This article is about the anthropologist of Native Americans in the United States; see also:

• D. W. Mooney, (d. 1882), prospector and namesake of Mooney Falls

James Mooney (1861-1921) was a notable anthropologist who lived for several years among the Cherokee. He was born at Richmond, Ind. In 1885 he became connected with the Bureau of American Ethnology at Washington, D.C. He compiled a tribal list containing 3,000 titles. His most notable work was his ethnographic study of the Ghost Dance, a widespread religious movement among various Native American culture groups that ended in 1890 with a bloody confrontation against the United States Army at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Mooney's obituary is available on JSTOR in American Anthropologist 24, #2 (New Series), pp. 209-214.

Works written by James Mooney

• Myths of the Cherokees (1888)
• Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891)
• ''Siouan Tribes of the East (1894)
• The Messiah Religion and the Ghost Dance; Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians (1898)

Bibliography

• The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890
• Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians
• Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees

1861 births | 1921 deaths | American non-fiction writers | Folklorists