James Mooney photographs
name: label: Creator
content: Mooney, James, 1861-1921
place: label: Place
content: Mexico
creator: label: Creator
content: Mooney, James, 1861-1921
culture: label: Culture
content: Apache
label: Culture
content: Caddo
label: Culture
content: Cherokee
label: Culture
content: Diné (Navajo)
label: Culture
content: Inunaina (Arapaho)
label: Culture
content: Kiowa
label: Culture
content: Niuam (Comanche)
label: Culture
content: Powhatan
label: Culture
content: Dakota (Eastern Sioux)
label: Culture
content: Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Cheyenne)
label: Culture
content: Wichita
label: Culture
content: Lenape (Delaware)
label: Culture
content: Mattaponi
label: Culture
content: Pamunkey
label: Culture
content: Nansemond
label: Culture
content: Chickahominy
setName: label: See more items in
content: James Mooney photographs
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: James Mooney (1861-1921) was an American ethnographer whose research focused on Native North Americans.  The son of Irish Catholic immigrants, Mooney was born in Richmond, Indiana. His formal education was limited to the public schools of the city; 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 Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) under John Wesley Powell.  There, he carried out ethnographic research for more than 30 years. He was a very early adopter of photography and made thouands of photographs in the course of his fieldwork.

Mooney married Ione Lee Gaut in 1897, and had six children. He died in 1921 in Washington, D.C. from heart disease.  

For fuller biographies of Mooney see George Ellison's introduction to the 1992 edition of Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, as well as The Indian Man: A Biography of James Mooney by L.G. Moses (2002).

Chronology

February 10, 1861 -- Born

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

1879 -- Joined the staff of The Richmond Palladium

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

May-June 1885 -- Worked with Cherokee Chief N. J. Smith on Eastern Cherokee grammar

Summer 1886 -- Worked with Chief Smith (in D.C.)

Summer 1887 -- First trip to the Eastern Cherokee of the Great Smokey Mountains to study language, collect material culture, and document activities including the Green Corn Dance and Cherokee ball games (3.5 months)

Winter/Spring 1888 -- Studied Iroquoian and Algonquian synonymies and published articles on the Irish and the Cherokee, collected and studied Cherokee sacred formulae

1889 -- Visit to Cherokee (worked with Swimmer, worked on his maps of place names/mound sites, witnessed ball play and the Green Corn Dance, gathered plants and collected objects for the Smithsonian

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

1891 -- "The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee" published  Visit to Cherokee in Oklahoma Territory

April 1891 -- Delegated to collect material for Chicago Exposition.  Collected for the next 2 years while studying the Ghost Dance

May 1891 -- Photographed Kiowa Mescal (Peyote) Ceremony Headed west for a four month collecting trip for the Chicago exposition, commissioned model tipis and summer houses from the Kiowa 

1891-1893 -- Observed/participated in three ghost dances during three seasons of fieldwork among Arapaho, Sioux, Kiowa, and Cheyenne communities

1892 -- Photographed Kiowa Mescal (Peyote) Ceremony and Oglala Sioux Ghost Dance

Winter 1892 -- Began intensive field study of Kiowa winter counts and Kiowa heraldry  Among the Navajo and Hopi, making collections for Chicago Exposition

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

May 1895 -- "Siouan Tribes of the East" published

1895 -- Trip to the Southwest, visited Hopi and Navajo communities

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

January 1897 -- At Anadarko

September 28, 1897 -- Married Ione Lee Gaut

Fall 1898 -- Trip to Southwest, visited Hopi and Navajo communities

1898 -- Attended Omaha Fair, helped plan 'Congress of Indians', supervised Frank Rinehart, who photographed many of the Indian delegates to the fair Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians published 

Fall 1899 -- For three weeks in the fall traveled with DeLancey Gill to William Co, VA to study and photograph Mattapony and Pamunkey communities; Gill took pictures while Mooney did census work before traveling to the Chickahominy River

1900 -- Myths of the Cherokee published 

Spring 1900 -- Studied communities of the Powhatan Confederacy in VA; traveled to VA again with Gill to visit the Pamunkey and Mattapony communities for more pictures and to complete census, then traveled to area south of Portsmouth to find the rural settlement of the Nansemond.

