James Mooney collection
name: label: Creator
content: Mooney, James, 1861-1921
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
label: Topic
content: Language and languages -- Documentation
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: The manuscripts in this collection were compiled from numerous sources.  Mooney deposited some of his papers in the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) archives during his lifetime.  After his death, J.N.B. Hewitt, BAE Custodian of Manuscripts, and Ione Mooney, Mooney's widow, selected additional material for inclusion in the archives.

Some materials in the collection were acquired by the BAE Archives and the National Anthropological Archives from the Department of Anthropology (DOA) object collections, DOA director's office, and other sources.  More information is available in the records for these individual items.  

Series 7: Mooney family material was donated by John M. (Jack) Scott, Mooney's grandson, in 1991.
creator: label: Creator
content: Mooney, James, 1861-1921
culture: label: Culture
content: Cherokee
label: Culture
content: Kiowa
label: Culture
content: Plains Apache (Naisha/Kiowa Apache)
label: Culture
content: Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne)
setName: label: See more items in
content: James Mooney collection
abstract: label: Summary
content: James Mooney (1861-1921) was an American ethnographer whose research focused on Native North Americans, particulary the Cherokee and other Southeast tribes, the Ghost Dance religion, and the Kiowa and other Plains tribes.  The collection consists primarily of field notes, drawings, maps, letters, historical research, and writings related to his research work as Ethnologist for the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1887 to 1922.
bioghist: label: Biographical Note
content: James Mooney (1861-1921) was an American ethnographer whose research focused on Native North Americans.  Mooney served as an Ethnologist for the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) for thirty-six years and is best known as the author of works on the Cherokee and other Southeast tribes, the Ghost Dance religion, and the Kiowa and other Plains tribes.

Mooney was born in Richmond, Indiana to Irish-Catholic immigrants. He graduated from high school but received no additional formal education. Most of his knowledge of anthropology and ethnography was self-taught, largely through his field experience working with various Native communities.

In 1885, Mooney began working for the BAE under John Wesley Powell. He spent the first years of his employment engaged in office work.  In 1887, he began fieldwork with the Cherokee in North Carolina.  From 1887 through the early 1900s, he studied various tribes in addition to the Cherokee, including the Kiowa, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Apache, Dakota, Kiowa-Apache, Wichita, Comanche, Paiute, Shoshoni, Caddo, and other groups in northern Mexico and in the Southeast.

Mooney collected material and prepared exhibits for the Spanish-Columbian Exposition in Madrid, Spain (1892), World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois (1893); Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in Nashville, Tennessee (1897); Trans-Mississippi International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska (1898); and Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri (1904).

Mooney married Ione Lee Gaut in 1897 and had six children. He died in 1921 at his home in Washington, D.C.

Chronology

1861 February 10 -- Born in Richmond, Indiana

1878 -- Graduated high school, then taught public school for 1 year

1879 -- Joined the staff of The Richmond Palladium

1885 -- Joined the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE)

1885-1888 -- Worked on "Indian synonymy" relating to Algonquian and Iroquoian languages

1887-1890 Summers -- Conducted fieldwork among Eastern Cherokee in North Carolina

1890-1891 Winter -- Visited Oklahoma Territory to complete research with Western Cherokee, witnessed the Ghost Dance at the Cheyenne/Arapaho Reservation for the first time

1891-1893 -- Collected material for the World's Columbian Exposition Observed and participated in three Ghost Dances during three seasons of fieldwork among Arapaho, Sioux, Kiowa, and Cheyenne communities

1891 -- Published "The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee"

1891 May -- Commissioned model tipis and summer houses from the Kiowa

1892 Winter -- Began intensive field study of Kiowa winter counts and Kiowa heraldry Worked among the Navajo and Hopi, making collections for the World's Columbian Exposition

1893 Fall -- Returned to Oklahoma Territory to observe and record the Arapaho Sun Dance. Also studied the Hopi Kachina Dance, the Wichita Corn Dance, and possibly also the Arapaho Ghost Dance

