MOONEY, JAMES

born Feb. 10, 1861, Richmond, Ind., U.S. died Dec. 22, 1921, Washington, D.C. early U.S. ethnographer of American Indians, especially those of the southeastern United States. His investigations of the history, heraldry, and culture of the Cherokee and Kiowa included the deciphering of the Kiowa calendar and the discovery of an ancient ritual of the North Carolina Cherokee recorded in the native script. His most acclaimed work was The Siouan Tribes of the East (1894). Mooney was largely self-taught. He had set out on an independent private expedition to Brazil when Maj. J.W. Powell, whom he stopped to ask for advice, persuaded him to take a position at the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnography. He remained with the bureau for the rest of his career.