James Mooney was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. Known as "The Indian Man", he conducted major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as of tribes on the Great Plains. He did ethnographic studies of the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement among various Native American culture groups, after Sitting Bull's death in 1890. His works on the Cherokee include The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891), and Myths of the Cherokee (1900). All were published by the US Bureau of American Ethnology, within the Smithsonian Institution.
Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through 1947. Kroeber provided detailed information about Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi people, whom he studied over a period of years. He was the father of the acclaimed novelist, poet, and writer of short stories Ursula K. Le Guin.
Clark David Wissler was an American anthropologist, ethnologist, and archaeologist.
Ella Cara Deloria, also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, was a Yankton Dakota (Sioux) educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist. She recorded Native American oral history and contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on Dakota/Lakota/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote a novel titled Waterlily, which was published in 1988, and republished in 2009.
The Bureau of American Ethnology was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution. But from the start, the bureau's visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell, promoted a broader mission: "to organize anthropologic research in America." Under Powell, the bureau organized research-intensive multi-year projects; sponsored ethnographic, archaeological and linguistic field research; initiated publications series ; and promoted the fledgling discipline of anthropology. 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.
Alice Cunningham Fletcher was an American ethnologist, anthropologist, and social scientist who studied and documented Native American culture.
Francis La Flesche was the first professional Native American ethnologist; he worked with the Smithsonian Institution. He specialized in Omaha and Osage cultures. Working closely as a translator and researcher with the anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher, La Flesche wrote several articles and a book on the Omaha, plus more numerous works on the Osage. He made valuable original recordings of their traditional songs and chants. Beginning in 1908, he collaborated with American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman to develop an opera, Da O Ma (1912), based on his stories of Omaha life, but it was never produced. A collection of La Flesche's stories was published posthumously in 1998.
Frances Theresa Densmore was an American anthropologist and ethnographer born in Red Wing, Minnesota. Densmore studied Native American music and culture, and in modern terms, she may be described as an ethnomusicologist.
Kathrine Story ("Kay") French was an American anthropologist born in Illinois. Educated in California, she studied ceremonialism and naming practices on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in the state of Oregon. She was married to fellow anthropologist David H. French.
Ira Stuart Jacknis was an American anthropologist who studied Native American art of the Northwest Coast. Jacknis had studied anthropology and art history as an undergraduate, deepening his interests in the history of anthropology while working as an intern at the Smithsonian Institution under curator William C. Sturtevant. He then continued his studies in history and anthropology under the tutelage Nancy Munn, Raymond Fogelson, and George W. Stocking at the University of Chicago. Much of Jacknis' work connected to ethnography, art history, and the history of anthropology.
William Curtis Sturtevant was an anthropologist and ethnologist. He is best known as the general editor of the 20-volume Handbook of North American Indians. Renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss described the work as "an absolutely indispensable tool that should be found on the shelves of all libraries, public and private alike."
Katherine Siva Saubel was a Native American scholar, educator, tribal leader, author, and activist committed to preserving her Cahuilla history, culture and language. Her efforts focused on preserving the language of the Cahuilla. Saubel is acknowledged nationally and internationally as one of California's most respected Native American leaders. She received an honorary PhD in philosophy from La Sierra University, Riverside, California, and was awarded the Chancellor's Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the University of California at the University of California, Riverside.
Daniel C. Swan is an American cultural anthropologist and museum curator whose work has focused on documenting and interpreting the cultural history of the Americas. He has specialized particularly on the histories, social organizations, and cultures of Native North American peoples in Oklahoma, USA. His research on the history, significance, and artistic forms of the Native American Church has led to research and exhibition collaborations with artists and elders in a diversity of American Indian communities, both in Oklahoma and elsewhere in the Western United States. In addition to his work on American Indian topics, he has organized exhibitions and museum catalogs about cultural diversity in the American West and in the Western Hemisphere more broadly.
Beatrice Medicine was a scholar, anthropologist, and educator known for her work in the fields of Indigenous languages, cultures, and history. Medicine spent much of her life researching, teaching, and serving Native communities, primarily in the fields of bilingual education, addiction and recovery, mental health, tribal identity, and women's, children's, and LGBT community issues.
John Canfield Ewers was an American ethnologist and museum curator. Known for his studies on the art and history of the American Plains Indians, he was described by The New York Times as one of his country's "foremost interpreters of American Indian culture."
Katharine Bartlett (1907–2001) was an American physical anthropologist who worked from 1930 to 1952 as the first curator of the Museum of Northern Arizona, cataloging and organizing the museum's holdings, and then as the museum's librarian until 1974 and archivist until 1981. She participated in a survey of the Navajo Nation's reservation in the Little Colorado River basin and established the cataloging system used by the Glen Canyon Archaeological Project. She was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association and a Fellow of the Society of American Archaeology, as well as the first Fellow of the MNA. Honored in an exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution in 1986 and a recipient of the 1991 Sharlot Hall Award for her contributions to Arizona history, she was posthumously inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame in 2008.
Bertha Pauline Dutton was an American anthropologist and ethnologist specializing in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. She was one of the first female archeologists to work with the National Park Service.
Alice Littleman was a Kiowa beadwork artist and regalia maker, who during her lifetime was recognized as one of the leading Kiowa beaders and buckskin dressmakers. Her works are included in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Southern Plains Indian Museum, and the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Sister Marie Inez Hilger was an American Benedictine nun and anthropologist who was the first woman admitted to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Ethel Cutler Freeman was an American amateur anthropologist and the first female trustee of the American Institute of Anthropology. She is best known for her research of Seminole culture on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation in Henry County, Florida. During her career, she also conducted fieldwork with other Native American communities, including the Arapaho, Shoshoni, Navajo, Hopi, and Kickapoo. She also conducted research among the people of the Virgin Islands, the Bahama Islands, and Haiti as well as the Maasai and Zulu in Africa.