1895 -- Published Siouan Tribes of the East Trip to the Southwest, visited Hopi and Navajo communities

1896 -- Published "The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890"

1897-1898 -- Conducted fieldwork at Anadarko, Oklahoma Territory, Texas, and Mexico

1897 September 28 -- Married Ione Lee Gaut

1898 -- Attended Trans-Mississippi International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska.   Published "Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians"

1899 Fall -- Traveled with DeLancey Gill, BAE Illustrator, to William Co, Virginia to study and photograph Mattapony and Pamunkey communities; Gill took pictures while Mooney did census work before traveling to the Chickahominy River

1900 -- Published "Myths of the Cherokee"

1900 Spring -- Visited communities of the Powhatan Confederacy in Virginia

1901-1906 -- Entered into cooperative agreement between the BAE and the Field [Columbian] Museum; Studied and collected Kiowa for the BAE/USNM and studied and collected Cheyenne for the Field Museum

1902 -- Visited Kiowa and Apache communities all year except for two brief visits to Washington, D.C. in September and November

1903 -- Studied the Sun Dance on the Cheyenne reservation in Oklahoma Territory

1903 Winter -- Visited the Cheyenne-Arapaho agency in Darlington; finished Kiowa tipi models for the BAE's exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition

1904 -- Supervised installation of exhibits at Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis Visited the Kiowa at Mount Scott, Oklahoma Territory

1905 -- Visited the Kiowa at Andarko and the Cheyenne at Cantonment, Oklahoma Territory

1906 April -- Last visit to the Cheyenne

1907-1910 -- President, Gaelic Society of Washington

1910-1916 Summers -- Visits to the Cherokee

1914-1915 -- President, Anthropological Society of Washington

1918 -- Assisted with chartering the Native American Church of Oklahoma

1921 December 22 -- Died, Washington D.C.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 36 Linear feet (46 boxes, 14 folders)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1849-1980
label: Date
content: bulk 1887-1921
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.1992-34
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The collection is arranged into seven (7) series: (1) Cherokee; (2) South Atlantic tribes; (3) Kiowa and Southern Plains; (4) Indigenous population of North America; (5) Other research; (6) Writing; (7) Mooney family material.  

The arrangement is based on Mooney's description of his own papers in "Ethnologic Material of James Mooney" (1903) [see Series 5].
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: The material in this collection has been organized and cataloged in various ways by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) and National Anthropological Archives (NAA). There is little remaining evidence of Mooney's own organizational scheme.

The first cataloging and classification systems employed by the BAE involved organizing the manuscripts onto shelves by language group, and frequently involved separating related items, such as letters, notes, and vocabularies.  In 1926, J.N.B. Hewitt, Custodian of Manuscripts, with the assistance of typist Mae Tucker, began to assign Manuscript Numbers to BAE collections, including Mooney's papers. The numbers loosely corresponded to language families, but this may have been a result of the numbers being assigned to the manuscripts in the order in which they were already arranged on the shelves. The manuscripts were stamped with a BAE stamp including the month and year they were cataloged and the catalog number was stamped or written on the documents.  Further attempts were made to (re-) arrange Mooney's materials by BAE Archivist Margaret Blaker (1953-1972).  In some cases, manuscripts numbers were reassigned, resulting in several different numbers appearing on the documents and in the catalog records.

In 2025, Mooney's manuscripts were reprocessed and incorporated into a single collection now known as the James Mooney collection. The Archivist assembled Mooney's ethnographic and linguistic manuscripts, writings, commissioned artworks, and personal papers.  Manuscripts created by other individuals but annotated by Mooney were not included.  The Archivist based the series arrangement of the bulk of the collection on Mooney's description of his own papers in "Ethnologic Material of James Mooney" (1903) [see Series 5].

