Bureau of American Ethnology

The Bureau of American Ethnology was founded by the Smithsonian Institution in 1879. It was founded to obtain information about American Indian peoples in the far west - information that was rapidly disappearing - and produced a series of annual reports on ethnology and linguistics.

Related Topics:
Smithsonian Institution - 1879 - American Indian peoples - Ethnology - Linguistics

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The interest in the foundation of the Bureau of Ethnology at this time was due to the intense controversy over the identity of the Moundbuilders. 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.

Related Topics:
Moundbuilder - Native American

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John Wesley Powell, also known as the first man to travel the Grand Canyon by boat, lobbied heartily for the Bureau's founding, and took on the first directorship of the bureau once it was established. Under his leadership, the bureau took on large archaeological programs over a large geographical area. Powell and the bureau moved into Moundbuilder studies in 1881. The Bureau's appointed head of the Division of Mound Exploration, Cyrus Thomas, eventually published his conclusions on the origins of the mounds in the bureau's Annual Report of 1894, which is considered to be the last word in the controversy over the Moundbuilders' identities. After Thomas' publication, it was generally accepted among scholars that native Americans were indeed the Moundbuilders.

Related Topics:
John Wesley Powell - Grand Canyon - 1881 - Cyrus Thomas - 1894

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On February 1, 1965, the Bureau of American Ethnology and the Department of Anthropology of the Museum of Natural History were combined to form the new Smithsonian Office of Anthropology under the Museum of Natural History.

Related Topics:
1965 - Smithsonian - Museum of Natural History

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