Bureau of Ethnology - Southwestern US - 1883
....7/8/24 (updated 11/29/25)The Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), originally called the Bureau of Ethnology, was established in 1879 by an act of Congress to transfer archives, records, and materials related to the Indigenous peoples of North America from the Department of the Interior to the Smithsonian Institution. Its founding director, John Wesley Powell, envisioned a broader mission "to organize anthropologic research in America," beyond just transferring materials. The BAE sponsored ethnographic, archaeological, and linguistic field research, organized research-intensive multi-year projects, and promoted the discipline of anthropology in the United States.Key activities of the Bureau included preparing exhibits for expositions, collecting anthropological artifacts for the Smithsonian's United States National Museum, and maintaining a manuscript repository, library, and photographic collections documenting Indigenous peoples. The BAE was also the official repository for documents collected by various US geological surveys that pertained to American Indians. It published extensive research works including Annual Reports and Bulletins that covered sociological, religious, industrial, linguistic, and archaeological studies related to Native American tribes.The Bureau's research addressed many practical issues such as classification of tribes by language affinity, sociocultural relations, medical practices, sanitation, land cessions, and preservation of antiquities. From 1897, it was known as the Bureau of American Ethnology to emphasize its focus on the geographic scope of America, though it occasionally conducted research in US possessions like Hawaii and the Philippines. In 1965, the BAE merged with the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology forming the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology, and its archives became the National Anthropological Archives in 1968. The Bureau had important subunits including the Mound Survey, Institute of Social Anthropology, and River Basin Surveys, contributing a wealth of knowledge and resources to American anthropology and ethnology.​Source: Perplexity.aiCurated by Gabrielle Ly