The Archivist referred to the following published resourcesto identify, arrange, and describe the research material in Series 3: Kiowa and Southern Plains:

Ewers, John C. Murals in the Round: Painted Tipis of the Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache Indians.  Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978.

Merrill, William L, Marian Kaulaity Hansson, Candace S. Greene, and Frederick J. Reuss.  A Guide to the Kiowa Collections at the Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. 

Mooney, James.  In Sun's Likeness and Power: Cheyenne Accounts of Shield and Tipi Heraldry. Edited by Father Peter J. Powell.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Old BAE/NAA manuscript numbers and titles have been recorded as "Local Numbers" for each file. In some cases, more than one BAE/NAA manuscript has been incorporated into a single file. In other cases, BAE/NAA manuscripts have been divided among several new files.  Some items, including drawings and other artworks, were assigned inventory numbers in the 1970s-1980s.  These numbers have been recorded as "Local Numbers" with the prefix "NAA INV."

Original titles and wording on the documents were used when possible, even when they included outdated or offensive terminology. Supplied titles, including modern terminology, are in square brackets [].

Processed and encoded by Gabrielle Sanchez, 2025.
bibliography: label: Selected Bibliography
content: 1891. "Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee." In  -- Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology -- .  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891.

1894.  -- The Siouan Tribes of the East.  --   Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin. 22. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894.

1896. "The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890." In  -- Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology -- . Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896.

1898. "Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians." In  -- Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology -- . Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1898.

1900.  "Myths of the Cherokee." In  -- Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology -- . Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900.

1908. "The Cheyenne Indians." In  -- Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association 1905-6.  --  Vol. 1, part 6, Lancaster, PA: New Era Printing Co., 1908. 361-442.

1928. "The Aboriginal Population of America North of Mexico." Prefaced and revised by John R. Swanton.  In  -- Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections -- . No. 52.  Baltimore: Lord Baltimore Press, 1928.

1932.   -- The Swimmer Manuscript: Cherokee Sacred Formulas and Medicinal Prescriptions -- .  Revised, completed, and edited by Frans Olbrechts.  Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin. 99.  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The collection consists primarily of field notes, drawings, maps, letters, historical research, and writings related to James Mooney's work as Ethnologist for the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1887 to 1922.  The collection contains material related to Mooney's field work with the Cherokee, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and other tribes, as well as his study of historical and archival sources.  

The bulk of the collection consists of material in the Cherokee language and syllabary, including sacred formulas, and material related to the study of Kiowa and Cheyenne heraldry and the creation of Kiowa and Cheyenne model tipis for several international expositions.  

The collection also documents Mooney's study of the Native peoples of the mid-Atlantic and Florida and the indigenous population of North America prior to colonization.  There is a small amount of material relating to Mooney's personal life and interest in Irish culture and language. 

There is little material in the collection related to Mooney's study of the Ghost Dance and Kiowa calendar or other works published during his lifetime.  His notes on these topics are not in the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) collections, and probably do not survive. The collection does not include manuscripts in the NAA collections created by others and merely annotated Mooney.

Please note that many of Mooney's notes are fragmentary, incomplete, and difficult to read.  Mooney frequently made brief notes on slips and scraps of paper, resulting in disjointed and obscure files whose meaning and context are not always clear. He also commonly removed pages or entire sections from his notebooks for research and further study.  As a result, many of the remaining notebooks and files are missing pages and/or contain portions of other, unidentified notebooks and files.  Mooney also regularly employed abbreviations in his notes and his handwriting can be difficult to decipher.

Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) holds the bulk of Mooney's photographs in
 PhotoLot 74 and holds additional Mooney correspondence and maps in the Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 
 
Manuscripts with notations, additions, and/or comments by Mooney are held the NAA's Numbered Manuscript collections.  

The James Mooney Collection Supplement Files in the NAA Reading room contain bibliographies, biographies, lists, copies of related material from other repositories, and transcripts of some Mooney documents.

The Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center holds James Mooney recordings of American Indian Ghost Dance songs.