Bureau of American Ethnology
Encyclopedia
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
. But from the start, the bureau's visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell was a U.S. soldier, geologist, explorer of the American West, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions...
, promoted a broader mission: "to organize anthropologic research in America." Under Powell, the bureau organized research intensive multi-year projects; sponsored ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
, archaeological
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
and linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
field research; initiated publications series (most notably its Annual Reports and Bulletins); and promoted the fledgling discipline of anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
. It prepared exhibits for expositions and collected anthropological artifacts for the Smithsonian United States National Museum. In addition, the BAE was the official repository of documents concerning American Indians collected by the various US geological surveys, especially the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region and the Geological Survey of the Territories. It developed a manuscript repository, library and illustrations section that included photographic work and the collection of photographs.
In 1897, the Bureau of Ethnology's name changed to the Bureau of American Ethnology to emphasize the geographic limit of its interests, although its staff briefly conducted research in US possessions such as Hawaii and the Philippines. In 1965, the BAE merged with the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology to form the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology within the United States National Museum (now the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History
National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. Admission is free and the museum is open 364 days a year....
). In 1968, the SOA archives became the National Anthropological Archives.
Research
The BAE's staff included some of America's earliest field anthropologists, including Frank Hamilton CushingFrank Hamilton Cushing
Frank Hamilton Cushing was an American anthropologist and ethnologist...
, James Owen Dorsey
James Owen Dorsey
James Owen Dorsey was an American ethnologist, linguist, and Episcopalian missionary who contributed to the description of the Ponca, Omaha, and other southern Siouan languages. He also collected much material on beliefs and institutions, although most of his manuscripts have not been published...
, Jesse Walter Fewkes, Alice Cunningham Fletcher
Alice Cunningham Fletcher
Alice Cunningham Fletcher was an American ethnologist who studied and documented American Indian culture.-Biography:...
, John N.B. Hewitt, Francis LaFlesche, Cosmos and Victor Mindeleff, James Mooney
James Mooney
James Mooney was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. He did major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as those on the Great Plains...
, John Stevenson, and Matilda Coxe Stevenson
Matilda Coxe Stevenson
Matilda Coxe Stevenson was an American ethnologist, born at San Augustine, Tex.-Bio:In 1872 she was married to James Stevenson, an ethnologist , with whom she spent 13 years in explorations of the Rocky Mountain region....
. In the 20th century, the BAE's staff included such anthropologists as Neil Judd
Neil Judd
Neil Merton Judd was an American archaeologist who studied under the pioneering archaeologist of the American Southwest, Edgar Lee Hewett. He was curator of archaeology at the erstwhile United States National Museum, which later became part of the Smithsonian Institution...
, John Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington
John Peabody Harrington was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the native peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which has remained unpublished: the shelf space in the Library of Congress dedicated to his work...
(a linguist who spent more than 40 years documenting endangered languages) and William C. Sturtevant
William C. Sturtevant
Dr. William C. Sturtevant was an anthropologist and ethnologist.He is best known as the general editor of the 20-volume Handbook of North American Indians....
. The BAE supported the work of many non-Smithsonian researchers (known as collaborators), most notably Franz Boas
Franz Boas
Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...
, Frances Densmore
Frances Densmore
Frances Densmore was an American ethnographer and ethnomusicologist, both being divisions of study within anthropology. She was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, and specialized in Native American music and culture....
, Garrick Mallery
Garrick Mallery
Garrick Mallery was an American ethnologist.-Ancestry:His family was of English origin, he himself being in direct descent from Peter Mallery, who landed at Boston in 1638. Some of his ancestors were military officers in the colonial service, and at a later period others of them served in the...
, Washington Matthews
Washington Matthews
Washington Matthews was a surgeon in the United States Army, ethnographer, and linguist known for his studies of Native American peoples, especially the Navajo.-Early life and education:...
, Paul Radin
Paul Radin
Paul Radin was a widely read American cultural anthropologist and folklorist of the early twentieth century. Born the son of a rabbi in the cosmopolitan Polish city of Łódź, he became a student of Franz Boas at Columbia, where he counted Edward Sapir and Robert Lowie among his classmates...
, Cyrus Thomas
Cyrus Thomas
Cyrus Thomas was a U.S. ethnologist and entomologist prominent in the late 19th century and noted for his studies of the natural history of the American West.-Biography:Thomas was born in Kingsport, Tennessee...
and T.T. Waterman.
The BAE had three subunits: the Mounds Survey (1882–1895); the Institute of Social Anthropology (1943–1952), and the River Basin Surveys (1946–1969).
Mounds survey
At the time the BAE was founded, there was intense controversy over the identity of the Mound Builders, the term for the prehistoric people who had built complex, monumental earthwork mounds. Archaeologists, both amateur and professional, were divided between believing the mounds were built by passing groups of people who settled in various places elsewhere, or believing they could have been built by Native Americans. Cyrus ThomasCyrus Thomas
Cyrus Thomas was a U.S. ethnologist and entomologist prominent in the late 19th century and noted for his studies of the natural history of the American West.-Biography:Thomas was born in Kingsport, Tennessee...
, the Bureau's appointed head of the Division of Mound Exploration, eventually published his conclusions on the origins of the mounds in the Bureau's Annual Report of 1894. It is considered to be the last word in the controversy over the Mound builders' identities. After Thomas' publication, scholars generally accepted that varying cultures of prehistoric indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
, Native Americans, were the Mound builders.
See also
- History of indigenous peoples of North America
- Native American history
External links
- List of Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology
- National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
- Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
- A History of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, 1897–1997
- Digitized copies of the BAE Annual Reports at Gallica
- Digitized copies of BAE Bulletins No. 1 – 24
- Digitized copies of BAE Bulletins No. 25 – 200
- Register to the Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution