James Mooney (February 10, 1861 – December 22, 1921) was an American ethnographer who worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology for thirty-six years and studied North American, particularly the Kiowa, Cheyenne and Cherokee tribes. He 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. "Register to the Papers of James Mooney" , National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, accessed November 10, 2009 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 U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, within the Smithsonian Institution.
Native American artifacts collected by Mooney are held in the collections of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and the Department of Anthropology, Field Museum of Natural History. Papers and photographs from Mooney are in the collections of the National Anthropological Archives, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.
Early life James Mooney was born on February 10, 1861, in Richmond, Indiana. He was the son of Irish Catholic immigrants, James Mooney Sr. and Ellen Devlin. His parents came from farming families in County Meath. They left for Liverpool around 1849 and then migrated to New York in 1852. That same year, they were married at the Little Church of the Transfiguration in New York City. Their first child, Mary Anne, was born in 1853. The family soon moved to Richmond, Indiana, where James Mooney Sr. worked at a local gas company. Their next daughter, Margaret, was born in 1856. A few years later, Ellen gave birth to their son, James Mooney. James Mooney Sr. died of pneumonia when his son was only a few months old.
Mooney's mother raised her children Catholic, sending them to St. Mary's Catholic Church for religious education. Mooney and his siblings were also brought up learning about their Irish roots through their mother and grandmother's stories about Irish folklore, history, and traditions. His sister Mary Anne would grow up to become a nun at Mount St. Clare Convent, while his other sister Margaret would remain a schoolteacher throughout her life.
As a child, Mooney was frequently left feeling weak due to his rheumatic fever, an illness which posed difficulties for him throughout his adult life as well. Since he was young, Mooney's family and teachers had noted his studious nature. Mooney was known to go through obsessive phases. At eight years of age, he began a project to document all the books that had ever been published. Later on, he would also try to make a list of all the different types of sewing machines and all the insurance companies doing business at the time. In 1873, Mooney discovered his lifelong interest in Indians in the aftermath of the Modoc War, after hearing someone make a comment about it. He was 12 years old at the time, and resolved to compile a list of the names and locations of all existing Native American tribes.
Mooney's formal education was limited to the public schools of the city, and he graduated from Richmond High School in May 1879.Moses, Lester George. "James Mooney, U.S. Ethnologist: A Biography." ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 1977. After graduation, Mooney became a schoolteacher for two semesters. In 1879, he joined the Richmond Palladium as a staff member but continued to devote his extra time to studying Native American cultures. He also increased his knowledge of Indian anthropology by studying the works of John Wesley Powell and Lewis Henry Morgan. While in Richmond, Mooney lived in close proximity to Earlham College, which allowed him to meet people who were involved in Indian affairs. During this period, Mooney was also able to meet with some Indians themselves as many of them attended Quaker missionary schools in the area. He spent his time in Earlham's library to read books about Indians and study his interests in more depth. He became a self-taught expert on American tribes by his own studies and his careful observation during long residences with different groups. The field of ethnography was new in the late 19th century, and he helped create high standards for the work.
Career at the Bureau of American Ethnology In 1885, Mooney started working with the Bureau of American Ethnology (now part of the Smithsonian Institution) at Washington, D.C., after years of written correspondence with John Wesley Powell to convince him of his qualifications. It was not until Mooney traveled to Washington in 1885 to personally meet with Powell and show him samples of his work that Powell allowed Mooney to work at the bureau as a volunteer.
Mooney's first major assignment was to classify Native American tribes by linguistic categories. Mooney had previously already compiled a list of approximately 2,500 tribal names, which he referred to as his "Indian Synonymy". Powell assigned Henry Weatherbee Henshaw to assist Mooney in revising his synonymy. The final list was published as a 55-page booklet under the title A List of Linguistic Families of the Indian Tribes North of Mexico, with Provisional List of the Principal Tribal Names and Synonyms. This work became an essential manual for the bureau until a more comprehensive classification appeared in 1891 under Powell's name.
Mooney was then given a second assignment to build upon the work of Otis T. Mason, the curator of ethnology at the National Museum since 1884. The task was to review the bureau's library to determine its usefulness for ethnological research and create thorough files on Indian tribes by their linguistic affinity. Under Henshaw, who assigned several staff members to each linguistic group, Mooney, alongside Garrick Mallery, expanded on his original synonymy project and focused on the Algonquian and Iroquoian families.
After officially being sworn in as an ethnologist by the bureau in 1886, Mooney decided to embark on his first fieldwork among the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, mostly in North Carolina. He worked closely with them for three consecutive seasons from 1887 to 1889, learning their language and daily life while collecting enough material to produce several important ethnographic studies. The extended length of time he spent amongst them allowed him to document sacred narratives, ritual practices, and historical traditions that were rarely shared with outsiders. This culminated in one of his most acclaimed publications, Myths of the Cherokee (1900).
In the fall of 1890, Mooney was on his way to conduct fieldwork for his research on the Cherokee, authorized by the bureau, when the Ghost Dance began to draw public attention. He asked the bureau for permission to go observe the Ghost Dance instead, and was awarded it with the additional task of investigating the phenomenon thoroughly. His book, The Ghost-dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (1896) included a balanced historical account drawing on unpublished government records, newspaper reports, and interviews with Native American people. Mooney's analysis was different from most of his contemporaries' analysis as he treated the Ghost Dance as a legitimate religious response to colonial dispossession rather than as a political conspiracy or delusion.
Research into peyote religion In his later bureau career, Mooney devoted increasing attention to the peyote religion. He played an instrumental role in the early Western characterization of peyote and its hallucinogenic effects. In 1887, John Raleigh Briggs, who learned of peyote from his brother who had spent years among Native Americans and Mexicans, published an article about his use of a very low dose of peyote and the effects he experienced. Briggs is credited with introducing peyote to the Western world. Subsequently, Mooney independently became the first known Westerner to attend and use peyote in a peyote ceremony in 1891 and 1892 and published his findings starting in 1891. In 1894, Mooney obtained a large amount of peyote and distributed it to the physicians Daniel W. Prentiss and F. P. Morgan, the physician and chemist Harvey Washington Wiley, and the physician Silas Weir Mitchell. Prentiss and Morgan evaluated the effects of peyote in several subjects and published their findings in 1895. Mitchell then tried peyote as well and published his experience with it in 1896. Mitchell sent some of his peyote buttons to the psychologist and philosopher William James, who took a low dose but became violently ill and did not further try the drug. The sexologist Havelock Ellis read Mitchell's report, obtained peyote and tried it himself, and published his experience in 1897 and thereafter. Initially obtained from Briggs, the German chemists and pharmacologists Louis Lewin and Arthur Heffter began work attempting to isolate the active constituents of peyote in 1888 and 1894, respectively. Heffter successfully isolated and tried mescaline from peyote, experiencing psychedelic effects with pure mescaline, and published his findings in 1898.
Mooney viewed peyotism as one of the most significant Indigenous religious developments of the modern period and sought to document it comprehensively. His work in this area, however, eventually caused him trouble with federal Indian policy and led him to be met with suspicion and doubt by government institutions.
Writing career Mooney's writing style was widely considered as evocative. His sympathetic treatment of Native Americans is attributed to his upbringing and ethnic heritage. Although he wrote as a scientist, his objective attitude toward Native Americans contrasted with other writing, which was often either romantic or discriminatory. He largely accepted the goal of Indian assimilation as outlined by reformers of the era. But, he was a witness to what the costs were to the traditional peoples and reported on issues and changes with objectivity.
During the late 1800s Native Americans were under harsh attack in many areas, and essentially subjects of genocide by the United States of America. The Indian Wars, intended to suppress tribal resistance to European-American settlement of the West, was generally presented as required because Native Americans made unjustified attacks on pioneers. Mooney wrote more objectively about issues in the West.
Mooney took the time to observe various Native American tribes in the way they lived on a daily basis. Prior to his work, most people outside reservations learned about issues only from a distance. He wanted to learn and to teach other Americans about their culture. He published several books based on his studies of Native American tribes.
In a 1910s letter to Frank Speck, Mooney advocated that Native American tribes in Virginia adopt racial segregation from African-Americans as a method of "salvage". Speck endorsed this strategy later on.
The Ghost-dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890