Fall 1901 -- Cooperative agreement with Field Museum and George A. Dorsey; Studied Kiowa for BAE, studied Cheyenne for Field Museum (focused on heraldry). This project, with Dorsey working on Arapaho, continued until 1906 

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

July 1903 -- Mooney and Dorsey study Sun Dance on Cheyenne reservation in Oklahoma Territory, brought staff photographer Charles Carpenter. Spent a week attending the Sun Dance and made the first photographs of the skull-dragging ceremony 

October 1903 -- Photographed Arapaho Tomahawk Dance 

Winter 1903 -- At the Cheyenne-Arapaho agency in Darlington; winter spent with Cheyenne, and finishing Kiowa tipi models for the Bureau's exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition

March 1904 -- At Mount Scott with Kiowa

June 1904 -- St. Louis Exposition opens

April 1906 -- Last visit to Cheyenne

Summers, 1911-1916 -- Visits to Cherokee

1918 -- Assisted with chartering the Native American Church of Oklahoma (the Secretary of the Interior issued a ban on his research)

June 28, 1918 -- Requested by Fewkes to study peyote cult and Kiowa Heraldry (see Mooney Papers, Box 1, Letters, statement dated 1921)

December 22, 1921 -- Died
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 11.75 Linear feet (Photographic prints: albumen, gelatin silver
Negatives: glass, cellulose nitrate
)
unitdate: label: Date
content: circa 1872-1920
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.PhotoLot.74
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Photographs
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Abby Clouse-Radigan carried out initial sorting of the prints and negatives and compiled the timeline in 2011. Eden Orelove processed the Kiowa series in 2015. Gina Rappaport completed processing in 2021.

Mooney photographs previously filed in Photo Lot 78, Photo Lot 24, and the "Vintage Prints" collection have been reunited and merged with Photo Lot 74. Mooney's glass negatives remain integrated into the BAE glass negative collection, but have been intellectually arranged in this finding aid. It should be noted that not all negatives have associated prints, and some prints do not have associated negatives; therefore, both the prints and the negatives may need to be consulted to view all of the images.

The item numbers for the photographs can be confusing as Mooney, the BAE, and the NAA employed various numbering systems for photographs over the years, all of which are present in the collection.  Mooney's numbers include a number followed by a superscript, underlined number.  The "base" number is the series indicator and the superscript number is the item number in the series.  Other numbers relate to whether a copy negative was made, and several of the series include new numbers assigned based on series.item, for example KW4.2 indicates item 2 in Kiowa subseries 4. For several of the series there are spreadsheets available in the repository with numbers cross referenced.

Collection and image descriptions provided in this finding aid were compiled using the best available sources of information. Such sources include the creator's annotations or descriptions, collection accession files, primary and secondary source material and subject matter experts.  For the Kiowa series, many of the identifications of individuals were made by consulting A Guide to the Kiowa Collections at the Smithsonian Institution , by William L. Merrill, Marian Kaulaity Hansson, Candace Greene and Frederick J. Reuss.  John Peabody Harrington's notes (largely informed by Delos K. Lonewolf) on many of the prints were also incorporated in the Kiowa series.

Because there is no consistent spelling of individual names throughout the collection, all diacritics have been removed in an effort to maintain a systemic accuracy. While every effort was made to provide accurate information, it is understood that errors may reveal themselves following review by other subject experts, and new information is welcome.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Photographs
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents note
content: Photographs made during James Mooney's fieldwork with Apache, Arapaho, Caddo, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Comanche, Dakota/Lakota, Hopi, Kiowa, Navaho, Powhatan, and Wichita communities, as well as in Mexico. Photographs document individuals and families, gatherings, ceremonies and dances, daily activities, games, crafts, landscapes, and burials.

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 Anthropology Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.