myths, and ceremonial life.Mooney later conducted research among the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Native nations and produced important studies of the Ghost Dance movement and Kiowa historical traditions. His best-known works include Myths of the Cherokee, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Although his writings reflect the assumptions and terminology of nineteenth-century anthropology, the linguistic, historical, and cultural materials he recorded remain significant resources for scholars and Indigenous communities.